Years ago, in the fourth grade, I remember some kid telling me that I was his best friend.

I thought that was kind of weird. I had known him for about 10 minutes.

Looking back on it, I wish I had been mature enough to befriend him. He obviously didn’t have much of a social circle or misunderstood the concept of a best friend. But given the complex politics of the fourth grade, I thought that it seemed strange that this nice kid, but an utter stranger to me, would suddenly want to be best friends. It seemed kind of desperate and needy.

That random memory popped into my head earlier this week – and got me to thinking about the latest posts on The TV Professor: Laverne & Shirley and Taxi.

If it was challenging to make friends as a kid, it's got to be even doubly or triply so as an adult. At a certain point in life, you've got your career and maybe a spouse or kids who you enjoy hanging out with. You have your routines and get kind of set in your ways and probably aren't involved in many social activities where you're likely to develop friendships. If you work remotely and your houseplants are coworkers, it becomes even more challenging.

Well, I think a lot of TV shows become so popular because of the friendships on the shows. We see Laverne and Shirley, best friends as best friends could be, and we suddenly want a piece of that. Everybody at Taxi, the characters may have been coworkers, but they were all clearly pals. The Taxi gang was always getting involved in each other’s lives and eating dinner together and hanging out.

Who wouldn’t friendships like that? Or like the friendships on Friends and the bond between Mary and Lou on The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

Of course, if all hung out with our own best friends much as TV characters hang out with theirs, we’d probably end up ruining our lives. We’d never get any work done. We’d ignore our families and find ourselves in divorce court or being reported to social services. We’d forget to pay bills and would lose our homes.

What’s new in The TV Professor?

​So I’m taking a look at the Laverne & Shirley theme song and how it was put together. A reader of The TV Professor mentioned to me that Cindy Williams (who played Shirley) is currently doing a one-woman tour around the country, and I think that inspired me. In any case, a lot of work went into putting this TV theme song together.

And I’ve been binge watching Taxi for awhile now. For a long time, I was hoping I could come up with some “how to be a better driver by watching Taxi” blog post… and maybe I’ll manage to write something about that at some point.

But it really was a show about how its drivers were trying to make their own lives better. I could have gone with some life lessons Taxi imparted, and maybe I’ll also tackle that in the future. But instead, I went with the financial lessons we can all pick up by watching Taxi.

Behind the scenes

Thanks for everyone who is reading, and welcome to my new subscribers. I really appreciate you being here. New and old.

The blog is admittedly growing slowly – at a speed you could time with a sundial, as my late uncle would have said – but yesterday, I had a pretty cool experience.

The TV Professor now has the seal of approval of one of the daughters of the late James Garner, star of The Rockford Files and gazillion other things.

That’s right. Yesterday, on Twitter, a daughter of the late James Garner himself posted on Twitter a Rockford Files blog post I put up about a month and a half ago – and called it a “great article.”

I mean, wow. I guess I'll be following her on social media, and of course, we'll probably start hanging out a lot. Because I'm pretty sure this means we’re best friends.

So I’ll end things here...

Well, I guess that’s all for now, but thanks for subscribing to The TV Professor and checking out the blog posts. And for those who celebrate Easter, happy Easter Sunday! May everyone find some giant rabbit tracks in your front yards and a basket of colorful eggs and chocolate at your front doorstep.

Until next time, happy TV watching,

Geoff Williams

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