Tuesday, April 19, 2022

2 Henry VI and Othello Make Brief Appearances in WRKP

"Three Days of the Condo." By Lissa Levin. Perf. Gary Sandy, Gordon Jump, Loni Anderson, Richard Sanders, Frank Bonner, Jan Smithers, Tim Reid, Howard Hesseman. Dir. Linda Day. WKRP. Season 4, episode 7. BBC. 18 November, 1981. DVD. Shout! Factory, 2018.

Doctor Johnny Fever makes two quick references to Shakespeare in a Season 4 episode. The plot surrounding the allusions isn't important, so I'll ignore that. 

The first reference contains an allusion to Dick the Butcher's famous line from 1 Henry VI: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" (IV.ii.76-77). Well, it's a very rough paraphrase, but Johnny Fever does cite Shakespeare as the source.

The second is just the name "Othello" uttered after Dr. Fever takes a closer look at what Venus Flytrap is wearing.

Enjoy!


Links: The Episode at IMDB.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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