{"id":23504,"date":"2021-10-13T12:25:34","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T17:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=23504"},"modified":"2021-10-13T12:25:34","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T17:25:34","slug":"really-really-dumb-trivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=23504","title":{"rendered":"Really, really dumb trivia."},"content":{"rendered":"

What started this: McLean Stevenson was on one of the “Match Game” reruns last night.<\/p>\n

I got to wondering: what was the motivating concept behind “Hello, Larry”? I knew he was a single dad raising two daughters, but was he a widower, or divorced?<\/p>\n

(I also knew that this is more thought than my entire readership combined<\/strong> has put into “Hello, Larry” since I started this blog. Onward!)<\/p>\n

Answer: he was divorced, and his ex-wife (played by Shelly Fabares<\/a>, who is still alive, and a “Mannix” alumnae) shows up in season 2.<\/p>\n

But that’s not the dumb trivia. Here’s the dumb trivia: “Hello, Larry” was not<\/strong> a “Diff’rent Strokes.” spinoff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even though there were “Diff’rent Strokes”\/”Hello, Larry” crossover episodes, “Hello, Larry” was not conceived of as a spinoff. The crossover episodes were intended to increase “Larry”‘s ratings, so the showrunners decided that Larry Alder and Mr. Drummond were…<\/p>\n

…wait for it…<\/p>\n

…Yes! “old Army buddies”! (“with Drummond’s company becoming the new owners of Larry’s radio station”).<\/p>\n

I wonder if they got the idea from Shelly Fabares.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What started this: McLean Stevenson was on one of the “Match Game” reruns last night. I got to wondering: what was the motivating concept behind “Hello, Larry”? I knew he was a single dad raising two daughters, but was he a widower, or divorced? (I also knew that this is more thought than my entire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150,195,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1970s","category-mannix","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23505,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23504\/revisions\/23505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}