Decoder Ring: Reconsidering One of the “Worst” TV Shows of All Time
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Earlier this year, Decoder Ring's senior editor and producer Evan Chung got a chance to speak with a Hollywood legend. A legend by the name of Sid Croft. And if you don't know who I am, you all have a cell phone, call your grandma. You should be talking to your grandma every day anyway. So...

Sid is 95 years old now, and for virtually every one of those years, he's been an entertainer. Ever since I'm 10, I'm in this business. It's the only business I know. As a little kid in the Depression, Sid fell in love with puppetry. And by the time he was a teenager, he was opening for Judy Garland and Liberace.

And then starting in the late 1960s, he teamed up with his brother Marty to make a series of gonzo, psychedelic children's TV shows starring some very large, very trippy puppets. That tree's talking! Oh, everybody talks here on Living Island. HR Puppet Star, who's your friend when things get rough? We were the kings of Saturday morning. We were on all three networks.

And we were so lucky because we didn't have 10 cents to do those shows. But we put everything up on the screen.

In 1975, Sid and Marty got a big break, the chance to move from Saturday mornings to primetime, when they got a call from Fred Silverman, the head of programming at ABC. And he said, I need a variety show. I just saw these two kids, and he said, would you just take a look at this piece of tape? The kids on the tape were a couple of siblings, a teenage brother and sister from Utah named Donnie and Marie Osmond. Man!

And I looked at it. I immediately called him back and I said, oh, my God, Fred, you just sent me a piece of magic.

Donnie and Marie premiered on ABC in January 1976. Hi, I'm Donnie. And I'm Marie. Tonight, our guests are Lee Majors, the Osmond Brothers, Ice Vanities, Fairfax and Majors, and special guest star, Pauline. It became the number one show on Friday night. It went through the roof.

Sid and Marty Croft had proven their primetime prowess. And it's what happened after that's the reason Evan reached out to Sid in the first place. A few years after Donny and Marie, Fred Silverman, the ABC exec, called the Crofts up again. He'd recently moved over to NBC, and he'd just seen something intriguing on the evening news. Walter Cronkite talking about the latest imports from Japan.

Cars, cameras, calculators, television sets. The Japanese now have packaged a new product, and it doesn't fit into any of those categories.

Japan's economic power was on the rise at the time, and American manufacturers were growing anxious about the influx of consumer goods. But the uncategorizable product Cronkite was referring to was a pair of young women in glitzy mini dresses. Individually, their names are Mi and Kei. Collectively, they are Pink Lady, the most phenomenal success ever in Japanese show business.

Me and Kay, the two members of Pink Lady, sang bubbly, disco-fied pop in Japanese. And their performances were driving a mania like the nation had never seen before. ♪

There are two ladies who have turned their entire country of Japan into a screaming basket case. Pink Lady has sold 17 million records. Fans range from the barely walking up through the bubblegum crowd. Nearly 300 Pink Lady products are available here, including everything from toy makeup kits to Pink Lady hot dogs. There's a Pink Lady TV commercial at almost any time of day or night. This one for an air conditioner. Kinto Matto.

That one for an automatic cockroach and bug eliminator. Fred Silverman was amazed by the images of enormous Japanese crowds screaming in ecstasy as the two women shimmied in unison. And he couldn't wait to share what he saw with the Croft brothers. Oh my God, they're like bigger than the Beatles in Japan. They play stadiums and they love them. He said, just let me fly them in. I'll never forget that.

Because just imagine what could happen if the American public got infected with Pink Lady Fever 2. If they could bring them over, give them their own TV show on NBC, it could potentially be the biggest smash of Sid and Marty's careers.

And pink ladies, too. I was being given an opportunity to go into American show business. So I wanted to do everything I could. Because it was the height of the pink lady boom, we thought we could make it in the birthplace of the entertainment industry.

And so over the next year, me and Kay of Pink Lady would fly to Hollywood, and Sid and Marty Croft would build them an American star vehicle, a variety show designed to take the Pink Lady boom and turn it supersonic. But that isn't quite what happened. Can you imagine doing the worst show in the history of television? That's an honor.

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. And I'm Evan Chung. In 1980, a TV show debuted called Pink Lady and Jeff. It had the potential to bring something sensational to American airwaves.

Instead, it became a punchline, a ratings disaster that left audiences completely bewildered. In the decades since, it's acquired legendary status as one of television's most notorious flops, a show that managed to kill off an entire genre. Or at least, that's how it's been seen in America.

But for the two women of Pink Lady, the show was something else. And with their help, we're going to put this so-called mega flop in the spotlight to find out what this 45-year-old show has to tell us about the demands of fame, pop cultural chauvinism, and the limits of the American star machine. So today on Dakota Ring, how does the biggest pop sensation in the world get lost in translation?

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By 1979, the pink lady phenomenon had been going on for years, and yet hardly anybody in the United States knew who these women were. I wanted to be a singer since I was three years old. I was convinced that I would definitely become a singer.

Keiko Masuda was absolutely determined to become a singer by the time she was three years old. So in middle school, Kei signed up for theater club. The first meeting, they went around the room making introductions. And when the hour was up, she headed out onto her next class. But then she heard a voice echoing down the hallway, calling her name. Masuda-san! Masuda-san!

It was this voice trailing off in the distance behind me. I turned around and saw a girl standing there who seemed like she was out of a fairy tale. Her hair in a long braid, books clutched to her chest. It was a kind of fairy tale encounter, because this girl would end up changing Kei's life. It was a meeting.

This is me. She was also in the theater club. They would get cast as sisters in the school play. And as they talked, they discovered they shared the same visions of stardom. That year, we became close to one another. We realized that our dreams for the future were the same, and both of us wanted to work hard for that future together.

Me and Kay auditioned for the same music school in high school, and they both got in. Their singing voices were very different. Kay's is husky, while Me's is high-pitched and pure. The girls were different in a lot of ways, in the way they dressed and in their personalities. Even talking to them today, Me comes across as a bit more formal and concise, while Kay is maybe warmer, a little scattered. But in high school, a music teacher took a look at them and saw that they complemented each other, and he made a suggestion.

Why don't you form a duo? If not for that teacher, there would be no Pink Lady. Thank you.

In March 1976, after a couple of years performing together, me and K got a huge opportunity, a chance to sing on national TV on a talent show called A Star is Born. They named themselves Cookie. They exuded a childlike innocence, wearing brightly colored bib overalls, harmonizing to a sweet, sunshiny pop song.

The audience was completely full of people who had come to watch us. So we thought the best we could do is sing right to them with this strong feeling of, please, please let us win this. They had nothing to worry about. Congratulations!

Immediately after the show ended, agents from production companies were lining up, making pitches to me and Kay. One of the producers had this passionate vision of making us into an act that could even succeed in the world of American show business. It was really startling. And we definitely wanted to go with his company. I think meeting him was something fated, a gift from God.

In those days, the music industry in Japan worked kind of like the old Hollywood studio system. Performers would enter a contract with one company, essentially becoming their employees. The production company would determine what they sang, where they sang, and how they looked. And so me and Kei were taken out of view and put in the hands of a team—a composer, a lyricist, a choreographer, a stylist—working together to prepare them for their professional debut.

And when they finally re-emerged six months later in another televised performance, they'd taken on a new name: Pink Lady. And they were virtually unrecognizable. Gone were the childlike overalls and the gentle sunshine pop.

Now they were wearing miniskirts, doing a highly choreographed routine to up-tempo disco. ♪ ♪ Mi told me that this was actually the aesthetic they'd wanted all along. ♪ ♪ Soul Train was on TV at the time, and I loved Soul Train. ♪

So we wanted to perform with that sort of soulful style that we saw on the show, like the artists who wore short shorts and boots with a lot of choreography. That was the vision we had, to become disco queens. It didn't take long. Pink Lady hit the top of the charts with their second single, S.O.S., in December 1976. It was the first of nine consecutive number one singles. My name is Pink Lady.

Their songs were catchy, charming, often a little goofy, and ahead of the disco curve in Japan. But it was how Pink Lady dressed and moved that really set them apart. Nobody in Japanese pop had ever looked quite like Pink Lady. Take a song like UFO. UFO! UFO!

When they performed it on TV, they would step out in shiny tiaras shaped like alien antennae, along with sequined mini dresses and go-go boots. And me and Kay danced side by side in precise, perfectly synchronized movements. That's how it was for every song. Every word had a gesture, every phrase a shimmy, looking like the Supremes leading an aerobics class.

It was choreography frankly anybody could do. But that was the point. Their fans, especially young kids, bought instructional pink lady booklets to learn how to dance right along with them. It was like the Macarena or the YMCA, but with more steps and for every song in their repertoire.

there was no lack of opportunity to see them dance and sing. Because 1970s Japan was a nation obsessed with TV. It was probably the era where TV was the most integrated into society. Every household had a TV now, and we were making fun music that everyone could watch and enjoy, from kids to their grandparents. So I think it was arriving at that moment that helped turn us into a phenomenon.

Pink Lady's management company kept them on a grueling minute-by-minute schedule, shuffling from TV studio to TV studio. And it wasn't just for televised performances. Me and Kay got contracted out for an absurd number of commercials, too. So Pink Lady was basically on TV every single day. And I think from there, we really began to reach audiences.

According to a magazine survey, the typical Japanese person came across an image of Pink Lady an average of three to four times a day. There were three Pink Lady movies and even a 36-episode anime biopic.

Me and Kay didn't see any of the money from the merchandising and commercials. That all went to their management company. For the first year, all they were paid was a $250 a month stipend. That salary did at least get bumped up as Pink Lady became by far Japan's best-selling artist of 1977 and 1978. At some points, they had the top three songs simultaneously. And then there were the concerts.

At Korakuen Stadium in July 1978, Pink Lady played to an audience of more than 100,000 people, all chanting their name. We were really pouring our entire souls into every single song, every single performance, working our very hardest, singing like our lives were on the line.

In that crowd of 100,000 in Tokyo was an American radio impresario. And after the show, he came to them with an offer. He said he could become their American manager and help break them overseas. Three months later, Pink Lady headed into the studio to record their first English-language single, a song tailor-made for American radio.

Debuting here is the first American hit by the biggest-selling Japanese recording act in the world. In the past two and a half years, they've sold 17 million records. Here they are, two pretty girls from Tokyo known as Pink Lady. Their song? Kiss in the Dark. Pink Lady actually came from Shizuoka, not Tokyo, and they weren't girls. They were 21-year-old women.

But Kiss in the Dark entered the US charts in the summer of 1979, just barely cracking the top 40. It wasn't much of a hit, but it was enough to wake the American media up to the fact that something phenomenal was happening in Japan. "Japan is sending a new export to this country, a recording by two singers who are unknown here, but in Japan, few people have better known." And it wasn't long until Pink Lady got word that they'd earned a new fan.

The president of NBC happened to see us on TV. He thought we were really interesting, so he wanted to make a program with us. Mi and Kay had dreamed of American success from the very beginning, from the moment they signed their first contract. They weren't expecting it so soon, but here it was.

Since we had all the momentum of the Pink Lady boom behind us, I thought that now was our best and maybe only chance to give things a shot in America. Pink Lady is ready for America. But is America ready for Pink Lady? We'll be right back.

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When Fred Silverman, the head of NBC, learned about Pink Lady, he immediately saw them as perfect material for a variety show. The variety show had been a reliable recipe for TV success for decades.

First, you find a charismatic host who can sing and do comedy, Dean Martin or Carol Burnett. Or better yet, get two hosts, Sonny and Cher, the Smothers Brothers. Then the hosts fill the hour with playful banter and sketch comedy. You throw in some big-name guest stars, and you pack the stage with backup dancers for some spectacular musical set pieces. And few people knew how to pull off spectacle better than Sid and Marty Croft.

The most important thing is grabbing that audience. You've got to set the stage, you've got to take them by the hand.

Sid and his brother Marty, who died in 2023, had filled Donny and Marie with ice skaters and balloon drops and turned it into one of the last great variety show smashes. And now Fred Silverman was tasking them with doing it again for Pink Lady. And they'd have to make it quick. "Variety needs to be done tomorrow night. When they want a show, they want it for next week. It's like totally, totally insane."

First off, they were going to need to hire a writing staff. And what I discovered was you didn't really work for Sid and Marty. You married into the family. Mark Evanier had already written for a bunch of shows for the Crofts when the woman in charge of production for them called about a new project. So we go to lunch and they brought a cup of tomato soup. And as we're eating the tomato soup, she says to me,

"Well, you never heard of these girls, but there are two women from Japan who are very hot over there." And I said, "Oh, pink lady?" And she dropped her spoon in the tomato soup and it was spattered all over both of us. And she was like shocked I knew who they were. They were on the walls of my office. It just so happened that his office mate was an American Japanophile and coincidentally a huge pink lady fan. So Mark knew they had appeal. He just had one question. I said to her, "Do they speak English?" And she says, "We're not sure."

If there was a moment in my life when I might have thought, let's take a different path here, that might have been it. Fred Silverman had told Sid and Marty not to worry. Pink Lady's managers had assured him, yes, they spoke English fine. So they didn't see the need to even hire someone who spoke Japanese to be on set.

Still, the network figured it would be smart to pair Pink Lady on screen with a more familiar-feeling presence, an American co-host they could play off of. Fred Silverman says, we got this comedian under contract, Jeff Altman. Well, I am Jeff Altman, master of my universe, and also I do some work at a gas station downtown. Jeff is joking, which is what he does for a living.

Though in 1979, he'd only been working the L.A. comedy club circuit for a few years. Oh, where are you guys from? Oh, that's great. His stand-up set always began the same way. I mean, I came out on stage and would say, "Gee, have any of you folks here been at a Hollywood party recently and wanted to try this silly little party gag?" And bang!

Jeff's routine also included a lot of impressions. Johnny Carson, Raymond Burr, Richard Nixon. He was starting to get steady work on TV, talk show appearances, a guest role on the Dukes of Hazzard, lots of commercials, and eventually, a network holding deal.

Actually, NBC was impressed with Jeff when he replaced a cast member last minute on another variety special.

So the network showed him footage of Pink Lady performing in front of enormous arena crowds in Japan and said, "These are your new co-stars." - I watched them do that and I said, "These girls are tremendous. If they could open these girls up to the Western world, holy God, this show will be the most highly rated variety show in television history." - Did you have a sense that this could be it? Like this could be your big break? - Oh, absolutely. I was gonna be on for an hour on prime time television.

And you thought to yourself, wow, this is going to be a different life. Now that the hosts were set and the show had become Pink Lady and Jeff, Marc Evanier and his writing staff had to get to work putting together the pilot. Though even at this point, nobody on the show had ever spoken with me or Kay. We had to write it without meeting them because they were so hot in Japan that they were booked constantly.

And then we had to negotiate how many days we'd have them. And they kept saying, can you do the show in two days? And we said, no. How about two weeks? And they clutched their hearts and said, oh no, God, we can't cancel all their concerts for two weeks. And I kept saying, if you can't get them here for four or five days to shoot a pilot, how are you going to get them here to do a series if this thing gets picked up?

Eventually, the Crofts reached an agreement for Pink Lady to spend a little less than a week to rehearse and shoot the pilot. The writers would just have to have the script ready to go as soon as they arrived. The brief was pretty straightforward: a traditional variety show, with me and Kay and Jeff doing comic monologues and sketches, song and dance numbers sprinkled throughout, and weekly guest stars.

But without having met Pink Lady, Mark had no hints as to how to write for them. We kept saying to our managers, what can they do? And they go, oh, they can do anything. Whatever you write, they'll be able to do. And I said, now, wait a minute. You know, if we write open heart surgery, they can't do that. No, no, they could learn that. They're fine. So we wrote a script and we just made up a relationship because we had to.

At some point, I am at my house and the script is delivered. Then there it is. We're off. The day Pink Lady finally landed in L.A., they were taken straight from the airport to sit in Marty's offices, where everybody was waiting. And these two gorgeous girls come in.

And I'm talking to them and Marty's talking to them. They talked to us for about 10 minutes. I was trying to listen with all my might, all lasered in. And they're bowing and bowing and bowing. And then I remember Marty finally said,

I couldn't speak English at all. In Japan, I had an English teacher who would come around with me.

She'd try to teach me while we were driving in the car. I was so busy with work. I'd end up falling asleep in the middle of a lesson. They were very talented girls, no question about that. It's just that they couldn't speak English. In that moment when you suddenly realize, oh, they don't in fact speak English, did something change in how you felt the show was going to go? Oh, absolutely. I remember having to change my underwear.

That's a little joke. We kind of looked at each other like, everyone in the meeting looked at each other and went, oh, you mean we actually have to do this show? We're actually going to tape this thing? They were going to have to muddle through somehow.

They wanted to rewrite the whole script to accommodate me and Kei, but there was no time, only a couple of days. Me and Kei would have to memorize every line phonetically on their own. Even as they were shooting, there was nobody else on set who spoke Japanese. We got all sorts of directions, where to stand, when to start the take, and so on, but we didn't understand them.

Then someone else would come to try to explain the directions to us, also in English, which we didn't understand either. So making the pilot was really rough. We taped this thing, this 15-minute pilot, and I thought it was never going to sell. Everybody thought, you know, this is nice. We got paid for doing this pilot, but then never, it's never going to pick this up.

Two weeks later, Mark was at an interview at Universal Studios, trying to secure his next job. On my way out, I stopped at a payphone, checked my voicemail at home, and there was a message saying, "We sold the show!" And I went, "What?" It's possible Fred Silverman picked up the show because the pilot wasn't nearly as rough as Mark thought it was. But the other explanation is that NBC was in deep trouble.

it was dead last in the ratings and coming close to bankruptcy. To save the network, Silverman had gone on a programming spree, commissioning nearly 60 pilots at once, aggressively tossing out the old nightly lineups to make room for dozens of new high-concept shows in the hope that at least one of these big swings would pay off. Pink Lady at least were proven moneymakers in Japan. So NBC put in an order for six episodes.

They're hotter than the odd couple. Sunnier than Sonny and Cher. It's me and Key. It's Kay. And Jeff. Pink Lady, a new series coming soon on NBC. You bet.

The show was set to debut in March 1980. Me and Kay would be coming over to America for an extended period this time. The pilot they'd already taped was just a demo. It would never air. For Sid Croft, that meant an opportunity to start from scratch, to solve the absurd predicament of having hosts who couldn't speak the language the show had to be in. You know, it's just, what am I going to do with them? And then he got an idea.

Why not lean into the absurdity? I want to do a show that the next day at the water cooler, everybody says, "Holy shit, did you see that? What was that?" Just making it a show that people would watch because it was so bizarre. I just want to do something weird.

But Fred Silverman at NBC did not want weird. He said, no. And so I said, Fred, what is it that you want? He said, I want Donny Marie. I said, I can't give you that. We kept hearing the phrase traditional variety shows. This has got to be a traditional variety show. And I kept saying, we don't have traditional variety show stars. But they figured they did at least have three stars.

Me and Kay couldn't speak English, but they could sing and dance. Jeff couldn't sing or dance, but he could do comedy. So between the three of them, we kind of had, you know, an amalgam variety show star. So nobody was feeling despondent once they got going.

Yeah, it was an odd premise. But in the TV business, having an odd premise wasn't an automatic death sentence. Mark remembers a time when everybody was chattering about CBS having the dumbest idea ever, a sitcom version of the Korean war satire MASH. And it turned out to be one of the most successful TV shows ever done. So you go...

Let's see where this goes. It might catch on. I had the best set designer and costumes. It was a good cast, crew. I walk into the studio and away we go. While the Americans were revved up, scrambling to figure out how to make it work,

From talking to me, I don't get the sense that Pink Lady was feeling much pressure about the show doing well. Since we debuted, we'd just been trying our best at everything. I didn't really think much about success. We were rising so high and we just wanted to keep taking on new challenges one after the next. Going to America was just one of those challenges. So I don't think I was particularly nervous.

Spending weeks learning and rehearsing each episode was a ton of work, no doubt.

But it didn't compare to the craziness they were used to in Japan, being the most famous people alive, making 16 appearances a day. Hollywood, in comparison, was a place they could relax. In Japan, everyone knew us everywhere and I couldn't exactly go out freely. But in America, where people didn't know me yet, I could go anywhere and it felt like I received my freedom.

So, on the contrary, it was a really wonderful thing that we weren't so known in America. But on March 1st, 1980, millions of Americans were about to get a chance to learn who they were. Welcome to Pink Lady!

Do you remember the night that the first episode went on air? I do. My part would be, you know, come out at the beginning and do a monologue. Jeff opened things up with his usual barstool prop comedy. Get the show started and introduce the girls. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome me and Kay, the wonderful Pink Lady. Thank you.

And out they came, in slinky pink dresses, to do the first of several numbers, all of them in English. For a one-hour variety show, there were a lot of musical performances. We had to remember all the English lyrics and the choreography, too.

And then there was all the banter they had to memorize. Now you girls do speak English? Oh yes! We spend many many hours in Japan learning. We wanted to speak perfect English when we got here. Oh, and you speak English too? Do you?

Me and Kei at least had a Japanese interpreter on set at this point, but they still had to learn everything phonetically. All we could do was memorize and memorize the pronunciation and try our best to form the words. But I like you already, Jeff. You were so, so handsome. Oh, you just get turned on by my sexy round eyes. Oh, brother.

For the comedy sketches, the writers tried to come up with scenarios where me and Kay had to say as little English as possible. Like with Jeff playing a televangelist, healing me of boogie fever. She is influenced by the terrible disco demon, Jay! Can you hear me, mama? Say baby. Baby? Yes, you've said it. Say baby again. Baby!

Episode 2 guest-starred the legendary comic Sid Caesar as Miyanke's kimono-wearing dad getting them ready for a date. It all builds up to a big show-stopping medley performed by Pink Lady. I'm thinking about tomorrow, not today.

And every episode would end the same way, with me and Kay in bikinis, dragging Jeff in his tuxedo into a jacuzzi. We have Japanese custom. At the end of the day, time to go into hot tub. Time to go into hot tub? No, I don't go into hot tub. And it was my idea, the hot tub at the end. I needed an ending. At least I got something weird in there. Good night!

I remember watching the show and thinking to myself, man, this is pretty good. Everything looked like it was going to work, but I was wrong. It was like a nightmare. Everything you could do wrong went wrong for us. That's after the break. While we're waiting, a word from Alpo. Hi, this is Ed McMahon. Boy, Alpo's good for your dog, good for the whole family. Have you got it, Evan?

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In America, Pink Lady were unknowns. Nobody wanted to be on the show as a guest star. The client would come back and say, who the hell is Pink Lady? One of them actually said, why do they have a variety show and I don't? I'm not going to go on this show. I should be the star of this show, not them. You said you were going to get some big name stars on the show. Yes, so far. All we've seen is you.

So we had to literally write the scripts without stars. They would come into us and say, what's on show three? We got to send the TV guide listing in. We didn't know. We would write something and hope we got... Like the time when the writers were promised that Dionne Warwick was going to appear. We'd go, okay, then we'd write a sketch for Dionne Warwick.

The moment I wake up Before I put on my mask Two days later, they were told, bad news, Dion dropped out. But hey, Buddy Ebsen from the Beverly Hillbillies was available. Could they just plug him into their script? What you cooking, Granny? That's my spring tonic. Hmm, got a dandy head on it this year. And we'd say, no, we can't switch the Dionne Warwick sketch to Buddy Ebsen. That was a literal example. We did everything backwards.

When guests were finally booked, it was often at the very last minute. They'd basically have to walk right on stage and perform the material cold. That's if they were there at all. Many of the so-called musical guests were literally just music videos. Ultimately, Sid and Marty Croft would have to open up their Rolodexes and call in favors to book some old showbiz legends a little past their heyday. I mean, gosh, we had Roy Orbison. We had Jerry Lewis. Pow! Pow!

Working with Sid Caesar was one of the high points of my career. But the last-minute bookings made the writers' jobs very difficult. And it was even tougher for Pink Lady, struggling to keep up with the script. I'd stay up all night memorizing lines if I needed to. And when I did sleep, the words would enter into my dreams.

Plus, there were five new songs with choreography to learn every week. And the script kept changing every rehearsal, every day. We'd want to change a word and there was like a panic because it would destroy their performances. They had done it by memory and they couldn't unlearn it. And it's like, I had just finally remembered that line. You look so handsome in your tuxedo. How did you get off the wedding cake? Jeff? Jeff?

Do you ever wear a robe? Robes? Well, sure. You know, like when I'm home and relaxing or I'm, you know, not working. That's often. There were other behind-the-scenes problems. Clashes with the director. A battle with standards and practices.

disastrous run-throughs with the backup dancers, even a still unresolved fight with me and Kay's managers over whether the show is actually called Pink Lady and Jeff or simply Pink Lady. So I don't know what the title of the show officially was. Honest to God. We just used both titles interchangeably and nobody cared because nobody was watching. ♪

The show opened in 49th place in the ratings and dropped further with episode two. Critics did not like it, whatever its title was. It was called a "dreary exercise" and an "abomination." One reviewer said, "I've seen a lot of strange things on television, but I don't recall anything as mystifying as Pink Lady and Jeff."

In a letter to the LA Times, a viewer wrote: "On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. On August 6, 1945, the United States bombed Hiroshima. On March 1, 1980, NBC bombed the American TV public." Was the show really that bad?

In the annals of Hollywood, there are myriad stories of a film or TV show that is reviled on its initial release. Then years later, it's rediscovered and reappraised as a flawed masterpiece.

Pink Lady and Jeff is not one of those shows. But some of the sketches do have a certain ragged, weird charm. Like a surreal parody of Celebrity Roasts, where Abraham Lincoln gets skewered by John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, and Mary Todd Lincoln. I'm just kidding, baby. But if I were to describe our love life in one sentence, it would have to be, foreplay was seven years ago.

There are musical sequences I find delightful. Whenever Pink Lady gets to sing and dance, it's very fun. And they have a great band behind them. At the same time, there's also corny jokes that fall flat. Some real clunkers of scenes that come across as pretty half-baked. Here he is anyway. Welcome Japan's own Shiki Nakamoto.

Like a sketch where a stand-up comic on The Tonight Show speaks Japanese. That's the entire joke, I guess. And there are other sketches where the jokes are more than just slapdash. Moments of Orientalist humor and leering exoticism.

The cheesecake hot tub bikini scenes and the yellow face and fake Japanese. It was a different era. This kind of stuff was all over TV. And yet, today, a lot of the show veers into the cringeworthy.

But that's looking through contemporary eyes. I don't get the sense that me or Kay were bothered by it at the time. And I really don't think that racial or sexist humor is what turned off audiences in 1980. Instead, what they couldn't handle was me and Kay speaking accented English. Tonight, we have our guest star, Hugh Hefner and Playmates. And our musical guest, Chip Higgins.

You know, they were pretty, they danced well, and they were fun to look at. But, you know, when they're mispronouncing some of the words, you know, people at home are sitting there going, Hey, Martha, could you go out and get me another beer? I can't understand these girls.

One critic wrote that not only had Me and Kay not mastered English, they seemed to have scarcely confronted it. Another said that whoever thought they could host an American variety series had to have rocks in his head. It didn't matter if the writers were trying to spin the language issues into comedy. Everyone asked us strange questions. Strange questions like what? Like, what do you design? Oh, oh, oh, they're talking about your horoscope. Horoscope?

Watching these routines, I actually find it pretty remarkable what me and Kay managed to do, considering. If you thrust me onto Japanese TV, I could only dream of doing so well.

But audiences were not going to grade Pink Lady on a curve. They expected them to be like standard American variety stars. But me and Kay were not standard American variety stars. And that's why NBC had brought them over. Because they were huge Japanese pop stars. Because Pink Lady was exceptional.

But then the network had forced them into the familiar American variety show host template. It was like NBC chickened out or completely missed the point of what had made Pink Lady stars to begin with. They didn't even allow them to perform their own hit songs. It was absolutely forbidden for them to sing in Japanese. They were just, you know, covering exclusively American music. And if you want my money and you think I'm sexy, come on to the lab.

If we could have just let them go up there and sing the songs they knew and do the choreography they knew, the kind of stuff that filled stadiums in Japan, they would have had a comfort level there. Under immense pressure from the producers and Jeff, the network eventually relented somewhat. Pink Lady got to perform a total of two Japanese songs in some later episodes, their highlights of the whole series. But it was too late.

The viewing audience had already turned on them. I felt sorry for Pink Lady. I felt sorry for me and Kay. They were being worked beyond their capabilities. We felt terrible putting them in this situation, but there would seem to be no way to course correct this mistake that had been made.

As the weeks went on, being in America seemed to be having an effect on me and Kay. They were on permanent jet lag every moment they were in America. They were literally, and I'm not conceding, falling asleep in the rehearsal hall. Just being in a studio in America for 12 hours a day trying to learn English was depressing. And so from time to time you would see Kay crying. It was rough. In America,

Kei told me she was upset, but it wasn't simple homesickness, or the condescending jokes, or the workload. Again, to Pink Lady, Hollywood was practically a quiet refuge in comparison to the frenzy of Japanese stardom. And that was the issue. Being in America gave Kei an opportunity to pause and reflect on the entirety of the past three years of fame, which had been going full speed since she was a teenager.

And it was finally dawning on her just how unrelenting and unsustainable it all was. Pink Lady had shot up in the world like a rocket, all the way to the moon.

But there was another me, the me that was still there with her feet on the ground. And it was like I had a bird's eye view of her or something. Every time I stood on stage, it felt like my heart was going to leap out of my mouth and I was going to forget the words, screw up the choreography. It was an intense way to live. I didn't have time to eat or sleep. It was concert after concert, concert after concert.

It was really, I don't know, my nerves just got ground down over time. Kay had virtually no control over her career. Pink Lady's production company decided everything and pocketed the bulk of the millions in revenue they generated. She just had to perform where she was told in exchange for a salary. That's how the Japanese music industry worked. Kay had been trying to tell her management that things needed to improve, her schedule, her life. But nothing was getting better.

Meanwhile, the numbers for Pink Lady and Jeff were getting worse and worse. The show had dropped to 66th place out of 69 in the ratings. And when I saw them start to plummet, you knew something was not right.

It was awful. Producer Sid Croft again. It was, you know, it was just a show that didn't have an edge to it or anything. So how did Pink Lady and Jeff come to an end then? Well, they got canceled. On the fifth show, we got the call. I'm sorry, but we've canceled your show. See ya.

NBC didn't even bother airing the sixth episode, which they'd already taped. You know, it was just, it was awful. Was there ever a moment of you feeling like this was your chance and it was blown, like you'll never get this opportunity again?

Yes, I did. I thought to myself, here I am starring in an hour variety show on a network. I mean, surely fame is headed my way. Well, it wasn't on long enough for that to have happened. And, you know, there were no offers coming in after that.

Jeff never got the opportunity to host his own show again. But he did make his way back to TV, becoming a fixture on the late-night talk circuit. His career recovered, but the reputation of Pink Lady and Jeff never did. In 2002, TV Guide featured it as one of the 50 worst shows in television history. You know, I'm proud of that. Do you think that's fair? Do you think it's one of the worst television shows of all time?

Yeah. You do? Well, can you name some others? Well, I think that reputation is held by a lot of people who never saw the show and who just heard, oh, they put two girls who couldn't speak English on TV. That deserves to be the worst show ever, just for that reason alone. Pink Lady and Jeff isn't good.

But being cringy or corny and dated doesn't actually make it different from most other variety shows of the era, including the successful ones, including Donny and Marie. A few weeks ago, I made a birdcage disappear. Donny's very good at making things disappear. Like my hairspray and my nail file. And where's my comb? Cute Marie. And I think people in 1980 were picking up on that.

There's a reason that after the failure of Pink Lady and Jeff, the entire genre of the variety show essentially went extinct. Not only was NBC imposing a format on Pink Lady that didn't work for them, it was a format that audiences didn't want at all anymore.

I didn't see the change in television that was happening. Between SNL and Letterman, there was a completely different way of looking at television, kind of laughing at the old standards that had come before. And the variety show was being left, I think, in the dust. It just had run its course. SNL, which was also on NBC, even parodied Pink Lady and Jeff.

bizarrely replacing Jeff Altman with the astronomer Carl Sagan. Now this Big Bang theory of the universe is the one that's most popular with scientists right now. Carl, we have that in Japan. You do? Sure. That's what happens when a bullet train hits Utson. Well, maybe SNL hasn't aged that well either. I asked me and Kay about what went wrong with Pink Lady and Jeff, and their answers really surprised me.

Both of them seemed genuinely unaware that the show has a bad reputation at all. I don't really know the answer to that. I heard that the ratings were really good in America. So when you're saying that it didn't become a big hit, is that different from the TV ratings? Yeah, I hadn't heard anything about the reception being poor.

I don't think the explanation for this is that they're naive or sheltered. I mean, if they'd had a flop in Japan, they would have known. It's that their American TV show was a curiosity for them, a one-time challenge they'd pulled off. And now they were as ready to move on from it as NBC. In fact, Mee has a very different understanding of how the show came to an end.

Well, we were the ones who canceled the show. We weren't told that the show was canceled. We decided against doing more episodes. So I think the show was a success. Me and Kay had always dreamed of making it in America. It did have significance to them. But the United States is not the center of the cultural universe. It just wasn't worth it to them to continue.

Especially when their real careers, their Japanese careers, needed attention. The truth is that the Pink Lady boom in Japan had already peaked before they even left for America. They'd never been critical darlings. But now their singles were charting lower and lower. They got caught in a scandal involving a declined invitation to an important televised event and the media was turning against them as a result. All of this was on their minds when they were preoccupied on set.

And when they returned to Japan, the decline accelerated. Unfortunately, Japan took us disappearing at that time as something like us throwing Japan in the garbage bin. When we got back, the bashing and criticism of Pink Lady was really intense. It all took its toll. Five months after the Pink Lady and Jeff show ended, me and Kei announced their breakup. They closed things out with one final concert in the rain in March 1981.

If she could do it all over again, Kei would have loved to wait to come to America after learning English better. But she also loves the Japanese language, loves its beauty. And she sees no reason why music can't reach people even when they don't understand the words.

And Kay's right. It turns out that Pink Lady was decades ahead of its time. Today, the English language does not hold a monopoly on global pop stardom. There is an enormous audience worldwide for entertainment from Japan and Hong Kong and South Korea. Groups like BTS have achieved exactly the crossover dominance that NBC had hoped for. ♪

Me and Kay continue to have solo careers in Japan, and they've reunited as Pink Lady several times over the past four decades. Because audiences still want to see their synchronized dance moves, still want to hear their catchy confections. Because it doesn't matter where you're listening from, a perfect pop song is still a perfect pop song.

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Evan Chung. And I'm Willa Paskin. There's so much more we could tell you about Pink Lady that we didn't have time for. So luckily, we have a special Decoder Ring bonus episode for Slate Plus members that's going to do just that. It's a conversation Evan had with Patrick Galbraith, an anthropologist based in Tokyo who studies what's known as Japanese idol culture.

Pink Lady helped define that culture, and it's still going strong. They're a fascinating category of Japanese celebrity that's been around since the 1960s. And though idols have no exact Western equivalent, they have an extraordinary resonance with contemporary influencers and fan culture.

Idols are not synonymous with pop stars because an idol is supposed to be what's called "toshinda," it's supposed to be human-sized. So the human-sized performer becomes approachable, relatable, accessible. They're kind of based on this principle that they appeal directly to the audience for support. If you like my song, if you like my band, please support me, buy the CD. It's a phenomenon that's marked by intimacy.

You can listen to this fascinating conversation by signing up for Slate Plus. If you are already a Slate Plus member, you can subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking Try Free at the top of the Decoder Ring show page.

or visit slate.com slash decoder plus to get access wherever you listen. We're going to be releasing bonus episodes regularly, including answers to mailbag questions, so please sign up now. Don't forget, Slate Plus members also get to listen to our show and every other Slate podcast without any ads, and you get unlimited access to Slate's website.

Again, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts by clicking try free or visit slate.com slash decoder plus to sign up. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at decodering at slate.com.

This episode was written and produced by Evan Chung. It was edited by me. Our translator was Eric Margolis. Decoder Ring is produced by me, Evan, Max Friedman, and Katie Shepard, with help from Sophie Codner. Derek John is executive producer. Merrick Jacob is senior technical director. ♪

Special thanks to Kelly Killian, Lorne Frohman, Roby Gorin, Michael Lloyd, Shana Roth, Karen Fjellman, Cole Del Charco, and Hannah Aris. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. We'll see you in two weeks. Quick story. So I'm sitting in Marty Kroff's office.

And I don't know how he got into the studio. A guy walks into his office and says, "Put me on the show. Put me on the show. I do great bird impressions." And Marty says, "We just don't need any people who do bird impressions." And the guy said, "You don't understand. I do tremendous bird impressions. I'm really, really terrific at this." And Marty said to him, "Well, I don't need anybody who does bird impressions. I'm sorry."

and the guy says listen you don't understand mr croft i do the best bird impressions in the world and marty said i'm sorry i can't help you the guy said okay and flew out the window

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