Charlie Spradling, Part 3: Television Appearances

Full House: Cutting It Close (1988)

 

As far as I'm aware, Charlie's television debut came on October 14, 1988 with the Season 2 premiere of Full House. I'm not sure that I have to give my readers a lot of background information on this series, as anyone fucked up enough to enjoy the same kind of sleaze that I do has to have gotten that way somehow, but perhaps a brief description is in order.

Full House is about some guy named Danny (the infamous Bob Saget) and his three daughters, D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle (the infamous Candace Cameron, the infamous Jodie Sweetin, and the infamous Olsen twins) who live with some guy they call Uncle Jethie (the infamous John Stamos) and some other guy they call Joey (the infamous Dave Coulier). They basically stumble around the set delivering their various signature lines (Michelle: “You're in big twouble, mithter”; Stephanie: “How rude!”; Uncle Jethie: “Have mercy!”; and Joey: “Cut. It. Out.”), which are invariably followed by uproarious laughter from the studio audience. I'm not kidding. I bet there was at least one episode in which Michelle, Stephanie, Uncle Jethie, and Joey sat around in a circle and took turns saying their catch phrases for twenty-two straight minutes, and I'll bet the audience didn't stop laughing the entire time, except maybe when they had to halt taping for five minutes to stretcher away some guy whose appendix burst as he convulsed during a giggling fit. It's easily the worst series in all of 80s primetime network programming. There's probably only one scene worth watching in the entire eight-season run of this shitcom, and this is it:

 

 

Married with Children: Requiem for a Dead Barber (1989)

 

On February 12, 1989, Charlie appeared in an episode of Married with Children. I never really watched this show, and if this episode is any indication I didn't really miss all that much. It's basically just another dumb sitcom. The humor isn't of the warm, fuzzy, and innocuous Full House variety, but it's just as lame. I considered trying to “just turn down the volume and think about fucking Christina Applegate,” but I didn't want to miss the only decent scene in this episode, and probably in the entire series:

 

 

 

 

 

Twin Peaks: Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer (1990)

Spradling's first appearance in a good TV series came on April 19, 1990 with a very brief scene in the third episode of Twin Peaks.

In this episode, Ben and Jerry Horne take a boat to visit an across-the-border bordello called One Eyed Jacks (“One Eyed Jack's yearnin' to go a peepin' in a seafood store"), and upon arriving they're met at the dock by the show's eponym (I tried really hard to talk myself out of making that joke, but my better judgment was vanquished yet again).

But, no, seriously, all poor taste aside, you put that sailor on a USN recruiting poster and the Pacific fleet will soon be so awash with seamen they'll have to recalibrate their sonar instruments. Um, I mean they'll have to, uh, build more ships, or something.

Frequent David Lynch casting director Johanna Ray had worked on The Blob (1988), so I'm imagining the following conversation:

David Lynch: I need a breathtakingly beautiful woman with large breasts who doesn't mind being woefully underused in every single production in which she's featured.

Johanna Ray: I have just the person.