If you were a kid watching TV in the 1980s and 1990s, you probably saw a fair number of “Very Special Episodes,” when the usual blissful bubble of the sitcom world was punctured by real-world issues for a half-hour. Drugs, drinking and driving, stranger danger, even AIDS. But never fear, all would be resolved by episode’s end. (Sometimes the material was so heavy, it required a two-parter.) So why did such a mainstay for a generation of families disappear? And how much was Seinfeld to blame? Mo talks with entertainment writer Jessica Shaw and the late great Norman Lear about the birth, life and death of a cultural phenomenon.
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LaWanda Page: Death of a Comedy Queen
Revisiting the Orphan Train: An American Odyssey
Death of a Sports Team: Satchel Paige and Los Dragones
Mobits Extra: How Norman Lear Changed Television
The Habsburg Jaw: Death of a Dynasty
Death of a Nepo Baby
JFK Impersonator Vaughn Meader: Death of a Career
Charlie McCarthy: Death of a Dummy
Things I Wish Would Die
Death of an Accent
Jim Thorpe: Death of an All-American
Peggy Lee: Death of Cool
Died on the Same Day (with special guest Anderson Cooper)
Introducing: Season 4 of Mobituaries with Mo Rocca
Timothy Scott: Death of a Dancer
Benedict Arnold: Before They Went Bad
The Gros Michel: Death of a Banana
Samantha Smith: Death of a Peacemaker
Second Place Finishers: Larry Doby, Judith Resnik & The Dave Clark Five
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