What if Nicolas Cage and Crispin Glover starred in a TV pilot that never got picked up? You might think the world missed out on something good. According to YouTuber That Junkman, you would be wrong. He calls it one of the strangest things he has ever seen, though he is careful to say he would not call it bad, either. It is simply a mess that cannot decide what it wants to be.

The show is called The Best of Times, and it aired on ABC in 1981 as a pilot for a possible series. As you can guess, it never became one. It is all about teenagers and the life struggles of teenagers in 1981, and That Junkman says he cannot tell whether it wants to be a sitcom, a variety show or a sketch show.

He watched the thing twice before making his video, and he came away with a headache. Here is what he found.

A Messy Room and a Cast of Friends

The pilot opens with Crispin Glover in a messy bedroom. That Junkman, who admits he was a messy kid himself, says boys on television in the 1980s always had rooms that looked as if their clothes, toys and gadgets had been thrown into a ceiling fan. Glover insists the room is not really messy and that he can find anything he wants, but he cannot find the one thing he wants to show the audience. So he starts introducing his friends instead.

The scene cuts to Nicolas Cage on a beach, and then viewers meet the rest of the gang one by one. There is Kevin, who is not good with the ladies, and Julia, who thinks he is cute. There is David, who has three part-time jobs and still has to go to school. There is Lisa, and there is Janet, who is 14 and wants to join a rock band. Glover wraps up by calling them a nice group, then explains that they are all treated as faceless members of society.

From there the monologue turns serious. Glover talks about how bad it was to be a teenager in 1981, with no respect from anyone and adults who assume every teen is on drugs. The show makes its case that teenagers are woven into the fabric of American life, and that without them there is no future. A phone call from friends at the 7-Eleven, who are out of quarters for the arcade, cuts him off, and the opening theme begins. The sponsor of the pilot, in a very 1981 touch, was Charmin bathroom tissue.

Jackie Mason and the Empty Bottles

Most of the pilot is made up of short segments, and That Junkman is not sure whether to call them skits or sketches. Sometimes they want to be funny and sometimes they do not. In one, Kevin is on a pay phone trying to get a date with a girl who keeps confusing him with a cool jock. He ends up admitting he is the other, smaller Kevin, short, with glasses, and a former hall monitor on the third floor.

The strangest segment features Jackie Mason, who plays a man running a store where Glover and his friends try to return empty bottles. Mason scolds the kids, telling them the trouble with their generation is that they have no sense of responsibility and think only about money and other grown-up vices. He refuses to take the bottles. Then the teens break into a song of sorts, blowing on the bottles, knocking on the counter and playing cans like drums. That Junkman says he cannot even explain what happens next.

Another bit has Jill worrying about going away to college and wondering what will happen to her cat. Back at the beach, Cage is working out and coaching Kevin on how to pick up girls, including how to walk. When Kevin tries the tips, it does not work. A teenager also complains about not being able to get a job without experience, and not being able to get experience without a job.

Why It Never Became a Series

That Junkman says the show is one of the most dated pieces of television history he has ever seen. It has a laugh track, so viewers are told to laugh and have a good time, but then it gets overly serious. Cage’s character worries about becoming an adult and getting drafted into a war. The cast also breaks the fourth wall now and then, in the manner of Ferris Bueller, and talks straight to the audience about being a teenager.

His verdict is that it feels as though it was written by 50-year-olds about teenagers who never did any research. He imagines they read a teen girl magazine, watched some boys hanging out at the mall and built a show around the hard times of being young. It reminds him of an audition tape for Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He also jokes that it feels like a high school student film that Hollywood kids made after asking their parents for help.

Still, he stops short of calling it terrible. It is not god-awful like the Star Wars Holiday Special, he says, and there is something about it you cannot stop watching, unlike that special, which you can turn off. Mason is a standout for the wrong reasons, acting at times like a robot, and the tone swings from super serious to super silly in a single minute.

The takeaway for classic TV fans is simple. Not every pilot that gets filmed deserves a full season, and The Best of Times is proof that even big names do not guarantee a series pickup. Cage and Glover would go on to bigger things, and ABC moved on. If you ever want to see two future movie stars in a strange early outing that most people have forgotten, this is the one to track down, with a warning to keep your expectations low and your sense of humor high.

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