This Short-Lived '80s Action TV Show Starred A Future Saturday Night Live Legend

"Blue Thunder" was not a box office smash during its theatrical run in 1983, but John Badham's thoughtful action movie about the surveillance state and police militarism proved immensely popular when it hit the home market. Unfortunately, most people weren't terribly intrigued by its Military Industrial Complex critique; instead, they were all about the titular souped-up, weapons-stacked helicopter. To be fair, I was 10 years old when the film came out and wasn't thrilled by Roy Scheider's LAPD helicopter pilot Frank Murphy destroying such wondrous, death-dealing machinery.

ABC took note of the film's home entertainment surge, saw that Donald P. Bellisario was bringing his own super-helicopter show to the air ("Airwolf"), and rolled the dice on a television adaptation of "Blue Thunder." In this iteration, you were meant to cheer for the aircraft. The creators must've been worried that Blue Thunder wouldn't be exciting enough on its own, though, so they added an armored ground unit called Rolling Thunder that was outfitted with a bunch of cool doohickeys. It was enormous enough to house an off-road desert vehicle, because why not?

The hardware was the draw, but the show actually rounded up an appealing cast to occupy these magnificent vehicles. James Farentino, who took over Scheider's role as the veteran helicopter pilot, had been previously nominated for a Primetime Emmy. Meanwhile, ex-NFL players (and then Lite Beer pitchmen) Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus played the Rolling Thunder's crew, proving their acting chops weren't limited to screaming "Less Filling!" and "Tastes Great!" at each other.

As for Farentino's co-pilot, the series went with a little-known comedy actor named Dana Carvey. The show only ran for 11 episodes, so it was hardly Carvey's breakthrough. But he was amusing enough as Clinton Wonderlove, aka. "JAFO," to suggest greater things were yet to come.

In John Badham's "Blue Thunder," the "JAFO" nickname that Daniel Stern's Richard Lymangood — the film's equivalent of Dana Carvey's character, Clinton Wonderlove, from the small screen re-imagining — goes by is an acronym for "Just Another F****** Observer." Unsurprisingly, that swear word was changed to "frustrated" for network television. Carvey's performance is a lot sillier than Stern's in Badham's movie as well, and, this being episodic television, you're always aware he's not going to die anytime soon. (Stern, by comparison, doesn't even make it to the film version's third act.)

The "Blue Thunder" show was aimed directly at action junkies and was wholly appropriate for children. Unfortunately, it was stuck in a Friday 9 PM time slot that put it up against "Dallas" and another dude-skewing action show called "The Master" (with Lee Van Cleef as a ninja). Though it brought on a load of great character actors for guest appearances (e.g. Richard Lynch, Kurtwood Smith, Geoffrey Lewis, and Ken Foree), it never got any kind of ratings traction and wound up losing the Great Helicopter Show War of 1984 to "Airwolf" (which ran for four seasons).

Carvey kept plugging away, however, and he finally got his big break two years later when he was hired to host the Nickelodeon game show "Double Dare." He was subsequently asked to join the cast of "Saturday Night Live" for the 1986-87 season, and we all know how that went. We'll always associate Carvey with the classic "SNL" character The Church Lady. And if you know your television comedy, you'll forever lament the failure of "The Dana Carvey Show." But I'll always have a soft spot for his brief time as JAFO on "Blue Thunder."