Monday, August 27, 2012

'Wings' - An Appreciation

 It has been 15 years since the last new episode of Wings aired on NBC – and probably about 15 seconds since the last Wings rerun aired somewhere on cable. 



During an eight-season run, the series anchored several NBC lineups that popularized the tag line “must-see TV.” But unlike The Cosby Show and Cheers, it is rarely afforded the same respect.  I don’t think that’s fair. We can debate about whether it qualifies as classic TV – I say it does – but it certainly deserves recognition as Comfort TV, and here are ten reasons why.

1. A classic(al) theme song
Before it was phased out halfway into the third season, Schubert’s Sonata in A set the delightful tone for a lovely 60-second opening credit sequence featuring picturesque aerial shots of Nantucket, where the series is set. Thanks to Wings, if you’re ever with some friends and this piece starts playing on a classical radio station, you can casually observe, “Ah, Schubert’s Sonata in A – one of my favorites” and everyone will think you have culture. 



2. The pilot
A show about pilots should have a great pilot, and Wings delivers. The first appearance of Joe Hackett’s ne’er do well brother Brian is one of the series’ best moments. The black sheep hits Tom Nevers Field like an insult comic propelled by a tornado, immediately setting the tone for the sibling rivalry that would play out over the next eight years.

3. Holiday episodes
Holiday shows have fallen out of favor in today’s TV landscape (don’t get me started on that topic), but even in the classic TV era most shows managed only one or two Christmas episodes no matter how many seasons they aired. Wings did six of them, all of which deserve a spot in your next holiday TV marathon. My favorite is “The Customer’s Usually Right” from season four, in which Joe’s refusal to pay a 50-cent rewind fee on a rented videocassette (it was 1992) gets a sweet little old lady fired on Christmas Eve. His attempts to make amends lead to unexpectedly hilarious complications. 

4. William Hickey as Carlton Blanchard
William Hickey was an Oscar-nominated actor and one of the most distinguished acting teachers of his generation (his students included Steve McQueen and Barbra Streisand). But for classic TV fans, he will always be best remembered as Carlton Blanchard, the most annoying man ever born. Hickey appears in just three episodes, but they’re all gems.

5. “Joe Blows”
Two-part episodes are difficult to pull off for the average sitcom. “Joe Blows” from season five overcomes the odds and became one of the show’s best stories. On the surface it’s basic role reversal – irresponsible Brian is forced to take over the day-to-day operations of Sandpiper Air, while button-down brother Joe becomes a Caribbean beachcomber. But it's also the best exploration of their always complicated relationship.

6. It could pull off a touching moment
Some of the most memorable scenes in any comedy are the ones bereft of laughs, when the writers dropped the punch lines and created dramatic moments that made the characters seem more authentic. Wings had its share, beginning with the standout season two episode “It’s Not the Thought, It’s the Gift.” The story is an escalating game of amusing one-upmanship between brothers Joe and Brian to find the best birthday present for Helen, but the poignant final scene is unexpectedly moving. And in the season six opener “Whose Wife Is it Anyway?” Joe proposes to Helen in the emotional high point of the series. 

7. The Frasier crossover
I don’t care if it was shameless network cross-promotion, the season three arrival of Drs. Frasier and Lilith Crane to Nantucket inspired several classic moments, including Joe’s reference to Lilith as “Morticia,” and Helen demanding her money back after one of Frasier’s vacuous self-esteem seminars. 

8. The Trivial Pursuit game
It’s hard to single out any one scene as the funniest out of 172 Wings episodes, but many fans point to the Trivial Pursuit game in the season two show “Sports and Leisure” as the series’ comedic pinnacle. 




9. The classic TV salutes
For a TV fan, some of Wings’ best scenes featured the cast acknowledging its classic sitcom ancestors. After Helen and Joe came into some money, Helen loses control at a memorabilia auction and outbids guest star Peter Tork for the Monkeemobile (“She’s Gotta Have It”); in “A House to Die For,” there’s a dream sequence in which Helen plays Marcia Brady opposite the cast of 1995’s The Brady Bunch Movie. 

10. A satisfying finale
“Final Approach” provides a fitting send-off that may not quite reach the heights of the last Mary Tyler Moore Show or Newhart episodes, but surpasses the finales of Cheers, Seinfeld and many other, more celebrated classics.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Redeeming the 1%: Family Affair

 
If you’ve watched television across the decades you may have noticed that rich people are rarely portrayed as admirable. Usually millionaires will either be corrupt and immoral (J.R. Ewing), a Scrooge McDuck caricature (Thurston Howell III), shallow and materialistic (Blair Warner) or just a dimwit (Edward Stratton).

Family Affair is an exceptional sitcom, not just in the sense of being well written and performed, but also in how it varied in both content and style from other situation comedies of its era. This was particularly true in Brian Keith’s portrayal of Bill Davis.



Here was a guy with a blue-collar work ethic and a white-collar lifestyle. He lived in a stunning Manhattan apartment, employed a British gentleman’s gentleman servant, and spent his evenings with a different woman every night. The last thing this bachelor wanted was custody of two six year-old twins and their teenage sister. But he took them in, because it was the right thing to do.

Family Affair is also remembered as one of the most cloyingly sweet sitcoms in history. Yet for all those moppet cries of “Uncle Bee-ill!” it was often a very dark show grounded in the harsher realities of life.



In the very first episode, we learn that the parents of Buffy, Jody and Cissy were killed in a car accident, and the kids were shipped off to separate relatives, none of whom provided a warm welcome. The circumstances of their arrival on Uncle Bill’s doorstep were not forgotten after the pilot – the twins’ insecurity and separation anxiety inspired several first season shows. Contrast this with any other series from that era that featured a widowed parent – The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, The Partridge Family – in which none of the children ever displayed a moment of sadness over such a traumatic experience.

My favorite episode is “The Good Neighbors” from the series’ fifth and final season. In it, Buffy wonders why the residents in their apartment building don’t all know each other and socialize like neighbors did back in her home state of Indiana. She sets out to change that, by inviting everyone in the building to a get-acquainted party in the lobby.

On a typical sitcom, the residents would all be so charmed by adorable little Buffy that they would cast aside their big city cynicism and realize how much they’ve been missing by their withdrawn ways. But here, Buffy waits by the elevator to greet all her New York neighbors with punch and cookies, and…nobody shows up. Nobody. How great is that? It’s exactly what would happen if this scenario occurred in the real world, whether in 1970 or 2012.

I hope I’m not making the series sound like a downer, in case anyone is considering taking another look. There’s a remarkable grace and compassion that permeates these shows, and an emotional honesty that is extraordinary for escapist entertainment.





As previously stated, Brian Keith is wonderful here, and Sebastian Cabot as Mr. French was a perfect foil for three rambunctious kids. Anissa Jones is almost spookily effective as an actress, meriting comparison to Jodie Foster at that age. It takes Johnnie Whitaker (Jody) a couple of seasons to catch up but he gets there eventually. And Kathy Garver’s Cissy was a first crush to many boys and one of TV’s most virtuous and well-behaved teenagers – which made her occasional moments of rebellion all the more interesting.

For all of its serious underpinnings, perhaps the most amazing thing about Family Affair (besides those weird doorknobs to the Davis apartment) is that, over the course of five seasons, I can’t recall a single moment of any member of the family raising their voice in anger. What a refreshing change from today’s sitcoms, where the theory that punch lines are funnier when shouted still pervades. 

Monday, August 13, 2012

Ringing Up Roberta Shore

 I have interviewed more than 1,000 people in my life, 90% of whom were not famous. But whether it was a celebrity interview for a book or a q&a with a bank vice-president for a business magazine article, I still get a little nervous every time.

Usually, my apprehension results either from not wanting to ask a stupid question, or finding out after the interview that the tape recorder didn’t work. Both have happened more than once. I remember a time when I worked for a real estate publication, and had just finished a substantive interview with a broker about the Las Vegas property market. When I got back to my car I rewound the tape just to make sure it was there. The tape was blank. I still do not know what happened.

After sitting in silence for a few moments. I calmly got out of my car, placed the tape recorder behind my left rear tire, and backed over it.

Every interview brings its own unique concerns, but one that generated more excitement than any I’ve faced in more than a year was with an actress and singer named Roberta Shore. The opportunity arose from an article I was offered on a 50th anniversary cast reunion for the western television series The Virginian. The publicist was willing to set up time with any cast members I selected, but after the obvious choice of top-billed series star James Drury, I immediately inquired about Ms. Shore, though my interest had nothing to do with The Virginian.


I wanted to speak with her because Roberta Shore, billed as Jymme Shore, appeared in the “Annette” serial on the original Mickey Mouse Club, as well as the Disney film The Shaggy Dog. In both projects, she played essentially the same role – a sophisticated teenage temptress whose mission in life was to make Annette Funicello miserable.

I first experienced the Mickey Mouse Club when it aired in syndication in the early 1980s, and rarely missed it when it was featured in the “Vault Disney” segments on Disney Channel. There’s something magical about it. Yes, it’s corny and antiquated, but I want to live in a world where people don’t scoff at this kind of entertainment. As Lorraine Santoli writes in her book about the Club, “It was a great time – innocent and full of the notion that it was a beautiful and uncomplicated world.”



The “Annette” serial in particular is a remarkable depiction of idealized teenage life in a small but affluent Midwestern town. Dance parties at someone’s home required donning suits and dresses, the local malt shop was the big meeting place, and there was nothing more exciting than singing “Polly Wolly Doodle” on a hayride.

And yet, as wholesome as it may seem to us now, there were also class distinctions, cliques, and worries over fitting in, the same type of issues that high schoolers deal with today.

As Laura Rogan, Roberta Shore was adolescent elitism personified. She mocked the simple manners of farm girl Annette and even accuses her of stealing a valuable necklace. The entire serial is on YouTube – if you start watching the 10-minute segments, don’t be surprised if you’re in for the duration. There is still something compelling about this Eisenhower era 90210, and about the remarkable Annette, who had a naturally sympathetic underdog quality rarely associated with a beautiful young woman. I will never have the chance to speak with her, or tell her how much I’ve enjoyed her work. So I treasured – and fretted over – the chance to interview one of her costars from the Mousketeer days.



I wish I had a great climax, or an unexpected twist, or even a decent punch line to this entry. It would be better for the story if Roberta and I hit it off like old friends and she shared wonderful memories of working with Annette, and asked me to look her up next time I was in Utah. Or if I could reveal how rude and abrupt she was, just like the snotty characters she played. 

But life is rarely like a sitcom, with a big act three climax. The interview lasted about 15 minutes. She was distracted at the beginning by some stuff going on in her home, answered my questions politely, if not enthusiastically, and thanked me for my praise of her Disney work but didn’t have much to say on the subject. She did her job, and I did mine. Sometimes that’s all that happens with an interview. Most of the time, that’s all that happens.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Zooma-Zooma-Zoom: Seven Moments Still Stuck in the Back of Your Mind

 
Zoom was PBS trying to be hip, which is rarely a good idea. Yet the series that shared the schedule at the home of the pledge drive with Sesame Street, The Electric Company and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood did seem more cutting-edge to little baby boomers back in the day.
 
Just having a show hosted only by kids, with no adult supervision in sight, made it seem like Zoom was something created especially for us, with a cast that was just like us. Most children on TV, like most adults on TV, tend to be better looking and more talented than you and me. That wasn’t the case here. The Zoom kids were not what you’d call child prodigies. Their singing, dancing and acting was no better than what you'd find in any elementary school. But in those moments when they’d try out games suggested by a viewer, or “rap” about the challenges of growing up, it felt like the same stuff you did with your friends.
 
I picked up the Zoom: Back to the 70s DVD a few years ago, and was surprised at what I remembered and what I didn’t. 
 
 
 
I forgot that the show introduced a new cast every year, like a Boston version of Menudo. After watching the intros from every season, I also realized that after year 3 I had no idea who any of these people were – Hector? Tishy? Levell? Guess by then I had moved on to Happy Days.
 
But within those first three years were songs and skits that came back as clearly as if I had first watched them yesterday. And I’ll bet that, whether you are conscious of it or not, there’s still a corner of your memory that is home to bunch of barefoot kids in rugby shirts. I offer the following as evidence:
 
1. The Zip Code
Thanks to television we know two zip codes, the one for Beverly Hills and the one for the post office in Boston where Zoom got its mail: “Send it to Zoom! Box 350, Boston Mass….”
See?
 
2. Fannee Doolees
Fannee Doolees were a code that seemed baffling at first, but once you figured it out you felt smart. Believe it or not, I know someone who just cracked the code about a year ago. And he went to a good college. 
 
3. Bernadette and her elbow twirl
I could never do this. Even when she explained the technique in one episode, all I did was bang my arms together. I still think there was camera trickery involved, because I have never seen anyone else master the optical illusion of this move with the same fluid motion. If there wasn’t, then Bernadette was clearly a sorceress. 
 
 
 
4. “The Cat Came Back”
Of all the songs on Zoom, this was the one that never left my head. According to Wikipedia, it was actually written in 1893, and the original version had a very racist title. 
 
 
 
 
5. Mary Macks
Like “The Cat Came Back,” Mary Macks predate Zoom but achieved a new level of popularity after the kids played this clapping game on several episodes. This one is probably fresher in your mind if you were a girl at the time.
 
6. Your first crush
If you were a kid when the Zoom kids were on, you may have felt drawn to one of the cast members more than the rest. For guys it was probably Nina, who seemed older and so sophisticated. For the girls it was probably Tommy, who had the thickest Boston accent, but hair like Bobby Sherman – as opposed to Joe, who had hair like Roseanne Roseannadanna.  
 

 
7. Ubbi-Dubbi
As languages go, Ubbi-Dubbi was slightly more complex than pig latin, but remains more commonly spoken than verlan. Its primary function was to frustrate your parents and teachers. Dubo Yubou stubill knubow hubow tubo spubeak ubit?