Charles in Charge: Goldenboy Scott Baio's rise and fall from glory. (Elevdado: Part II) Aug 08 '01 (Updated Aug 15 '01)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet The Bottom Line And I sing, I want, I want Charles in Charge of me. It's the theme song. It's catchy, you see?! Note: The following is a review of the show Charles in Charge for the Elevdado write off. As there is no epinions category for this show, I will be taking a page out of the book of DavidK93 and writing the review under the category for the network that the show originally aired on, CBS. Curiously, this show premiered the same season as the show David reviewed, Who's the Boss? Pros: Wholesome family entertainment with good moral lessons Cons: Pretty hokey by modern standards Rating: ** Recommended: No The year was 1984. We all knew Mozart's middle name and we wanted amplifiers that went to 11. (ELEVEN, MAN!) America was settling in for four more years of Reganomics. We were still the good guys. Russia was still the bad guys. Orwell was wrong, Big Brother wasn't watching… At least not too closely. It was a year after Joanie had stopped loving Chachi, and even though they eventually got married, the Happy Days had ended. One thing was still true, and a constant. Scott Baio was hot. To CBS executives, Scott Baio must have looked like gold. A veteran teen heartthrob, Baio had been a fixture on the TV hit Happy Days from 1977 until its cancellation earlier that year. He had been so successful in that series, that ABC had spun him off into his own series, Joanie Loves Chachi for the 1982-83 season, while retaining him as a recurring member of the Happy Days cast. Joanie Loves Chachi bombed, being cancelled after only 17 episodes, and Happy Days aired its last episode a year later, but none of that seemed to affect goldenboy Baio's star potential. A summer worth of Happy Days reruns, and Baio landed right on his feet, again as the star of his own series, only this time he was on CBS. Charles in Charge teamed Baio with his co-star from the 1982 B-movie cult classic, Zapped!, Wille Ames. Ames, perhaps best known for his role as Tommy Bradford on the series Eight is Enough had been languishing in the three years since that series' cancellation. The premise: A working couple, the Pembrokes, hire Charles (Baio) as a live-in babysitter for their three children. Charles is a goodhearted kid, working his way through college, he keeps his grades up, his nose clean, and is always glad to help out with the family. Somehow, between studying and being a moral guide for the three children, he finds the time to court his college sweetheart, Gwendolyn Pierce (the sexiest co-ed in school) and get into misadventures with his bumbling friend Buddy Lembeck (played by Ames). CBS cancelled it after one season. Who'd have thought? What went wrong? Lets look at the family sitcom checklist and see what we forgot: - Convenient if unlikely premise. Check! - Teen hearthrob hunk. Check! - Sexy love interest. Check! - Cute and sarcastic kids who get in trouble. Check! - Naïve parent foils to the kids. Check! - Slapstick best friend for comic relief. Check! - Good family oriented moral messages. Check! - Plot. Dammit! You can see how it might have been easy to overlook that. I mean eight details, they nailed seven of them, the audience should have loved it. Who could have ever predicted that the television audience would want interesting stories. No really! I'm serious! This was 1984 television. People had become used to TV shows like AfterM*A*S*H and Three's a Crowd. Of course, those shows got cancelled too. But the story doesn't end there. This isn't some flash in the pan actor like John Ritter or Jamie Farr. This is Scott Baio. Hollywood's Goldenboy. Cancellation can't stop the Goldenboy. And so, in early 1987, more than a year after the cancellation, Charles in Charge returned to the airways, albeit in syndication and in a slightly altered form. Only Ames and Baio returned from the original cast. On the first episode of this second season we find Charles and Buddy returning home from summer vacation (you know, I never got a year and a half for summer vacation, what a rip) to find out that the Pembrokes have sold their home and Charles along with it to another family, the Powells. Mr. Powell, a Navy man, is stationed abroad in the South Seas. His father, a retired Navy man, is living with his daughter and their three children in the old Pembroke home when Charles returns. After some initial indecision, Charles decides that these new children need his help as much as the old children did and so the series was reborn. Why the Powells needed another live-in babysitter when the grandfather was living in the house for that express purpose, I'll never understand. But see, that's the thing, no plot? That's ok! Tweak the premise, make it more convenient and more unlikely! While we're at it, dump the sexy co-ed and bring in a new and different sexy co-ed every week! Presto! Money in the bank. Ok, that's not fair, the series did change a bit. The episodes became a little less preachy. And a little more fun. Charles lost a bit of his squeaky clean image as the plots began to center on his girl chasing of the new bevy of babes that were travelling through his school. Frankly, the series simply became a bit more fun. Without being "too much fun." Perfect for syndication. The show ran in first-run syndication untl the end of 1990, by this time, Scott Baio has somehow lost his goldenboy magic. Once a hunky mantoy in the mind of every teenaged girl and the boyfriend of no less than Pamela Anderson, Nicolette Sheridan and Heather Lockleay, he is now a 40 year old also ran who makes the occasional appearance in a little known film or TV movie. Ames has retired from the business and now works as a youth pastor. Most notable about the series was its launching of the careers of Josie Davis (who later became a regular on Beverly Hills, 90210 and Titans) as well as Erika Eleniak and Nicole Eggert (who each later moved on to Baywatch and a streak of films starring their cleavage). Veteren actor, James T. Callahan, who played Commander Powell, the grandfather in the second incarnation of the series, continues to get character roles to this day. Ellen Travolta, who played Charles's Mom, gets an occasional role even today whenever someone needs to pretend they sort of have a real star (she's John Travolta's sister). The rest of the cast promptly boarded a rocketship heading straight for the sun shortly after the series final cancellation in December 1990. (At least I assume, they might have actually gone off in search of the lost city of Atlantis for all I know.) As one might expect, Charles in Charge will probably not go down in the annals of TV history as a great show. But I for one hope that it at least rates a decent footnote. You see, I admit it. I kinda enjoy watching Charles in Charge every now in then. I get a laugh out of it (that Buddy! He's crazy!). I enjoy the 80s in general. But make no mistake, you're going to see this show and think, Wow. This is what TV had to offer 17 years ago.. Wow! Ummm, maybe Yes, Dear isn't so bad anyway. On second thought, maybe Charles in Charge wasn't so bad anyway. In closing, I'd just like to say one thing: We still miss you Willie Ames! ---- This review is the second of my 3 part entry into the Elevdado 80s write-off. Please visit the other entrants in the writeoff: 29th_Candidate, ainsleyjo, Bijou, bluehawq, brotherman, Caleo, DavidK93, elvisdo, Fez_Monkey, ggrimes1221, levda, mattjoe, orator, Phineaskc, repulsemonkey, rfr, and st3on1ey1baby. For details, see the official Elevdado homepage at http://www.geocities.com/elevdado/.

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