Get back, get back to where you once belonged. After Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Clayton Morris “corrected” his co-anchor Alisyn Camerota today, she may have hummed this Beatles refrain under her breath for the rest of the show. Or, simply thought aloud that he should remember her proper place on the curvy couch.
As F&FW returned from commercial break mid show, it began with a segment entitled, “NBC Airs New Jay Leno Promo: Underhanded Dig at Conan O’Brien?” After the clip ran, Aly asked, “What’s the dig?” Clayton replied, “Did you hear that song in the background? Of course, made famous by the Beatles, Get Back….It’s almost as if they’re sort of wiping away the fact that Conan ever existed on NBC at that time.” Guest co-host Peter Johnson, Jr., facetiously interjected, “Maybe, you’re right. I mean, if you play it backwards, maybe, it’s an attack on David Letterman.”
When Aly subsequently queried, “Is it like the time on Dallas? Is it Dallas where they woke up from a dream after a year?” Almost dismissively, Clayton quickly replied, “No that was Bob Newhart. That was the Newhart show.” As she looked down at her notes to prepare to read the headlines, she softly responded, “Okay.”
Actually, Aly was right. The seventh year of the drama Dallas is known as the “dream season.” In the previous season, the character of Bobby Ewing (played by Patrick Duffy) had been killed off and the show continued without him during this seventh season. However, when the actor decided to return to the series, the producers brought him back in the last scene of the finale through the dream device. I.e., season seven had been a “bad dream” for both Pamela Ewing and the viewers.
Ironically, as to Clayton’s comment about Newhart, the entire eight years (1982-1990) of that series were wiped away in its final episode. At the conclusion of that show, Bob Newhart awakened to his 1970’s series The Bob Newhart Show wife Suzanne Pleshette. In a satirical reference to the Dallas “dream season,” he suggests that it had all been a strange dream.
Perhaps, another mea culpa from Clayton tomorrow? Today, the history buff laudably made one as to a mistake about the history of Medicare. (After saying that it was enacted during Truman’s tenure, he later acknowledged that it was actually LBJ and that Truman was its first beneficiary.) However, he has not made another as to Aly re Dallas yet: when the author Tweeted that she was indeed right, Clayton replied, “[W]hy do you know that?” In response to his oddly phrased query, I answered that I remembered it and gave him a Guardian cite.
In Clayton defense, most of the remainder of F&FW was dedicated to coverage of the death of Al Haig, Nixon’s White House chief of staff (during Watergate) and Reagan’s Secretary of State (infamously during the assassination attempt aftermath).
Perhaps, he shall remember tomorrow. Or, perchance, Aly will.
Carpe Diem 