November 29, 2006
Half Empty
First aired: November 20, 1970 on ABC
Recently aired: November 11, 2006 on TV Land
Written by: Paul West
Directed by: Irving Moore
I need but type only two words to convey the youthful angst of the middle Brady daughter: George Glass. Seriously, how desperate for validation from your own family do you have to be to invent a boyfriend? It's one thing to create a fictional beau at a slumber party so your friends won't think you're a loser, but does any twelve-year-old kid really think she'll be diminished in the eyes of Mom and Dad because she's not part of a couple? The family issues presented here would make Dr. Phil throw up his hands and say "Ah give up!"
Jan loves Clark Tyson, but one look at Marcia and he forgets Jan is even in the room (oh sure, Clark. Like you have a shot with a fourteen-year-old). After accusing Marcia of trying to steal Clark, Jan convinces herself that she's too ugly have a boyfriend. When Mike and Carol try to comfort her ("You shouldn't feel left out because you don't have a boyfriend." "Sure, you'll have lots of boyfriends!"), she cuts them off and offers up the imaginary George Glass. On second thought, maybe she's not seeking their validation; maybe she she's lying to them about George in order to put an end to their endless stream of platitudes.
Rather than let Jan work through her funk by herself, the Bradys indulge the hell out of her. Alice suggests they give her her birthday presents early. Better yet, says Mike, let's throw her a party! Yes, there's a good life lesson: whenever you're in a bad mood, get your loved ones to hire a caterer and a deejay.
Trying to get to the bottom of Jan's problems, which from what I can tell, would rival most archaeological digs, Carol plies Clark with ice cream for information about Jan's appeal, or lack thereof, to twelve-year-old males. He tells her that "Jan is a good guy." When informed that Jan is actually female, he responds that she doesn't "wear groovy clothes and stuff like that." So when Carol trots out Jan in a dress, he takes notice. Hold on a sec, I need rewind to the part where Marcia walks in on Clark and Jan in the first scene...yep, Marcia's wearing a dress. And there you have it - Clark Tyson is a leg man.
As Clark lavishes attention on Jan, her fellow Bradys smile warmly at her and at one another. If this moment didn't inspire the scene in Airplane! where everyone smiles warmly at everyone else when the nun is singing to the sick kid, it certainly should have.
Random notes:
Clark is played by Mark Gruner, whose only other noteworthy credit is Mike Brody in Jaws 2. So when he tries to impress women by telling them he's an actor, what do you think he leads with: the hero in a lame sequel, or the MacGuffin for Jan's Big Lie? If it's the former, the conversation probably goes like this:
Mark: You know, I was in Jaws 2.
Attractive Woman: Wow, what was it like working with Steven Spielberg?
Mark: Actually, it was directed by Jeannot Szwarc
AW: Oh, so what was it like working with Richard Dreyfuss?
Mark: Dreyfuss wasn't in the sequel.
AW: Well, what was it like working with Robert Shaw?
Mark: Shark ate him in the first one.
AW: Oh.
Mark: I did have a really nice scene with Lorraine Gary.
AW: Who?
Mark: (long pause) I'm Clark Tyson!!!!
Jan: Clark, this map of the United States I'm drawing looks kind of weird.
Clark: (taking a look at the map) It would look better if you hadn't forgotten Baja California.
Huh? Does The Brady Bunch take place in some disrupted time-space continuum in which Marty McFly helped negotiate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and somehow netted the U.S. an extra few thousand square miles? Or is Jan so taken with Clark that she lets his geographic gaffe slide, rather than say "Baja California?! Are you serious? That's in Mexico, you idiot! Oh, Marcia, I'm glad you're here. This is Clark. You're conceited and he's an idiot. I'm sure you'll get along just fine."
******
November 15, 2006
Andy walks with me
First aired: November 14, 1966 on CBS
Recently aired: October 30, 2006 on TV Land
Written by: Sid Morse
Directed by: Lee Philips
Here's a philosophical question I've been pondering since watching this episode: if a television show is regarded as a "classic," yet a particular episode of the show contains none of the elements that made it classic, will a tree still fall in the forest? And would someone unfamiliar with the series come away from it asking "you mean TV Guide said this thing was the ninth greatest TV show of all time?" If you tuned in to "The Senior Play" to get your fix of homespun wisdom from Sheriff Andy Taylor or comic hubris from Deputy Barney Fife, you would be thoroughly disappointed. You would be even more disappointed if you watched the whole episode and realized that the most entertaining part of the preceding half hour was a promo for Mr. T's reality show, I Pity the Fool.
It's time for the senior play, which for some reason, the entire town of Mayberry is eagerly anticipating. Helen, Miss Vogel, Howard Sprague, two incredibly wholesome seniors named Homer and Estelle and Principal Hampton are all pitching ideas for the play. This is a very important part of the production process, as Howard reminds us: "you know, it's the basic idea that makes a show a success or failure." Honest to God, he actually says that. I'm guessing he learned this cold, hard truth about show business after the Broadway show he invested in, "Paint Drying!", closed after only four performances. Miss Vogel suggests a series of skits illustrating great moments in history, such as Samuel Morse tapping out "what hath God wrought" on the telegraph. As a history major, I thought this was a splendid idea, but the looks Homer and Estelle's faces let us know that they think the idea is like squaresville, man. They suggest a musical. Awesome! But who will direct it? Not to worry. The show will be directed by Helen, who is supremely qualified because she "did a few plays in college." Well hey, with a resume like that, how could it NOT be a smash?
Mr. Hampton drops in on a dress rehearsal and is shocked, shocked to see the youth of Mayberry dancing like a bunch of spazzes (my apologies to any British folk reading this, but really, they're dancing like a bunch of spazzes). He upbraids Helen on her lack of morality: "We depend on you to lift the standards of our young people, not hasten their decadence." Hmmm...there seems to be some sort of gap between the generational values of Helen's students and those of Mr. Hampton. Not sure what you would call that. A generation chasm, perhaps.
In the previous seasons, this would be the point in the show when Andy would come up with a clever idea to resolve the conflict, i.e., to get Mr. Hampton to change his mind. Your attention please. Now batting for Taylor, Helen Crump. Helen gets the clever idea to rewrite the show and have the kids dance the Charleston. You see, Mr. Hampton? You danced like a spaz when you were young, too! Get it!? Helen tells him that kids need to express themselves through dancing, and it's not immoral, yada yada yada. Mr. Hampton caves and lets the kids do their show.
Stuff I noticed:
The absence of Barney, Opie, Thelma Lou, Aunt Bee, Otis, and Gomer
A painfully unfunny scene between Floyd and Goober.
How lucky for Helen that the students in her play appear to be professional dancers.
Opening Title Sequence Watch: You can have your Ballad of Gilligan's Island, your Ballad of Jed Clampett, and your Brady Bunch theme, all of which spell out the antecedent action in their lyrics. The opening sequence of The Andy Griffith Show sets the tone simply by showing a father and son heading down to the lake to go fishing. I have, however, always been a little off put by the fact that Andy is wearing his Sheriff's uniform, like he's on call or something. I worry that his pager might go off and that will be the end of fishing for the day. Side note: Watching this sequence as a young boy, I thought that Opie's method of catching fish was throwing rocks at them.
November 04, 2006
Meatheads Prefer Blondes
First aired: November 17, 1975
Recently aired: September 11, 2006
Written by: Lou Derman and Milt Josefsberg
Directed by: Paul Bogart
When All in the Family debuted in 1971, it was topical, edgy, and ground-breaking (I used to think it was totally cool that they said "hell" and "damn" on this show). By 1975, it seems to have had surrendered to sitcom entropy and settled in to more standard plotlines. Here, a pregnant Gloria is jealous of the woman Mike is tutoring. And she has good reason to be - he's tutoring the lovely Linda Galloway (Bernadette Peters and her pouty lips).
I remember once reading that Rob Reiner used to hang around the set of The Dick Van Dyke show while his dad, Carl Reiner, executive produced the show. In this episode, it seems that Reiner learned how to act like a total buffoon around pretty women from Van Dyke. The giggling, the stammering - they're all here. The difference here is that Linda actually responds to it:
"you're being cute and charming, like you're coming on to me. And if you're trying to turn me on, I just want you to know it's okay." She then sits on his lap and kisses him with her pouty lips (Note: as a guy who has acted like a total buffoon around women many times, I can assure you that this never happens). This is followed by a Happy Days studio audience-like "wo-o-o-o-o-o!"
"Gloria Suspects Mike" seems to be less about marital fidelity than an opportunity for Reiner and Carroll O'Connor to do shtick. Archie suspects Mike of cheating on Gloria, so he gets Mike drunk in hopes that Mike will confess his sins ("in vine-o ve-REET-us"). Usually a drunk scene involves someone saying what he or she would not say when sober, thus letting us get to know the character a little better. Here it's simply used for exposition: a drunk Mike tells Archie that he did not respond to Linda's advances. In vino deus ex machina.
Stuff I noticed:
Edith flubs a line and they keep it in. When Archie gets locked in the basement and bangs on the door, she says "oh, that's Glor - Archie!"
The only political joke is one about Betty Ford's alcoholism.
Opening Title Sequence Watch: Archie and Edith singing "Those Were the Days" at the piano is classic TV iconography. Written by broadway legend Charles Strouse ("Bye Bye Birdie," "Annie"), the song is about how great everything was a few decades ago. Thus, there are references to Glenn Miller and the La Salle automobile. But if I ever met Strouse, I would ask him what's the deal with the line "Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again." Hoover was the one every one blamed for the Great Depression. Hell, even Strouse's lyricist for "Annie," Martin Charnin, wrote a whole song about Americans' loathing of Hoover ("We'd Like to Thank You"). Was he going for irony?
