The good news: In the process of discussing the Kozak girls, the topic of Dream On came up – and I found that the show is now streaming for free (with ads) on Roku. Prior to this, only seasons 1 and 2 were available, and even that incomplete collection would set you back 80 bucks.
The even better news: it’s the original HBO version, with the nudity, not the watered-down, censored Comedy Central edits.
Here’s the Kozak episode, for example.
Years ago, I reviewed every season and created a full list of who got naked in each one. (At the time, all of the clips were poor quality.)
I’m kind of surprised Brian Benben hasn’t done all that much after this.
Of course, he did marry Madeleine Stowe, so the universe has a way of balancing things out.
She married him long before Dream On (they married in 1982).
IMDB says they own a working cattle ranch (if accurate) so I guess he does that instead of acting, she is in a new project this year, but hadn’t acted in six years previous. So either the ranch, theater or side projects kept them going, or they invested well.
Yes, Annabelle Gurwitch!
I had completely forgotten about Wendy Malick and Dream On until she showed up in Apple TV’s Shrinked as the spicy elder girlfriend opposite Harrison Ford
Mimi Rogers was in 3 episodes. If she and Brian Benben had married, she could have been Mimi Benben.
There are certain names that, in my opinion, you should never name your children. At the very top of that list is the name Anita. I went to law school with a woman named Anita. She was engaged to a man whose last name was Mann. She decided to keep her maiden name. We had a classmate named Edward Haskell. He went by his middle name. We were the class of 1998, so for the most part, the name Eddie Haskell meant nothing to anyone younger than we were, but it did to many people older than we were. A little over 20 years ago, I interviewed a paralegal named Felix Unger. I grew up watching The Odd Couple in syndication, but that young man’s parents had not. They had emigrated to the U.S. from somewhere in Eastern Europe around the time he was born. They didn’t realize that name would cause him to be teased throughout his childhood. For what it’s worth, I recommended that he be hired.
The topless cheerleader waving her pom-poms on top of Benben has lived in my head rent-free since the night it aired.
I am firmly of the opinion that not everything that is legal is moral and that not everything that is illegal is necessarily immoral. For instance, if the owner(s) of a movie or TV show refuse to offer a legal way to watch that movie or TV show, there is nothing immoral about obtaining that movie or TV show by less than legal means. Since only the first two seasons of Dream On were available on DVD, I don’t think it would have been wrong to torrent seasons three through six. If I “accidentally” downloaded all 6 seasons, the right thing to do would be to buy the first two seasons on DVD. Of course, $80 is twice what most complete series cost on Amazon. But buying that outrageously overpriced DVD set would have been the morally correct thing to do.
In all seriousness, if the complete series had been available for no more than $50, I would have purchased it, just as I have bought dozens of other DVD sets.
These companies overcharge everyone on cable channels they don’t watch but are forced to pay for every year. No one should be worried about compensating them for a couple of seasons of anything. They will never apologize for robbing us blind.
Considering that every made-for-HBO movie or TV show of the last 25+ years has opened with a CRT TV tuned to a channel with no signal, a clear reference to the opening credits of Dream On, it made no sense to me that Dream On was never available on HBO Max or Max. Another show that should have been available on Max was Tales From The Crypt. I do own that complete series on DVD.
If I remember correctly, the argument was always about the rights to all the old material. Not everything was in the public domain.
And … I’m guessing that the first set didn’t sell well enough to motivate anyone to keep going.
The problem is that the contracts originally negotiated said nothing about VOD or streaming. Tracking down all the rights holders and negotiating new contracts is expensive, and studios rarely bother unless they believe old shows would draw enough interest. Even when there is significant interest in a series, there is the problem of some rights holder holding out for more than the studio is willing to pay. I could be wrong, but I believe that is why it took so long to release the Adam West Batman series on DVD. By the time they released Batman, the world had mostly moved on to streaming.
There are so many thousands of hours of TV shows that were made in the 20th Century, it’s a shame most can’t be watched. Granted, most of them are probably not worth watching, but I am sure some are. I believe Congress should pass a law that would apply to all movies and TV shows produced prior to some date that had not already signed contracts concerning streaming rights, that would establish revenue sharing for all the parties that would otherwise need to sign contracts. That would leave all the existing contracts for more popular shows alone, but would otherwise get the studios to open their vaults. Any money earned would be placed in escrow accounts that would be administered by the various unions (actors, screenwriters, musicians, and directors). That would save the studios the cost of locating rights holders (or their heirs) as well as prevent holdouts.