sledgehammer (american tv program, not the peter gabriel song or the tool)

i too watched this as a young kid, it seems like everyone else did too...? i was always so excited to watch it.

"trust me, i know what i'm doing"

their daughter (i don't know if she'd be cool with me posting her name on the internet in this context) just graduated and is actually looking for a job....she has a lot of experience in publicity and theater so....if anyone knows of any openings, you may just be able to meet SLEDGE HAMMER!

IIRC, what happened was that they had heard that the show wasn't going to be renewed for the next season, so in the final episode they had Sledge attempting to defuse an A-bomb, and of course he cuts the wrong wires, vaporizing the entire city. But then it turns out that at the last possible minute the show was renewed after all. So in the first episode of the next season, they had to retroactively change history so that Sledge actually did cut the right wires and defuse the bomb. The ending of the previous episode was somehow explained away as depicting what would have happened in an alternate universe if he hadn't succeeding in cutting the right wires. At least that's how I remember it. It was a great show though - probably my favorite at the time.

Pointless post alert!

-- o. nate (syne_wav...), July 26th, 2004.
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o. nate, you may very well be right, but I remember the first ep of the 2nd season starting with something like "The following episode takes place three years before that A-bomb explosion."

Needless to say, classic.

i always thought it was maybe a pisstake of a specific 80's cop show called 'Hunter' (?)

totally a pisstake of hunter

*To account for the fact Sledge had blown up himself, L.A., and everyone in it at the end of the previous episode, we're told that the second season is "Sledge Hammer - The Early Days", implying these episodes all happened before the first episode of the first season. Which is a gross contradiction since Doreau is in the "Early Days" episodes before she was introduced, but nobody really cared.*

"you can't do that!"

"what, there's no setting for sandwich?"

Gotta rise this thread from the grave. I bought both DVD sets and they are incredible. There's an interview I read somewhere with Alan Spencer (show's creator) where he said that the studios originally wanted someone like John Candy to take the role of Sledge, but Alan basically held out unless he could get Rasche to do it, in retrospect what a brilliant home that was, having an actual "comedian" in the role would have just killed it. The show just existed in a weird plane of meta-humor and postmodernism that I don't think many people understood at the time. They couldn't show much actual violence so they had the enemies dispatched in weird ways. Like Sledge throws a hammer that bounces off four walls and knocks the gun out of a dude's hand, and then the next scene is just a short shot of Hammer doing a small fist pump...the kind of things that would make most viewers get upset, but if you really "got it" then that was part of what made the whole thing amazing. IIRC one person slips on a banana peel and falls out the window. Yep

I particularly loved the episode where Sledge gets poisoned. Lots of great parts there but I love when he learns he's been poisoned and starts to take out his rage on his boss's office, but he's still sedated so he does it so straight-faced and casual, just dropping everything on the floor, pushing stuff over, then he gets to the American flag and salutes it. Later on he gets in a fight with a snake and says "You've had this coming for a long time" and punches it in the face. Serious WTF moment.

I'll stick your head in the microwave and set it on "sandwich".

Most of the series is on youtube and I've been going through it for the first time since I was a kid. Great stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ9h3nxL1pY&list=PLAPGcD5LGrp4g9pNQVn-UGl7IuZ9cgiD-

Uh, try again. The account that uploaded this one has a whole playlist of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ9h3nxL1pY

I recently saw Burn After Reading for the first time and was delighted to see David Rasche in even a small role.

That's what inspired me to go check it out again. I'd seen that movie a few times and on the most recent re-watch was like "who is that?" I had forgotten all about Sledge Hammer, but I loved it when I was 9 or so.

I watched about 4 minutes of the episode posted above and I'm dying rn.

"It's disgusting. Real men don't need women."

"Hammer, without women, you would never have been born"

"Prove it"

hmm this scene was a little prophetic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFh09hF6qlA&feature=youtu.be&t=6m8s

one moment in this show I think about all the time is one where he's in a plane, freaking out because he's afraid of a plane crash, and the pilot assures him that it's safe because all their pilots have at least 1000 hours of training logged. he calms down, then turns around in a panic and says "Hey!! That's not that much!!"

Trust me. I know what I'm doing.

the studios originally wanted someone like John Candy to take the role of Sledge, but Alan basically held out unless he could get Rasche to do it, in retrospect what a brilliant home that was, having an actual "comedian" in the role would have just killed it.

Leslie Nielsen effect in a way

David Rasche was a Second City guy too.

Always amused when he shows up on hbo premium teevee