# Fernwood 2 Night

Fernwood 2 Night (or Fernwood Tonight) is a satirical comedy talk show that was broadcast weeknights from July to September 1977 in first-run syndication. The program was created by Norman Lear and produced by Alan Thicke as a spinoff and summer replacement for Lear's satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. The show was hosted by Barth Gimble (Martin Mull) and sidekick announcer Jerry Hubbard (Fred Willard). Dour bandleader Happy Kyne (Frank De Vol) and the Mirth Makers were the show's stage band, featuring Tommy Tedesco on guitar.

## Overview and production

Fernwood 2 Night is set in the fictional small town of Fernwood, Ohio, which is also the setting for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a show in which Mull portrays Barth's twin brother Garth Gimble, who died after being impaled on an aluminum Christmas tree. The show parodies late-night talk shows and the local television content produced in midwestern American towns. Fernwood 2 Night was the first television talk-show satire, foreshadowing The Larry Sanders Show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Jiminy Glick, and Comedy Bang! Bang!.
The show was intended to run for just one season, but it became popular enough to warrant a second season. Because many real-life celebrities wished to appear on the show, the setting was changed to the fictional city of Alta Coma ("the unfinished furniture capital of the world") located in southern California, in order to explain why movie and television celebrities could easily appear as guests. This revamped show debuted in April 1978 as America 2 Night.
In 2001, Mull and Willard reprised their roles in a stage appearance and retrospective at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. The pair also worked together in other projects, appearing together as a gay couple in the final seasons of Roseanne.
Reruns of Fernwood and America 2 Night were broadcast on Nick at Nite from 1990 to 1993 and TV Land in 2002 as part of its "TV Land Kitschen" block, also hosted by Mull and Willard. Neither Fernwood 2 Night nor America 2 Night has ever been officially released on home video in any format.

## Recurring characters

* Merle Jeeter (Dabney Coleman), Fernwood's somewhat shifty, self-promoting mayor.
* William W.D. "Bud" Prize (Kenneth Mars), Fernwood's "ambassador at large" from the chamber of commerce and the mayor's supposed energy expert; he wears elaborate "chinodontic" headgear designed to correct his underbite.
* Tony Rolletti (Bill Kirchenbauer), an enthusiastic, but not very talented, lounge singer.
* Susan Cloud (Susan Elliot), the spaced-out owner of the Butterfly Deli, a local health-food restaurant.
* Virgil Simms (Jim Varney), a local mechanic who offers automotive advice and later becomes a "motor-home daredevil", performing stunts in the style of Evel Knievel but while driving a motor home.
* Garth Gimble Sr. (Robert Williams), Barth's father, who is also the cheerfully incompetent studio security guard. He is almost always seen with Louie, his lethargic English Springer Spaniel.
* Lou Moffat (Lou Felder), a "consumer affairs expert" who plugs various products distributed by Barth's company, Gimbleco Enterprises.
* Debbie Dunbar (Kathy McCullen), Fernwood's controversial teenage "Spanking Girl."
* Mrs. Dunbar (Jan Stratton), Debbie's outraged mother.
* Larry Guy (Terry McGovern) A local disc jockey.
* Dr. Richard Osgood/Van Moot (Craig Richard Nelson), a physician and research scientist who discovers that leisure suits cause cancer.

## Trivia

While there is an actual, small community in Ohio named Fernwood, located in Jefferson County, it is unrelated to the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio of Fernwood 2 Night and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. In episode 39, Barth introduces a guest who runs a "nude dude ranch" near Farrington, in Miami County, which places the fictional Fernwood somewhere near Dayton, Ohio.