"You just get turned on by my sexy round eyes." - Jeff Altman to Mie Nemoto
Pink Lady...and Jeff: The Complete Series DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
During the mid 1970s, Pink Lady was an enormously popular Japanese singing duo made up of Mie Nemoto and Kei Masuda. While they regularly sold out giant stadiums in Japan, Pink Lady only scored one minor hit in the United States. One stumbling block was that they could not speak English. Hmm.big in Japan, virtually unknown in the States, could not speak English. Only NBC executives and the criminally insane could analyze those facts and decide that Pink Lady should star in an American variety show.
Brothers Sid and Marty Krofft, the creative team behind such psychedelic Saturday morning fare as Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and H.R. Pufnstuf, were hired to produce the show. This was not as much of a stretch for them as it might seem since they also served as the original producers of the hit variety series Donny and Marie. Sensing that it might be problematic for the show to feature leads who could not speak English, comedian Jeff Altman was brought in as co-host.
Pink Lady first aired on Saturday, March 1, 1980. (That's right - Pink Lady. Although the show was often referred to as Pink Lady.and Jeff in print ads and on the packaging of this DVD boxed set, the show was officially called Pink Lady). Immediately after its premiere, the show moved to its regular Friday night berth where it went head to head with The Dukes of Hazzard. Needless to say, the General Lee won the ratings race, and Pink Lady sputtered along for only six episodes. But the show was so terrible even if playing against dead air Pink Lady probably would not have had a much longer run.
The show's main flaw was in not knowing how to exploit its strengths, Mie and Kei (pronounced "Me" and "Kay"). They obviously possessed an enormous amount of talent, but this show did not understand how to showcase it. Surely Pink Lady was discovered by NBC through their Japanese performances, but we never get a chance to see them perform in their element. On the first show, Jeff Altman alludes to their Japanese popularity and then cuts to a clip.of Mie and Kei parading through a packed stadium in convertibles. The clip then ends immediately before they began to sing. It was almost as if the producers were afraid to present an unfiltered Pink Lady to American audiences.
Mie and Kei instead sang oldies and some stale disco tunes in English. They learned their numbers for the show phonetically, and while "You've Got a Friend," for example, came across as "You've Got a Flend," they still managed to be engaging musical performers.
Pink Lady mostly interacted with Jeff in lame comedic conversations about life in America. These bits were also learned phonetically, and there was thus no opportunity to punch up the dialogue once Mie and Kei had learned it. Kei especially seemed to be painfully uncomfortable in these bits. She seemed to almost palpably struggle with reproducing the sounds she learned, and rarely looked at ease.
But as painful as those moments could be, they were surrounded by even worse comedy bits starring the show's rep company, none of which were very funny. Skits with guest stars like Sherman Hemsley, Bert Parks, Larry Hagman, and Sid Caesar do not fare any better.
Sid Caesar appears in an especially misguided recurring skit in which he plays Mie and Kei's father. This combination of the worst parts of Caesar's patented "foreign nonsense speak" and John Belushi's samurai character is difficult to watch. It is hard to understand why Caesar was willing to do it. Surely sitting around the pool, or however else he occupied his time in the late 70s, was more fulfilling than this. (Perhaps he, like Larry Hagman, was bribed. In an interview included as an extra, Jeff Altman reveals that Hagman appeared on Pink Lady simply because NBC executives promised him a TV movie deal in exchange).
It is also a sure sign that a variety show is a special kind of terrible when the announced musical guests appear only in music videos. Why not simply play the record and have audience members dance along?
The six episodes are divided onto three DVDs. All of the extras are on the first DVD. The disks are housed in an oversized keep case. Each episode is divided into twelve chapters. A single-sheet insert lists the chapter stops for each episode.
Rhino has done a great job with menu design on Pink Lady. The background features a full motion clip from one of the show's production numbers, with a picture of Pink Lady and Jeff in the foreground. A stylized seagull hovers in the top right corner, and an actual Japanese Pink Lady song plays on continuous loop. Upon choosing an episode, the seagull comes to life, sweeping the menu from the screen. The menus for the individual episodes list all of the chapter stops and include screen shots from each. Upon choosing the first chapter, a Jeff Altman intro automatically comes up for each episode.
