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?
September 20, 2006
Brakes on a Train
First aired: October 31, 1955 on CBS
Recently aired: September 10, 2006 on TV Land
Written by: Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, jr., Bob Schiller, and Bob Weiskopf
Directed by: James V. Kern
The Hollywood story arc wraps up with a mediocre episode (with the exception of one line that never fails to make me laugh. More on that later). Most of the episode features a lot of square pegs being shoved in to round plot holes in order to work in the comedy.
Lucy, Ricky, Fred, Ethel, Lucy's mom and Little Ricky are all aboard the the train they call the City of Los Angeles heading home to New York. Lucy wastes no time getting all the foreshadowing and exposition out of the way. This is Lucy's first time on a train, so she jokingly asks which car the spies are on. Then she asks what the emergency brake is for. Basil Exposition couldn't have done it any better.
The running gag here is that Lucy keeps pulling the emergency brake to stop the train. The first time she does it is to stop the train for Ricky, who has run back to the station to get Lucy's purse, which holds their train tickets. In real life, this would be the end of the emergency brake hijinks, but this is the Land of Lucy, a magical land where chocolate candies go faster and faster on a conveyer belt, and giant loaves of bread come out of normal-sized ovens. We're just gettin' warmed up.
The first time, however, is the charm. Frank Nelson, playing the conductor, taps Lucy on the shoulder and asks, "did you stop this train?" There's no way to describe here how funny he reads that line, but since he became famous on Jack Benny's radio and television show for getting a laugh with just one word, "Ye-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-s?", it's no wonder he nailed it.
Later, Lucy mistakes a jewelry salesman for a jewel thief. An easy mistake to make, since the jewelry salesman DRAWS HIS GUN ON HER! Lucy's peeking in to his compartment, and the guy says "Hold on a minute, Miss. I want to talk to you." Dude! You probably could have saved every one a lot of confusion if you had kept your weapon holstered. Then, in the lounge car, Lucy tells Ethel what happened. And guess who's sitting next to them. . .that's right - the real jewel thief. Because we all know that jewel thieves on the run from the law never stay in their compartment. They hang out in the lounge car.
A few cases of mistaken identity and tugs on the emergency brake later, the curtain finally falls on an episode that took five writers to paste together. Props to Frank Nelson for saving it.
Random Notes:It looks like they did a location shot (maybe at Union Station) of Fred and Ethel boarding an actual train. It also looks like they shot an interior of an actual lounge car for an establishing shot, and the set designers matched it for the rest of the scene.
As a kid, I thought it was really cool to hear the cast mention my home town of Riverside.
Until I looked at the I Love Lucy Episode guide, I never realized that the Hollywood story arc spanned two seasons: from February '55 ("L.A. at Last") to October '55 ("The Great Train Robbery"). That means that the Ricardos and Mertzes spent about eight real-time months in Hollywood, and no one ever suggested (after July 17 anyway) that they go to that new amusement park down the road in Anaheim.
September 05, 2006
Mr. October 31st
First aired: April 8, 1965 on CBS
Recently aired: August 30, 2006 on TV Land
Teleplay by Joe Connelly & Bob Mosher
Story by Dick Conway
Directed by Jerry Paris
I would have loved to have sat in on the pitch meeting for The Munsters. "It's like this: Frankenstein's monster is married to Count Dracula's daughter. They think they're normal, but everyone else thinks their freaks! The monster is really effeminate, and get this - he works at a funeral parlor!" "Great idea!. . .hey, what's that sound?" "It's just Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker spinning in their respective graves. Pay no attention." "Cool. Anyway, I love it! Let's do it!"
And television history is born. I'm guessing the folks at CBS were so enamored of their big hit, The Beverly Hillbillies, that they were sure the "fish-out-of-water" concept would transfer to the world of monsters. So we've got Frankenstein's Monster, aka Herman, Count Dracula, and the Count's ghoul-like daughter Lily, who is married to Herman. Who else do we need to round out the cast? First, there's Herman and Lily's son Eddie, a wolf-boy. Somebody explain that one to me: A science experiment gone wrong and a ghoul get truly freaky with each other (I once made a list of the TV couples who were the hardest to imagine having sex - Herman and Lily came in second, right behind Barney and Betty Rubble), and nine months later, she gives birth to some lupine/human hybrid. Then there's the Munsters' niece, Marilyn, who is totally hot. So why doesn't she realize that her family is a bunch of freaks? As a kid, I got really frustrated watching gentleman callers show up at 1313 Mockingbird Lane to pick up Marilyn for a date, take one look at Herman, and then get the hell out there. And then Marilyn would blame HERSELF for not being able to attract a man. Babe, take a look around! You live in a haunted house with monsters!
In "Herman the Rookie," L.A. Dodger coach Leo Durocher and sportswriter Charlie Hodges are walking down the street when Durocher gets hit in the head with a baseball that was hit by Herman eight blocks away. Instead of going to the nearest hospital for an x-ray, Durocher wants to know who hit the ball. Durocher gets on the phone with Walt (Alston?) and tells him that the neighborhood kids told him about Herman Munster. Yes, I'm sure good ol' Herman is a big topic of conversation among the neighborhood kids. Hell, if he lived in my neighborhood, I'd find a way to charge admission to see him.
Herman shows up at the practice field in a non-Dodger uniform to practice with a bunch of non-Dodgers. What a disappointment. I guess the real Dodgers got teased by the other teams when Mr. Ed tried out for the team two years earlier ("Leo Durocher Meets Mr. Ed"). I was looking forward to seeing Koufax, Roseboro, Davis, and Skowron reprise their roles as themselves. The tryout does not go well. Herman wreaks all kinds of havoc: making a Herman-shaped hole in the outfield fence, causing a player to tumble backwards in fast-motion after catching a ball thrown by him, etc. Watching Herman on the ballfield demonstrating that he has absolutely no control over his own strength reinforces the problem of trying to imagine him having sex with Lily.
Sadly, Big League stardom for Herman is not to be. Dodger owner Mr. O'Malley says that it would cost seventy-five grand to repair the stadium every time he played. Not only that, but the other players refuse to play with him. Valid reasons, to be sure, but it would have been fun to see Herman in front of a Congressional committee denying that he ever took steroids.
Random stuff:
To bring the episode full-circle, Hodges walks down the street with Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, general manager of the Los Angeles Rams who, like Durocher, gets hit in the head with a football kicked by Herman eight blocks away. Unlike Durocher, however, Hirsch totally sucks at acting.
When Herman breaks his bat by tapping it on his cleats, the bat breaks before it makes contact.
Pat Priest, who played Marilyn, was in The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant in 1971. If I recall correctly, she was genuinely taken aback by the two-headed guy. Finally got a clue regarding freaks, I guess.
According to Durocher, the Dodgers need a long ball hitter (they traded away their one power hitter, Frank Howard, after the 1964 season). If they got a long ball hitter, they could win the pennant. Well, he was half right. The Dodgers not only won the pennant in 1965, they beat the Minnesota Twins in the World Series. But not because of a long ball hitter. Jim Lefebvre and Lou Johnson led the Dodgers in home runs with a measly twelve each. Their success was due mainly to the pitching of Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, who won a combined 49 games.
One of the reasons I'm doing a post about The Munsters is to have an excuse to share a joke I wrote: What kind of screwdriver did Dr. Frankenstein use to build his monster? A flathead. You're a lovely audience. Good night.
September 03, 2006
Some disappointing news
September 02, 2006
Preamblin' Entertainment
First aired: November 18, 1963 on CBS
Recently aired: August 29, 2006 on TV Land
Written by John Whedon
Directed by Jeffrey Hayden
A couple of things happen here:
1. Don Knotts reveals himself to be one of television's best comedic actors.
2. Opie's teacher reveals herself to be totally incompetent.
Opie gets a report card with straight A's. Andy is proud. Opie is proud. Aunt Bee makes him a butterscotch pecan pie. All is well in Mayberry until his teacher, Miss Crump, calls him up to her desk the next day and tells him she made a mistake transcribing the grades, and she needs to change his report card, which includes a giant F, which stands for what Opie is when he tells his dad what happened. Then she has the audacity to tell him that he really could get straight A's if he tried. Wonderful sense of timing, Miss Crump.
So what could have caused Miss Crump to make such a mistake? Well, I noticed that in the TV movie Return to Mayberry (1986), she looked and talked as if she had been smoking two packs a day for most of her adult life. Perhaps the stress of report card time made her smoke even more cigarettes than usual, causing her to do an important task in a nicotine-induced haze. Opie just stands there at her desk with a hang-dog look on his face, instead of telling her that she could probably do everyone's report cards correctly if she dialed back her cigarette intake a little.
As Andy revels in his son's scholastic achievments, Barney brings in his old history book and brags to his boss that he can still remember the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. His facial expressions and frustration as Andy prompts him with every word and syllable are indescribably brilliant, so I won't try to describe them. Ranks right up there with Vitameatavegamin.
Random Notes:
Andy's patrol car is a Ford Galaxy
Andy Taylor, supportive father: "A report card? Bad news, huh? I hate to say I told you so, but I did, you know."
In the preamble scene, Barney's hair switches back and forth from neatly combed to messy several times.
LIfe in Mayberry, and America in general, sure was simple when this episode first aired. Four days later, it got substantially less so.
