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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 5, 1971
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: We’re here to celebrate Mark Wahlberg’s birthday. That much is certain. The question is how. The grand majority of Wahlberg’s greatest career triumphs — an Oscar nomination for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed; history’s most memorable Calvin Klein campaign — have come in fields like movies or music or underwear fashion. So what do we have to celebrate Wahlberg with on the TV side?
- Entourage. Can’t forget our old friend Entourage! 96 episodes of Hollywood good times, plus a movie that nobody liked! Wahlberg executive-produced the show, and it was loosely based on his early-career days in Hollywood with his own from-back-home Entourage.
- Other TV productions: Wahlberg’s production company, Closest To the Hole Productions, has been responsible for TV shows like In Treatment, Boardwalk Empire, How to Make It In America, and the seminal reality series Wahlburgers.
- The How to Make It In America opening credits, for which there is no reason to think that Mark Wahlberg had any responsibility, but when you own the production company, all the good decisions end up getting credited to you, so let’s just smile and remember what great Mark Wahlberg-produced credits these were:
But no. We’re not going to be celebrating Mark Wahlberg’s birthday with Johnny Drama or Nucky Thompson or Lake Bell. We’re obviously going to be celebrating Mark Wahlberg’s birthday with Andy Samberg’s brilliant impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live in the sketch “Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals.” It was one of those sketches where it had never occurred to you that Mark Wahlberg was a particularly parody-able figure until Samberg nailed it perfectly.
Of course, the famously chill Wahlberg was totally cool with the parody and not at all pissed off and didn’t even once make threats in the press that he was going to break Samberg’s nose. Ah, but all was soon well, as Wahlberg made the traditional SNL I’m-cool-with-it walk-on, preventing the world from having to choose sides in a great Wahlberg-Samberg war. For now.
So happy birthday, Mark Wahlberg. Please spend at least some of it talking to a goat.
