A collection of skits that make fun of 1970s television, featuring early appearances by Chevy Chase and Richard Belzer.
A collection of skits that make fun of television. Everything from commercials to the nightly news are spoofed. Chevy Chase makes a brief (as well as his debut), appearance.—K.L.
"The Groove Tube" is a collection of sketches unified as programming for the imaginary Channel One. It opens with a 2001-inspired sequence of primitive humans encountering a TV set, leading to the discovery of partying and then of fire. It moves quickly to a playful strip sequence with full nudity (male and female) and a meeting with the police. The first dialogue belongs to Director and star Ken Shapiro as Koko the Clown, host of a children's show where 'imagination time' is viewer requested readings of sexual passages from literature. Shapiro also appears as one of the leads in the "Dealers", a drug dealing story with a message, and as both the Anchor and a correspondent of the Channel 1 news team, among other roles. Richard Belzer appears with him often, including as Shapiro's sidekick (and the unwitting object of his sexual affection) in the Dealers and in the news as a black transvestite prostitute picked up by the Cultural Correspondent in a color story on the underside of New York.
The programming has many other shows and a large number of commercials, including a scene involving two pairs of fingers (both belonging to Chevy Chase) walking, but not talking: the campaign tag line is "Let your fingers do it." There is a also a series of commercials from Uranus Corporation, "Where things come out a bit differently", one lauding the miracle product "Brown-25", another admitting responsibility for the destruction of the "mighty Mayopac River" on which their chemical processing plant sits. There is also more nudity, including a public service announcement on STDs featuring a muppet-like character that is actually an upside-down penis.
