Sexy Friday – 20260501

TGIF! Happy May Day to all who celebrate. Though, the real holiday is Cinco De ME. I mean, Mayo. Anyway, we’re mainlining playoff hockey so let’s get to it.

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Today’s subject is Star Wars! (NERD!!!!!) Believe it or not, Star Wars had an even worse and earlier blunder for the franchise than the original trilogy.

After Star Wars was released in 1977 the sequel wasn’t expected for another three (3) years. So they decided they needed to fill in that gap somehow and keep fans interest. Lucas came up with the idea of a holiday special: A 2 hour show to air around Thanksgiving in 1978.

Lucas even wrote the story. It centered around Life Day, which is Christmas to us and would follow Chewbacca’s family as the awaited his return home with Han Solo. Of course, Darth Vader gets involved and Han and Chewy have to fight him off to make it home just in time for Life Day.

ABC bought the idea. But when production began Lucas had started work on The Empire Strikes Back and wasn’t involved. Instead the production was turned over to novice staff writers. But things were still looking rosy and almost the entire original cast had signed on as well as having cameo appearances from TV stars like Harvey Korman, Diahann Caroll, and Bea Arthur. Ads promoted a space fight between Han and Darth Vader.

The show premiered Nov 7, 1978 at 8pm. Viewership started high at around 20 million. 15 minutes later it had mostly vanished and changed the channel to Wonder Woman. They took that opening time to show Chewbacca’s family arguing in Wookie. With no subtitles. From there, the show had no actual plot and devolved into a variety show with all the cameos. The finale was Leia singing a Life Day carol to the tune of the Star Wars theme song. Carrie Fisher later admitted to being “highly medicated” during filming.

Reviews were awful and fans hated it. Especially George Lucas. He successfully made sure the show was never aired again. Unfortunately, 1978 was right around the time VCRs were becoming a thing and a lot of fans recorded the show. Those bootleg tapes are still around, though most are of poor quality. Lucas has said if he had a sledgehammer and the time, he’d track down every tape and smash them to its himself.

As always, folks, never delegate important tasks to incompetent folks if you care about the result.

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Enjoy the weekend, folks! Alright, now let’s get to the comments!