Miss Rerun? See him shake his groove thing on MySpace

Finally, MySpace is good for something besides trolling for underage girls.

The site is now home to The Minisode Network (www.myspace.com/minisodenetwork), a new venture from Sony that takes episodes of 15 "classic" series -- everything from "Charlie's Angels" to "Who's the Boss" to, for some reason, "Ricki Lake" -- and condenses them into six-minutes-or-less bursts of nostalgia.

As a TV purist, I should be appalled. These minisodes destroy the integrity of a series, mess with the writers' vision, and all that. But the opening and closing credits are kept intact and the cuts never distort an episode's meaning. And, let's face it, they're not exactly chopping up "The West Wing" or "Seinfeld" or even "Two and a Half Men."

At this point in my life, I can't imagine taking 45 minutes to an hour to watch "Fantasy Island" or "T.J. Hooker." But six minutes to feel like I watched an entire episode? You betcha.

Using as an example the "Charlie's Angels"-goes-to-prison episode that's been burned into my brain since childhood, here's what you get: about 15 seconds of exposition; the scene where the girls, still wet from a shower, are forced to open their towels to be sprayed down by a female guard; the scene that lets you know the guard enjoys that part of her job a little too much; a two-line Kim Basinger cameo; a hint of a prison prostitution ring; a backwoods sheriff; a shot of the girls running while chained together; some gunplay; a car chase; an explosion; two calls from Charlie; and just enough of that patented Aaron Spelling jiggle.

But then there's an awful lot of jiggle going on here. Pam Anderson's "VIP." Gena Lee Nolin's "Sheena." And "What's Happening!!" -- at least during those sublime moments when Rerun dances.

As it turns out, "What's Happening!!" is the gold standard for minisodes. Of the roughly 3 1/2 minutes not counting the credits, a good 40 seconds of the "Rerun Gets Married" minisode are spent showcasing Rerun's mad dancing skills.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's "Starsky & Hutch." The "Shootout" minisode cut out all the Huggy Bear! There should be nothing but Huggy Bear. How else am I supposed to know what the word on the street is?

Other good examples: "Diff'rent Strokes" is just long enough for a "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout" and to make you feel bad about the way Gary Coleman turned out, and "The Partridge Family" is just long enough to let you groove on the music and feel bad about the way Danny Bonaduce turned out.

But some edits are easier to make than others. You could cut "VIP" just about anywhere and get the same result. It's Pam Anderson foiling criminals while running around in a bikini top. The episodes didn't make all that much sense in their entirety. But how do you squish "T.J. Hooker" down to six minutes? William Shatner could ride on the hood of a perp's car for longer than that.

What makes these minisodes so perfect is that the episodes themselves haven't exactly aged very well. For the "Fantasy Island" episode "My Fair Pharaoh," which sent a young(er) Joan Collins back to ancient Egypt, no one bothered to substitute a metallic clang for the clacking sound of the obviously wooden swords. And a few minutes of "Silver Spoons" is all it takes to realize how lame the train in the living room and the remote-controlled front door really were.

And a side-by-side comparison of the minisode and DVD versions of the "Sex Symbol" episode of "The Facts of Life" reveals that the minisodes are surprisingly coherent.

The plot revolves around Natalie and her undeserved reputation for being, as Blair says, "real easy to get along with, if you know what I mean. Real easy." On the minisode, you miss a lot of bad-even-for-"The Facts of Life" jokes and most of the raucous, over-the-top howling from the audience. You also don't get to see Natalie's scared-straight moment with "Home Run" Helen, the school tramp. But while there's not nearly enough Jo for my tastes, I actually preferred the minisode version.

Considering that you could watch a minisode of every series on the site in slightly more time than it would take to see one installment of what's passing for entertainment this summer -- Shaq helping fat kids exercise, celebrity impersonators, wacky inventors and bitter ex-wives (and that's just on ABC) -- in this case, less really is more.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Mondays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.