Remember Hart to Hart?

The other day I woke up thinking—of all things—about "Hart to Hart," a truly awful show that could only have been spawned by the '80s.

That is, of course, Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers, the stars of the program. The premise of the show was that there was this extraordinarily wealthy couple who were also glamorous and who solved crimes on the side. Also, they were totally in love and devoted to each other. To aid them in their efforts was their valet, Max, and dog, Freeway.

In other words, this was a show that trashed your suspension of disbelief from the get-go. Naturally, being pre-teens, this was a show that I and my older sister—I'll call her "Chris"—liked to watch. We weren't allowed to watch it upstairs in the living room; before we even got the first "H" sound of "how about Hart to Hart?" out of our mouths to suggest it, my mom was already shaking her head and saying, "uh-uh, no. No way." We had to go down to the basement and watch it on the crappy TV! There is no justice in this world—Hart to Hart in the basement, indeed!

The dialogue was insipid, even to our unformed ears. In every episode, the husband—Jonathan—would get himself into a dangerous situation (like dangling out of a window, say). And every episode, his wife (name lost to the sands of time) would yell out, "Jonathan!" while helping not a jot to get him out of his predicament. Chris and I would try and guess when this line would be uttered, and there were a LOT of misfires, accidentally on purpose. The best was when Chris hollered out, "Jonathan!" as the opening theme song played.