"Shadow" Goes Postmodern

I finished watching season two of an all-time-top-five favorite series, "The White Shadow," this weekend. One of the final episodes, "Coolidge Goes to Hollywood," is amazingly as great and as funny as the golfing episode from the same season. And over two decades before "The OC" made fun of itself by having a show-within-the-show, "The White Shadow" did it; thereby forecasting all the great inside jokes that popped up in "St. Elsewhere," another Bruce Paltrow, MTM, et al. show. The scene goes as follows:

Hayward, Salami, Coolidge, Thorpe, Vitaglia, and Reese are walking down the halls of Carver High when the subject of the TV series "Downtown High" comes up.

Reese: "Downtown High?" What's it about?

Thorpe: It's this ridiculous new TV show on TV man, about this white principal in a black ghetto high school who always gets involved in the kids' personal problems.

Hayward: Sounds like a lotta bull to me, man.

Coach Reeves walks by, going in the opposite direction.

Coach: Hi guys.

The last in the group, Reese, stops. He looks quizzically back in the direction of the coach.

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p.s. The scene eariler contained this classic bit of dialogue:

Salami: You joined the Drama Club?

Coolidge: Now I'm officially a thespian.

Salami: Yeah, you and my cousin Mary.