Tracey Ullman's Linda Granger - If DataLounge Were a Person

I love her. One of Tracey's best characters. Thanks for posting that!

Linda was always my favourite character too! Remember when she got mauled by a tiger during her Vegas act because she'd been bathing in milk. And the way she'd be watching her old reruns of VIP Lounge on TV whenever they were on.

"I'm still here, Marmalade!"

“I’ve been orphaned, arrested, molested, comatose, and riddled with cancer.”

Banging the cable guy.

Linda’s stalker.

Linda’s many marriages.

“I’ve kicked librium and eskatrol, dexedrine and valium, percodan and percocet, seconals, tuinals, cocaine, quaaludes, opium, peyote and hash.”

R8…

“Oh, I forgot amyl nitrate!”

Does anyone remember Linda selling her recovery Barbie dolls on the Home Shopping Network? lol. One could have her stomach pumped, another had her eyes rolling to the back of her head with vomit on her chin and slash marks on her wrists.

And the time Linda met Ruby Romaine:

Linda: I love senior citizens. Can I give you a hug?

Ruby: You most certainly cannot. Your drug addled brain may not remember, but you got me fired from Vegas Vixens 23 years ago.

Linda: IT WASN'T ME! It was Doug McClure.

Ruby and Linda together were a hoot!

R10, I sure do! That was the first scene I ever saw of Tracey Takes On... and I was hooked. The actress who played the host was brilliant too, she really lampooned those types of people well.

Oh and Ruby Romaine is one of the callers who ringing up for a doll. She doesn't know if she should get a white or a black doll because her great-granddaughter is "kind of beige".

HOST: Might I suggest: one of each?

RUBY: You can suggest a champagne colonic but I ain't spending that kind of money!

R11 Ruby says she met Linda Granger a few other times, too.

"I used to do her makeup on that show, 'VIP Lounge. One day, I caught her sniffin' up the translucent powder out of my makeup kit! When I tried to take it away from her, that tramp had the nerve to smack me! So I packed up my things and said 'Miss Granger,' I says, "You can go to Hell! And while you're there, say hello to Marilyn and Judy for me!' I dropped a dime, and told those red-sleeve pedestrians at the network and I says 'That girl's gotta die, cause she's flyin' too high!' I was the Deepthroat that brought that bitch down!"

Paul Anka wrote "She's Having My Baby" for Linda!

How about when Raylene's husband Mitch, a little person, died, and Linda sang for him at the funeral, a song of her very own, with the line: "In heaven there are no freaks. That's right, in heaven, our wonderful dead Mitch, is no longer a freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaak".

R15 He was a stunt performer, and he died on the set of Spielberg's "The Lost World." He was playing a baby raptor, and at lunch, the mechanical jaws around his head failed to open, and he choked to death on a bean burrito.

on Leeza

She has such a SOLID homosexual fanbase!

Nothing better than Linda hosting a funeral. lmao

The boa ate my baby!

"Go to the light, Mitch, go into the light."

Hahahahaha, I'd forgotten that part. I'm gonna have to get out my DVDs again. I wish seasons 3 and 4 had been properly released. I have them recorded off the TV, but who owns a VCR these days?

Ruby Romaine going nuts in a supermarket over her douche pump being recalled is another favorite of mine. lmao

Remember the episode on road rage which was just one long episode with several characters experiencing road rage in LA, ending with a number of them crashing into each other. Linda is with Chopper Tim in the helicopter, watching a getaway driver and moaning about how turned on she is with a big stick between her legs, unaware that she is live. That's where R11 is from too, I'm pretty sure.

Ruby gets carjacked and drives the carjacker crazy with her reminiscences of old Hollywood.

R23, she says Burt Reynolds took so many ludes his balls dissolved.

I loved all the little connecting bits between the characters that happened. From memory, when it came to Linda:

- Chic started his career selling drugs to Linda's agent;

- Janie wrote the expose on Linda that got her fired (though Ruby also claimed she was responsible);

- Hope exposed Janie's involvement in the end of Linda's career, and also did a striptease at a club Linda was performing at in Vegas;

- Trevor was her number one fan ('I have such a solid homosexual fanbase') and even tries to smuggle her dog abroad for her;

- Ruby had her Hollywood connections to Linda;

- Rayleen was her stunt double and Linda sang at Mitch's funeral;

- Sydney offered to represent Linda in suing a health spa;

- Mrs Noh Nah Ning had Linda's picture on the wall of her doughnut shop...

And I'm sure there were many others.

^Oh, and if my memory is correct, in the one off Tracey Takes on New York, it's Fern who distracts Linda, causing her to get run over.

[quote]Does anyone remember Linda selling her recovery Barbie dolls on the Home Shopping Network? lol. One could have her stomach pumped, another had her eyes rolling to the back of her head with vomit on her chin and slash marks on her wrists.

I came here to say that very thing!

Then there was Sex Addict Linda. She had bendable knees.

Tracey was awesome as always, but the writing on Tracey Takes On was really good too. Its what? 20-something years later and I still bust a gut over this show.

Creative differences...

Found the dolls skit.

I think one of my implants is exploding.

"I can feel it leaking into my chest cavity."

Where else have I seen the studmeat who plays the cable guy in r5?

Poor Linda, such a trooper, such a survivor.

Ruby got pissed off when she couldn’t buy liquor and cigarettes with food stamps and went off on a rant about Bette Davis and what she told her.

I also loved Ruby’s line, “Miss Granger, you can go to hell, and while you’re there say hello to Marilyn and Judy for me!”

Here she is abducted by aliens.

Gail Parent of The Golden Girls, and Jenji Kohan creator of Weeds and Orange is the New Black wrote and produced on the show.

Ruby Romaine, the classiest broad who ever loved, dearie!

Satan’s Playground.

"Somebody tell me I'm asleep but I'm just dreamin' I'm on the planet of the assholes!"

I gotta put some, um, medication in there.

“Hogan’s Heroes is on. They took it off the air for awhile when that Bob Crane got a little too enthusiastic with his S&M hobby and ended up dead in the desert. Doesn’t surprise me at all though. You never saw anybody so damned pleased to be working in a concentration camp.”

Ruby's filthy story about becoming a secret agent.

Jack Conley played the cable guy R33.

R41 "TAKE OFF EVERYTHING BUT YOUR TOOL BELT!!!!"

“A party that Van Johnson was giving for the Vienna Boys Choir.”

I can’t.

Oh god, I fucking LOVED Tracey Takes On. I was the only weirdo at school that loved this show and would use so many sayings from it. LOL! Absolutely brilliant stuff that still holds up. Tracey is a comic genius.

It's a shame HBO Max doesn't have all these seasons to watch.

Sooooo ahead of its time and so many people came out of that show and went on to do incredible things. Even the cinematographer went on to work on Avatar.

There was one episode when Ruby kept getting attacked and raped by the neighbor’s dog. Then her son Buddy’s father was referred to as his “uncle daddy”. Absolutely hilarious!

Fern Rosenthal getting into a fistfight with Julie Kavner’s character when they both run for condo president is another one. lol

R44 I think I read somewhere that Tracey bought up the rights to all her shows, and she's holding onto them to make sure they go to a proper home.

Or she might start a bidding war between BritBox and Hulu.

Yeah I have never seen any of these but it all sounds hysterical, I wish I could stream it all right now! I love Ullmann but somehow missed the entire run of this series

Most of her characters were a gay man's dream, and she had a lot of gay writers.

1) Linda Granger, this boozy old has-been

2) Ruby Romaine, the decaying old makeup artist to the stars

3) Sydney Kross, cunty celebrity attorney

4) Fern Rosenthal, spoiled Jewess retiree in Flahrida

5) Kay Clarke, kooky little spinster who lives with her ailing mother

6) Trevor, the gay airline steward

7) Kris, the lesbian lover to an LPGA golf pro

Or the one where Ruby's son Buddy purchases a mail order Filipino bride.

Ruby: "And don't even THINK about slittin' my throat, I sleep with a gun under my pillow."

The next morning after the mail order bride cleans up Ruby's pig sty house:

Ruby: "Why, you're a regular brown tornado!"

R50 She also made Ruby some fresh-squeezed orange juice from the trees in the backyard. Ruby added a jigger of vodka "as a purification agent."

R50 Then Ruby takes the mail order bride to see Buddy, who was in a standoff with the FBI. Ruby sells the Filipino woman to the FBI agent. And we learn that Buddy was the child star spokesperson for Taystee Bread!

Another hilarious Ruby episode!

I always enjoyed Birdie, the evangelical Christian. At one point she kidnaps Tracey's other character, Chris the lesbian, to take her to a homosexual deprogramming centre, run by her twin brother Sandy (also played by Tracey). At the end of the episode Sandy is being beaten up by the "ex-gay" parishoners who have seen the light, and at the same time their twin telepathy kicks in and Birdie starts feeling the kicks in her stomach too.

"It must be that time of the month again - when the state troopers get a hold of your uncle Sandy." she says to her child.

R46, she owns all of her shows except the Fox one. That’s how she made her money. She helped finance as long as the rights went back to her. She’s a shrewd cookie.

There was a bit in the first season about an old film that was never completed. Tracey plays a drunk aging actress named Laura Demerol. She talks about the film’s star: “Buzz has me over one Sunday and he said, ‘Laura, Alicia gives the greatest head in Hollywood and it’s gonna show on the screen.’ And I saw the dailies, and Buzz was right.” lol. She also talks about her gay co-star that was very vain. They caught him in bed with his stunt double - “So I guess he adored the thought of screwing himself!”

Fern at the hairdressers:

“The last time I let anybody touch my hair, I ended up so orange that I looked like Lucy - and I don’t mean the “I Love Lucy” Lucy, I mean the old tired Lucy!”

OMG, I forgot how funny it was. What a great thread.

“You’ve been into Mother’s room, haven’t ya?”

Fern’s housekeeper puts a hex on her.

Sydney Kross: “These priests, they can’t wait to go to heaven!”

Linda got her TV gig by overdosing and fainting - her head landed in the lap of a television network executive. lol

Ruby sided with Joan Crawford.

R61 "I examined my conscience, and I went on the side of the person who signed my paychecks. The Academy Award winning Miss Joan Crawford."

Also wasn't there an episode where Sydney Kross married Kay off to a death row inmate so she could get him a stay of execution? I think in the end Kay married him right before they gassed him--Kay behind the glass motioning for him to hold his breath. LOL!

"I hate death row. Everybody's so uptight!"

Fern & Jobie at the pool.

Jump in, swim around a little, maybe have a small seizure…

Here's her awful Sydney Kross character fantasizing about achieving career success AND getting rid of her awful mother at the same time.

"Well, mom. You're old, you're in poor health, and your medical insurance is nearly up. Life in prison is your only option!"

There was an episode where Sydney riverdances to unwind.

Im surprise Leslie Abramson didn’t try suing the show. lol

Melissa Rivers was in an episode interviewing Linda and Linda took forever telling her the meaning behind every ribbon she was wearing - child stars in trouble, thr homeless Dalai Lama… The ballots at the festival she was hosting were being tabulated by those with attention deficit disorder, “It takes a little longer, but it’s so worth.”

R58, I was going to mention, I love the part when Fern and Harry have the curse put on them, and a little effigy of Fern pops out of the toaster, causing Fern to scream and scream:

"Harry! I'm in the fires of HELL here!"

Another episode had Fern being molested by her dentist while she was under the influence. Fern’s friend played by Julie Kavner’s breaks in and tries to save her and Fern slaps her out of the way:

Julie: “Fern, that man fondled you!”

Fern groggy: “My insurance pays for it!”

Here's Linda, being stalked by Jon Favreau.

The idiot hired a phony stalker for publicity purposes, so she could fit in with Tori Spelling and Kate Moss, but she ended up drawing out an actual psycho.

^That's so hilarious, when she's driving around and indicating for the stalker to follow her and acting all concerned, but not too concerned in the mall because she thinks he's a set up for publicity.

Was it on this series or the Fox one where Tracey plays a woman in a divorce hearing against her proctologist husband and belts out "Goldfinger"??? I would love to see that again!

"That young man has been following me around for quite some time."

"Would you like me to call the police?"

"Oh, no. Not yet!"

Rayleen: I'll tumble for ya!

Has anyone mentioned the episode on dating yet? Linda is in a Titanic spoof where she's being driven home from a premiere in a limo (it's maiden voyage) driven by Corbin Bernsen. They screw, then the limo gets hit by a truck full of iceberg lettuce and the limo sinks into the ocean. As it's going down Linda tries to dial 911 but can't ("Jack, do you have a pencil? My nails!). She ends up on a piece of driftwood as Jack drowns.

"The partners in my firm decided that I'm a little irritable when I'm, quote, 'without a partner.' They think I need to get laid!"

The final Tracey Takes On was the end of the world, spoofing Independence Day and other 90s/early 2000s disaster movies. Kay's mother finally dies, then she has a few hours before the meteor hits the earth to go to the over 50 singles club.

That was a great one, R77. Birdie, the evangelical Christian starts getting drunk and firing her gun off in the house. When the end of the world doesn't happen, she gets all her kids in a circle and starts yelling at them: "We heard nothing! We saw nothing! Praise momma, praise daddy, praise Jesus! SAY IT AGAIN!"

He’s going to get two firearms for his birthday!

"Bob Jr's been begging me for a minibike, but I just don't know. He's only 8 years old and I hear those things can be very dangerous..."

One other Birdie bit that always sticks in my head too is the politics one.

"Me and my daughter are fixing to go a meeting of the We Hate Hillary Club. Bunch of us girls all get together once a week over in Greenville. Now tonight's topic is 'Hillary Rodham Clinton: Why Three Names is Just One Too Many'. And my daughter's starting her own club with a bunch of her girlfriends. It's called the We Hate Chelsea Club. Ain't that great? Something you like to do with the family. Look up to the Lord!"

Just watching a few clips of Tracey Takes On again and what's so cool is that obviously Tracey is the star of the show, she plays all the main characters, does the voices etc, but she also allows co-stars to have the jokes and some great lines and be a real presence too, which is really cool.

I love "Fawn Loving" from the recovery dolls sketch with her terrible, limited vocabulary: "Last time Linda was here, she was here to be here with her book: I'm Still Here!" or "I wish the folks at home could see exactly how carefully crafted with careful craftsmanship these dolls are crafted" and by the end, yelling: "Can we get some help to help us here?!" Hehehe.

Tracey as Camilla.

Tracey as Brigitte Macron.

I loved the recent HBO episodes but they seem to have stopped a few years ago.

Tracey Breaks the News has been my favourite outing for Ullman after Tracey Takes On.

Tracey Takes On was a brilliant show, I wish she'd done more seasons. I wonder if Linda Granger was based on one particular actress or was she a composite character of several 70s-era actresses?

Linda was based on people like Loni Anderson and every 70s has-been (Charlie’s Angels). These women would still be sporting the same hairstyle from their peak period, and go on promotional book tours talking about their struggles. You saw it all the time and it’s been revived.

Linda would probably be on Real Housewives now. Her plastic surgery looks pretty minimal compared to today’s women. She would fit right in.

I remember that a Linda Granger movie was in the works in the early 2000s. It’s a shame it never happened. Here’s hoping Tracey revives the character someday. I always loved how Tracey’s other character, the very drunk, Hollywood makeup Union artist, Ruby Romaine hated Linda.

There was a great line from Ruby, who it was revealed helped end Linda’s career, that went something like this:

“…so I come in and I catch her trying to snort the translucent powder out of my makeup kit. I says, ‘Miss Granger, you can go to hell and while you’re there say hello to Marilyn and Judy for me!’”

Linda had a bit where she was in a bathroom talking about her struggle with bulimia. She found a way to lose weight without throwing up: “Unfortunately the answer was speed and cocaine.”

Tracey’s gay writers wrote a lot of the Linda Granger sketches.

Tracey Breaks the News was undoubtedly the best thing she’s done (of her own original work) since Tracey takes on. That show was filmed the week each episode aired so that it was always current. Theresa May having a nervous breakdown believing she’s part of the Truman Show kills me. She lays out how insane the world has become and how it all must be a joke to get viewers to watch her go insane. She brings up that the conservatives are being headed by a pregnant lesbian! “It just doesn’t make sense!” lol

“I had so much that I wanted to do and some day I was going to tell everyone what that was!” - Theresa

If you've lived in the NYC Metro area or Florida, you've known women who are exactly like Fern Rosenthal.

[quote]Linda was based on people like Loni Anderson and every 70s has-been (Charlie’s Angels). These women would still be sporting the same hairstyle from their peak period, and go on promotional book tours talking about their struggles. You saw it all the time and it’s been revived.

Linda's desperation to still be seen as "hot" and relevant reminded me of Farrah Fawcett as she aged.

She had a great soundbite from the opening to her episode on Race Relations, I remember. It was something like:

"The reason I play a middle-Eastern cab driver, a gay flight attendant, a Jewish housewife and an Asian doughnut shop owner is that I don't want to offend anyone - I want to offend [italic]everyone[/italic]!"

The tone of her stuff has always been that everyone, no matter how "insignificant" is both worthwhile in this world and also good fodder for comedy. It's wonderfully equalising, and also allows her to get really deep into the characters she creates.

She played Angela Merkel and Judi Dench perfectly.

That really wasn’t funny. But….whatever you say

That’s nice, r93. Run along.

R93, Go Home! Go Home!

"God grant me the serenity to accept members of the opposite sex and not to accept the opposite sex's members, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Here's Ruby Romaine, drunkenly explaining the plot to Rock Hudson's "Magnificent Obsession."

Of course, she remembers Rock as being "all hands" in those days. She has a theory for what made him gay.

No. Linda Granger is much too positve to be DataLounge as a person.

You got that right, R98.

R98 R99 Linda's poorly-selling autobiography was called "I'm Still Here," after all. It details her saga with pills, booze, bulimia, and Erik Estrada.

She hands out copies in the ladies room at The Ivy anytime she hears models retching in the stalls.

R100 LOL!