The Ballad of Bad Ronald

So maybe there was this actor from back in the day, Scott Jacoby, and people might know him from playing Dorothy’s son on The Golden Girls. But this actor also appeared in this notably twisted TV movie in 1974, Bad Ronald, a thrillerish sort of thing about a painfully shy teenager living with his overprotective mother.

In the movie, Ronald accidentally kills his sister, and the mom — convinced that the authorities will not believe that the death is accidental — hides Ronald, which is well and good until the mom herself dies, the house sells and Ronald becomes a real-life boogeyman, hiding within the house from its new owners as he slowly he slips into a fantasy world of his own making.

And maybe I’d heard about this movie years ago, when a coworker described it to me but couldn’t remember the name. And then maybe I saw this other TV movie with Scott Jacoby — this rather groundbreaking one with Hal Holbrook and Martin Sheen — and I finally ended up finding Bad Ronald. And then maybe I found the cover art for the DVD release of this movie. And then maybe it looked like this:

And maybe I, upon seeing it, couldn’t mentally separate this photo from the Andy Samberg character Shy Ronnie — who actually reminds me of Bad Ronald a great deal, red glasses and all — only Bad Ronald actually looks more like Andy Samberg.

I mean, right?



And then maybe I decided to rematch the original “Shy Ronnie” video — yeah, the one with Rihanna— rather than exploring Bad Ronald any further.

Previous things that are like other things:

• The doctor in this 2004 <i>SNL</i> sketch is a lot like Dr. Spaceman from <i>30 Rock</i>
• Freddy Krueger is like the Pied Piper of Hamelin
• This video game is a lot like <i>Twin Peaks</i>
• This Japanese calendar illustration is a lot like <i>The Ring</i>
• Baby Doll from <i>Batman</i> is a lot like this creepy Osamu Tezuka character, Pinoko