Mar 10: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gettin' Jiggy With It
Plus the best songs by fictional musicians, The Clapper, and Coke's worst marketing campaign
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
March 10th, 2023 • Issue 142
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
March 10th
26 years ago, on March 10th, 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on The WB.
The Sopranos usually gets credit for kicking off the “golden age of television” — but it’s entirely possible the true spark came two years earlier in the unlikeliest of forms on the unlikeliest of networks.
Yes, it’s true: The genesis of the golden age of TV may have come in the form of a low-budget, soapy, teen-focused, horror-comedy movie reboot on a two-year-old TV network that had never even sniffed a ratings hit.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on this day in 1997, a reboot of the underperforming movie of the same title from a mere five years earlier. But the series bore little resemblance to the film. The TV show was somehow (almost paradoxically) both way darker and way funnier. Unlike the movie, it had a cast of essentially unknowns. And also unlike the movie, it had a minuscule budget.
But it had a story to tell. A compelling one, too. And that story was powered by fantastic writing, great acting performances (by the aforementioned cast of unknowns), and serialized, season-long story arcs
Serialized, season-long arcs were few and far between to that point in TV; after Buffy, they became a signature of the golden age of TV.
So, in totality, Buffy wasn’t the common by-the-numbers TV fare of the day. Which is why in spite of its B-movie monster makeup and in spite of The WB’s lack of eyeballs or name recognition, Buffy was a huge success. Both with critics and with fans — and eventually commercially, though it never did huge numbers on The WB or, in its later seasons, UPN.
The show remains a bona fide classic (not just a cult classic), even as creator Joss Whedon’s stock has plummeted due to the cast speaking out about his toxic behavior on set.
And though there’s been talk of rebooting it for at least a decade, Buffy caught so much lightning in a bottle a quarter-century ago, it might just be one of the few series that’s un-rebootable.
1980 - Willard Scott became the weatherman on the Today show.
1988 - Prince’s album Lovesexy was released.
1989 - Police Academy 6 hit theaters.
1989 - The series finale of Webster aired, as did the series finale of game show Finders Keepers.
1992 - Jodeci’s single Come and Talk to Me was released.
1997 - The first PalmPilot was released.
1998 - Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place premiered on ABC.
1998 - Fastball’s album All the Pain Money Can Buy was released.
March 11th
1986 - Popsicle announced plans to switch from two-sticks to a one-stick version.
1986 - The NFL adopted instant replay, although they’d drop it six years later.
1988 - Stand and Deliver and Vice Versa hit theaters.
1989 - COPS premiered on FOX.
1993 - H-Town’s single Knockin’ Da Boots was released.
1993 - “Last Exit to Springfield”, often called the best Simpsons episode ever, premiered on FOX.
1994 - Four Weddings and a Funeral hit theaters.
1995 - Des’ree’s one hit, You Gotta Be, peaked at number five.
1996 - Steve Austin debuted his new Stone Cold gimmick at a WWF Monday Night Raw taping.
1997 - Paul McCartney was knighted.
March 12th
1987 - Les Miserables opened on Broadway for the first time.
1988 - Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
1990 - The eternally-filled-with-wanderlust Raiders announced they were returning to Oakland from Los Angeles.
1991 - REM’s album Out of Time was released.
1993 - Ace of Base’s song The Sign hit number one.
1994 - The most famous Loch Ness Monster photo in history turned out to be a hoax.
1996 - Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was suspended by the NBA for not coming out of the locker room for the national anthem.
2002 - The Shield premiered on FX.
2002 - The Undeclared series finale aired on FOX.
March 13th
1982 - William Shatner’s show T.J. Hooker premiered on ABC.
1986 - Microsoft had its initial public offering.
1987 - The first cassette single went on sale nationwide in the U.S.
1992 - My Cousin Vinny hit theaters.
1993 - The underrated CB4 hit theaters.
1993 - Snow’s classic Informer hit number one.
1998 - Bryce Drew of Valparaiso hit a famous March Madness buzzer beater.
1999 - Cher’s single Believe hit number one.
2002 - Celebrity Boxing premiered on FOX.
March 14th
25 years ago, on March 14th, 1998, Will Smith’s single Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It hit number one.
Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It is not, of course, a great hip-hop song. (Though it did win the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance, a textbook demonstration of how poorly the Grammys handled hip-hop for so, so, so long.)
But Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It was a low key tent pole in hip-hop history.
The song hit number one right about one year after Notorious B.I.G. was killed in the tragic climax of the gangsta rap era.
Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’s commercial success was a sign that era was over. Mainstream hip-hop overcorrected back to being far more benign and commercially friendly. The genre was now a high-budget, highly-produced, micromanaged form of pop music.
And its course would continue that way until, around a decade later, the line between pop and hip-hop became so blurry that the majority of hit songs were now hip-hop.
1987 - Huey Lewis and the News’ single Jacob’s Ladder hit number one.
1990 - Heart’s single All I Want to Do Is Make Love to You was released.
1992 - Farm Aid V was held in Irving, Texas.
1992 - The Soviet newspaper Pravda shut down.
1995 - The Goo Goo Dolls’ album A Boy Named Goo and Collective Soul’s single December were released.
1996 - A Canadian Football League team drafted a dead player... for the second year in a row.
1998 - KP & Envyi’s one hit, Swing My Way, peaked at number six.
1998 - Ray Charles made his first solo performance in 53 years on QVC of all places.
March 15th
44 B.C. - Julius Caesar was stabbed to death despite prophetic warnings.
1981 - The series finale aired of the original version of The Muppet Show.
1985 - Symbolic.com was the first domain name ever registered.
1986 - Starship’s song Sara hit number one.
1988 - The St. Louis Cardinals NFL team moved to Phoenix.
1994 - Madonna’s single I’ll Remember was released.
1996 - Executive Decision hit theaters.
1996 - Matt LeBlanc’s baseball/chimpanzee movie Ed hit theaters.
March 16th
1985 - Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s one hit, Relax, peaked at number 10.
1993 - France legalized ostrich eating.
1994 - Tonya Harding plead guilty to conspiracy in the Nancy Kerrigan attack.
1995 - Eazy E announced he had AIDS.
1997 - The famous prohibition episode of The Simpsons aired on FOX.
1999 - The PC game Everquest was released.
2001 - WCW Monday Nitro and WCW Thunder were both canceled by Turner Broadcasting, bringing an end to wrestling’s Monday night wars.
2001 - Memento hit theaters.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
It turns out Julia Roberts was originally going to star in Shakespeare in Love but she dropped out after she had zero chemistry with all of the possible male leads.
It’s official: According to the RIAA’s year-end report, vinyl albums outsold CDs last year for the first time since 1987. About 41 million vinyl albums were sold in the U.S. versus 33 million CDs.
Ben Savage has officially announced he’s running for Congress. He’ll be running for Adam Schiff’s seat in southern California when Schiff runs for Senate.
History of the World, Part II started airing on Hulu earlier this week and concludes tonight.
Jenna Ortega of Wednesday is considering joining Beetlejuice 2, which films later this year.
The second season of the Beavis and Butt-Head revival will premiere on April 20th on Paramount+.
The final trailer is out for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which opens on April 5th.
Billy Squier, the ‘80s rock legend behind several anthems (most important: The Stroke), just released his first new song in 30 years. It’s called Harder on a Woman and it’s a protest song in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade reversal.
Chuck E. Cheese still uses floppy disks to run its animatronic shows.
Sharon Stone says she lost custody of her son after Basic Instinct in an “abuse by the system.”
Tom Sizemore passed away earlier this week at age 61. He suffered a stroke and brain aneurysm in mid-February.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
Rolling Stone made a list of the 50 best songs by made-up musicians. There are some pretty glaring exclusions — but also lots of inspired picks from the decades covered in this newsletter. Keep an eye out for songs from The Simpsons, That Thing You Do, CB4, and, though it’s technically outside the scope of this newsletter, Eurotrip.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
Here’s a brief history of The Clapper, the As Seen on TV sensation of the ‘80s. It was originally called the Great American Turn-On then rebranded as The Clapper and took off. Both names are arguably sexual innuendos, although the latter is much less appealing than the former.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
In 1998, Coca-Cola went all-in on a wildly convoluted rewards system called the Coca-Cola Card. They killed the $75 million campaign after two years.
Have a great week!
-Sam