I honestly wish I'd found this one a year ago.
Saturday's The Place was not just the title of CBS' Saturday morning block in 1984, but also their preview special that year, the 2nd of 3 produced by Sid & Marty Krofft.
SAY WHAT?
Now, we all know the Kroffts sold their 2nd entry to CBS, Pryor's Place, that season, nine years after Far Out Space Nuts. As part of the deal, CBS also acquired reruns of the 1974-7 Land of The Lost series as a mid-season replacement. After Pryor was cancelled, the Kroffts produced the next year's preview show (w/Roddy Piper and others), and that was it.
We've already reviewed the freshman class of the season:
Jim Henson's Muppet Babies
Pole Position
Pryor's Place
The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show, Dungeons & Dragons, & Saturday Supercade all returned, and Shirt Tales moved over after 2 seasons at NBC.
There's a story to this. Ted Knight returned to CBS, although Too Close For Comfort had gone into syndication after leaving ABC. As was the case on Comfort, Knight plays a cartoonist, but in this case his character is named for legendary artist Windsor McCay. Joyce DeWitt, fresh from Three's Company, co-stars. Bookending things is a homage to Chuck Jones' Duck Amuck and its Bugs Bunny-centric sequel, with Knight/McCay in place of Daffy at the end of the show.
We also see a portion of a Muppet Babies recording session with Russi Taylor, Laurie O'Brien, Frank Welker, and Howie Mandel (St. Elsewhere). Welker had been on an ABC preview show two years earlier.
Forgive the poor video quality. No rating.
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