In Television
TV sidekicks usually play a supporting pivotal role to the star. Examples include Ethel Mertz to Lucy Ricardo (I Love Lucy), Ed Norton to Ralph Kramden (The Honeymooners), Screech Powers to Zack Morris (Saved by the Bell), Major Roger Healey to Major Anthony "Tony" Nelson (I Dream of Jeannie), Rhoda Morgenstern to Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Sam Puckett to Carly Shay (iCarly), or even a group of people such as the Sweathogs to Mr. Kotter (Welcome Back, Kotter). Duos of equal importance on TV such as Kate McArdle and Allie Lowell (Kate & Allie), Oscar Madison and Felix Unger (The Odd Couple), Bret Maverick and Bart Maverick (Maverick), Captain Scarlet and Captain Blue (Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons), or Laverne De Fazio and Shirley Feeney (Laverne & Shirley), are sometimes both called sidekicks to each other, although the usual sense of the term denotes inequality.
Many television talk shows make use of a sidekick as a co-host who anchors a show with the main star. Ed McMahon played this role famously to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, as did Andy Richter to Conan O'Brien on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and during O'Brien's short-lived tenure on Tonight Show. The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson employs a mechanical robot sidekick named Geoff Peterson (played by comedian/entertainer Josh Robert Thompson). The Sammy Maudlin Show on SCTV famously lampooned the late night talk show format, with John Candy in the role of William B. Williams, the sidekick or "second banana" to host Sammy Maudlin (Joe Flaherty).
Clarence Gilyard informed viewers on a television commercial for Walker, Texas Ranger that he was not Chuck Norris's sidekick, instead humorously saying, "This is Chuck Norris's sidekick," over footage of Norris kicking a villain.
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Famous quotes containing the word television:
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)