What's on TV? Thursday, February 21, 1980

Reviewing this week's Kentucky edition of TV Guide put me in a nostalgic kind of mood. Not for these particular shows, necessarily, but for what it was like to come home from school every afternoon and turn on the TV. I talk frequently about being old, because I am old—but it wasn't during their original runs that I watched shows like Gilligan's Island on Channel 11 or McHale's Navy on Channel 9; it was by watching them after school. That's when I was introduced to the Francis the Talking Mule movies on Channel 4, having no idea that the human acting opposite Francis was the legendary Donald O'Connor. And though I didn't bother to watch Star Trek or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea when they were on the networks, I watched them around dinnertime on Channel 11. Part of what makes the memory of a show so strong, so special, is when and where you watched it. It makes afterschool memories special as well, as if simply being out of school wasn't special enough. What kind of afterschool TV memories do you have?