A fan love letter to It's a Wonderful Life, this episode dives deeply into the period over the 1970s and ‘80s when the movie played around the clock on local TV and Americans fell in love with it, asking why writer Philip Van Doren Stern’s sliding-doors butterfly-effect concept of each person’s value and impact on all others acquired such currency with Americans of that place and time.  What resurrected Wonderful Life after nearly three decades?  We become the first to tell the tale of how the combination of a whoops by Rashida Jones’ grandfather and a decade-long NYC viewing party launched this movie from obscurity to American icon.  We look at the endless string of TV episodes and movies inspired by Wonderful Life and talk with the writers of one of the very first, a 1979 Robin Williams starring sitcom’s “Wonderful Mork” episode, to understand the deep universal appeal of considering what the world would be like without you.  Finally, we come to 1989, peak year for “take-offs” on this movie, many decidedly dark.  Why?  SaveGeorgeBailey.com

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