Back in the Olden Times, if you wanted to see a television programme sometime after it aired you had to record it on VHS tape. PBS often had programmes scheduled to finish at the top of the hour but the actual documentary/foreign drama/what-have-you ended 15-20 minutes before then.
We recorded a show once that put a short film to fill the space afterward and, because there was a lot of tape remaining, we continued to use that cassette for other shows. As a result, for about two years every time we rewound to see the recent recording we would catch only the last 20-30 seconds of Tater, Tomater . I don’t think we ever watched the American Playhouse episode we taped it along with it (my link is to a copy from after it got picked up by a cable channel).
Our friend who visited in May lived a couple miles away from us just outside of Athens GA at this time and had also seen this a couple of times and finally insisted we watch it. It is a masterpiece of modern cinema and I implore each and every one of you to set aside 15 minutes for this.
The busboy in this is one of the guys from Jump Little Children. Phrases that have entered the lexicon of Tater Tomater-heads include:
“Oh I cut myself. I’m alright!”
“Can I help you with some bread tonight butter margerine?”
“Ladies what got har gots to wear a har net.”
“This sticky stuff won’t stay stuck.”
Then, there’s Doris’ moment of glory. This will make sense to you, once you’ve witnessed ‘the incident’:
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 