Bryan Cranston Tells Conan He Met His Wife While Guest-Starring on Airwolf

On Thursday's Conan, Bryan Cranston revealed to Conan O'Brien that he met his wife Robin Dearden while they were both guest-starring on the 1980s TV show Airwolf, in an episode that aired almost 35 years ago to the day. 

"My wife was the victim of the week, and I was the bad guy of the week, and I literally held her captive by gunpoint," Cranston said of his experience playing a shady kidnapper whose extortion scheme goes wrong. "It's also very sexy, I think, though. It's like she thought I was very dangerous. Ooooh!"

Cranston noted that the Airwolf theme was the best part of the show. "Very, very bad show, but with a great thumping theme song... and you got excited about the show, and then slowly, as the show rolled out, it's like bleeeeeeh. You start losing interest."

"Which means it only ran for, like, seven seasons," Conan O'Brien quipped back. It actually only had four seasons, which is still good for a show built around a cool helicopter. 

O'Brien then took a moment to enjoy the Airwolf opening sequence with Cranston and marveled at what television used to be like. 

"You know they spent a fortune on the theme song and the visuals," Cranston said as they watched helicopters blowing things up. "This was seven minutes of the show!"

O'Brien said his kids don't understand how long show openings used to be, since they've pretty much vanished from most television shows at this point. "It's unbelievable. The opening to CHiPs, I clocked it once at 45 minutes," he joked. "It shows you how much television has changed... there were three networks, there was a limited amount of product. You would watch a long opening even if it wasn't great, because what else are you gonna do? It's the '70s or the early '80s. What do you gotta do, pal?"

Airwolf ran from 1984 to 1987 and is currently streaming on Peacock. 

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Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.