That 700 Club
That 700 Club is a terrible American sitcom/religious program, hosted by Pat Robertson and also starring Topher Grace and George and renowned hot redhead Laura Prepon, with Benny Hinn as "Fes". It has run from 1970 to the present, although its format has shifted significantly since its earlier years. Later episodes, quite controversially, centered on newcomer Jerry Mathers as "The Beaver."
The show's peculiar title is derived from the college-aptitude examination known as the SAT. To be a member of the "club," one cannot have scored higher than 700 combined on all portions of the test.
Beginnings[edit | edit source]
Pat Robertson, a hobo and self-styled Jesus impersonator, spent the early to late 1960's roaming the streets of Los Angeles, California badgering his fellow and and vagrants and delivering generally incoherent sermons. Robertson was discovered by TV producers who knew right away that they wanted to use him on their new erotic program, "The 700 Rub," on the Playboy channel. Robertson was unable to pronounce the letter R correctly, and the rest is history.
The Rest[edit | edit source]
Robertson almost immediately enlisted the help of Grace and Prepon, who had already garned critical acclaim for their rousing stage play, a throwback to the black-and-white era of television, "Woman, Thou Art Lucy." He cast them as each other, roles which both would later recall as "the challenge of a lifetime."
The format was quite simple. Robertson would open up the show with a 5-minute segment entitled "This Week in Perversion," in which he would run through a short list of celebrities he suspected of buggery. Then, after a brief commercial break, Grace and Prepon would lampoon 1970's culture with uproarious skits and variety acts, most of which ended in a fistfight, due to very common misunderstandings about how one would portray the other. After one infamous incident which made it to air, Grace quipped, "Never fight a Jew in the desert."
At the 30-minute mark, Robertson took calls from the audience about religious issues affecting America at the time. Common themes were "The Right of Homosexuals to Exist, pro and con," "Jews: America's Silent Killer," "Today's Modern Wife Batterer." Robertson's trademark style, which included yelling at callers, popping Oxy-Contin, and blaming everything on liberals, has had a lasting influence on radio and TV broadcasting to this day.
The remainder of the show was set aside for upcoming Christian musical talent, such as Slayer, Korn, Slipknot, Carman, Creed, Nine Inch Nails, Amy Grant, and Great White, although since the 1999 season, musical guests are partitioned off from Robertson at his own request, due to what he calls "serious homo vibes."