Monday, September 30, 2013

Comfort TV Goes Back to the Future

 
It is in our nature to wonder about the future. What will we be able to do in 20 or 50 years that we can’t do now? How will society change? How will technology evolve? 

So it’s not surprising that these speculations often found their way into television, obviously within the science fiction genre but also in comedies, dramas and animated series. One of the more fascinating aspects of watching classic television is looking at how the future was viewed by the shows of the past, now that that “future” has come and gone. 



How was the brave new world of the 1980s envisioned by people in the 1950s? There was an episode of The Donna Reed Show called “Explorers Ten,” in which Jeff and his friends form a club to talk about space exploration. A college astronomy professor tells the group that man will soon land on the moon, but there is a good chance that in their lifetimes the teenagers of the club will not just walk on the moon, they might visit Mars and Venus as well. Apparently they were pretty optimistic in the 1950s and early ‘60s. Hopefully that professor never got tenure.

Whenever a television series tried to depict the future, the two areas they always guessed on – and always got wrong – were couture and computers.

Why were the television writers of 50-60 years ago so certain that future generations would all want to dress in identical pajamas or one-piece jumpsuits? We’ve lost a lot of occupations to progress – gas station attendants, switchboard operators, milkmen – but fashion designer has not been one of them.



Computers have been around as long as television, and many accurately predicted they would become more sophisticated. But the assumption was always that they would have to be bigger to do so. Whenever you see a computer in a comfort TV series, it will always be an enormous floor model with a lot of blinking lights and two large spinning reels at the top. And if a character on the show asks the computer a question, it will respond either with a hokey electronic voice, made by an actor pinching his nose when he talks, or with a card that drops out of a slot after a cacophony of beeps like we used to hear on Mattel Electronic Football.




In retrospect, it is surprising that no one associated computer technology advancement with machines that would become smaller.

The sole exception to television’s poor track record at prognostication was Star Trek. The original Enterprise crew used communicators that resemble the cell phones we use now, and the diagnostic medical beds in Dr. McCoy’s sickbay have also been developed. On Star Trek: The Next Generation you will often see characters carrying communication tablets that perform many of the same functions our iPads do. With the advances now being made in 3D printing, even replicators may become reality.




Star Trek, of course, is the dream of what our future might look like. The nightmare can be experienced in any number of post-apocalyptic series, from Ark II and Planet of the Apes to Jericho and Revolution. And if you look at any list of shows set in the future, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground. We will either live in a futuristic fantasy world like The Jetsons, or be foraging for scraps in a primitive wasteland.

Neither one has happened yet. And given our genius for invention and our genius for stupidity, the future could still go either way. But look on the bright side – even if we find ourselves in the worst case scenario described in Ark II, at least we’ll have jet packs and chimpanzee scientists – not the worst tradeoff for Armageddon.  

 

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Neat, Sweet, Groovy Songs: The Remarkable Story of Josie and the Pussycats

 
To the casual viewer of baby boom-era cartoons, Josie and the Pussycats was just one more Scooby-Doo facsimile to emerge from the Hanna-Barbera factory.

But despite a fleeting 16-episode run the series was actually a trailblazer on multiple fronts, and has maintained a high degree of name recognition more than 40 years after its debut, certainly more so than similar H-B series like Jabber Jaw or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids




Prominent female vocal groups date back to the 1950s, but girls that sang and played their own instruments? That was unprecedented in 1970 when the series debuted. Before the Go-Gos, the Bangles or the Runaways there was the Pussycats, feminist pop-rock pioneers.

Also rarely seen in 1970 – a cartoon series with an African-American character. Valerie banged the tambourines in Josie’s power trio, and was never depicted as a stereotype. In fact, she was the smartest member of the gang.



As any comic book fan knows, Josie and her Pussycats predate the Hanna-Barbera series by nearly a decade. They were created by Dan DeCarlo, one of the most talented artists of comics’ Golden Age. Though artists were not always credited by publishers back then, fans of Archie books always knew DeCarlo’ s pencils on sight, because no one ever drew a more enticing Betty and Veronica.

Josie first appeared in Archie’s Pals & Gals #23, published in 1962. DeCarlo modeled her on his wife Josette, who sported the same red bouffant hairstyle with blue hair bow. Josie was spun off into her own series the following year, joined by Melody and many of the other characters featured in the animated series.



For the first few years they were just another group of Riverdale teenagers. But then Dan and Josette DeCarlo went on a cruise to the West Indies, and one night there was a costume party. Dan dressed like a big game hunter, and Josette dressed like a cat with a leopard skin top, feline ears and a tail. Inspiration struck, and DeCarlo added a new element to the comic, renamed Josie and the Pussycats.

When it was adapted for television, the result was more Hanna-Barbera than Archie. Alan was a buffer version of Fred from Scooby-Doo. Alexander, voiced by Casey Kasem, was just as cowardly as Shaggy but with slightly better fashion sense. The stories likewise were right out of the “meddlin’ kids” playbook with a chase scene climax set to music, a custom that began in the second season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?

The difference was that in Josie the songs were much more than bland bubblegum filler. Since this would be a series about a rock band, the studio opted to take the musical component seriously. 

Janet Waldo (Josie), Jackie Joseph (Melody) and Barbara Pariot (Valerie) supplied the Pussycats’ voices for the series. But for the songs professional singers were recruited, starting with Patrice Holloway, a talented R&B vocalist and the sister of Motown star Brenda Holloway. As a teenager, Patrice co-wrote the Blood, Sweat & Tears hit “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” As a Pussycat, she sang lead on many of the group’s best songs, including “Every Beat of My Heart.” 




The other singing Pussycats were voiced by Cathy Dougher, a classically-trained vocalist, and Cherie Moor, who later joined another sexy trio under her married name of Cheryl Ladd.

The original plan was to include a live-action performance with Holloway, Dougher and Moor at the end of each series episode. How that might have changed the popularity or legacy of the show is anyone’s guess. However, they did appear on the cover of the group’s one and only album, released in 1970 and now going for big bucks on eBay.



Personally I think it’s a pretty terrific record (the songs have also been released on a Rhino CD, but that too is now out of print and pretty expensive). There’s a nice mix of the original songs featured on the show, with first-rate covers of The Carpenters’ “Close to You,” Bread’s “It Don’t Matter to Me,” Bobby Sherman’s “La La La” and the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There.”

My favorite Josie and The Pussycats song is “Inside, Outside, Upside Down,” a sunburst of glistening pop which I first owned on a 45 record, after sending in box tops from Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. Loved it then, love it now.




Following the original series, Hanna-Barbera created Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, a passable but pale imitation of its predecessor. By then the music was no longer a priority, and it showed. The animated characters made one other appearance, in an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies.

But that still wasn’t the end of the Pussycats tail…er, tale. In 1995, Juliana Hatfield and Belly lead singer Tanya Donelly covered the Josie theme on the CD Saturday Morning. “I can’t say that Josie and the Pussycats is the reason I picked up a guitar,” Donelly said, “but I think the show contributed some Saturday morning positive reinforcement to a generation of potential female musicians.”

And in 2001, a film version was released starring Rachael Leigh Cook as Josie, Rosario Dawson as Valerie and Tara Reid as Melody. It flopped, but give it a chance if you missed it. It’s actually a pretty smart satire on the commercialization of music, and songs like “3 Small Words” are worthy editions to the Pussycats legacy.




Josie and the Pussycats make me happy. And that’s what comfort TV is supposed to do. Rock on, cats.



Sunday, September 8, 2013

The 7 Least Intimidating Comfort TV Villains

 
Being a villain back in the Comfort TV era was not an easy gig. It’s hard to create a genuine air of menace when television was less compliant about sadistic violence and provocative language. Plus, TV being TV, the hero was going to win eventually because if he (or she) didn’t, the show would be over.

Still, some evildoers managed to put a scare into us, at least for an episode or two. I’ll post my list of the most intimidating Comfort TV villains sometime closer to Halloween, when we’re all in the mood for a good fright. But here, let’s look at seven vanilla villains who never forced anyone to sleep with the lights on.

Louis the Lilac
Batman
It was not surprising that Batman’s third season was it’s last, after two episodes in which the Dynamic Duo pitted their crime fighting skills against Milton Berle as Louis the Lilac. Louie wanted to control the minds of Gotham City hippies – not much of a plan as most of the hippies’ minds were already in an altered state. Sure, he once captured Batgirl, but then everybody captured Batgirl. She got tied up more than Nell Fenwick on Dudley Do-Right



Rogan
The Adventures of Superman
It’s hard to scare viewers at home if their first reaction is to bust out laughing. But that’s what happened in “The Perils of Superman,” one of the more memorable episodes of the classic 1950s Superman series. What other reaction is possible when you see master criminal Rogan and his two henchmen, garbed in identical business suits and giant bullet-shaped lead headpieces? The show also contained some hilariously ridiculous dialogue; when the gang captures Clark Kent and tells him he will be lowered into a vat of acid, Kent protests, “But…that’s illegal!” 



The Kandyman
Doctor Who
This venerable sci-fi series was clearly on the last gasp of its original run when it introduced a sugarcoated robot in a story called “The Happiness Patrol.” The Kandyman was one of far too many low points from the snakebitten Sylvester McCoy era.




The Jennifer Darling Fembot
The Bionic Woman
Jennifer Darling was a petite, winsome actress who specialized in playing plucky secretaries – first to Oscar Goldman on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, later to Tom Bradford on Eight is Enough. Even her name should be listed in Roget’s as a synonym for adorable. So when she tries to suggest lethal menace as a super-strong killer robot, it’s like watching someone be attacked by Kristin Chenoweth. 



Colonel Wilhelm Klink
Hogan’s Heroes
Mel Brooks proved that Nazis could be funny as long as they are utterly toothless and incompetent. That description certainly applies to the Kommandant of Stalag 13. Klink was an embarrassment to his allies and a joke to his adversaries, and probably did more than General Eisenhower to help the Germans lose World War II. Werner Klemperer’s inspired portrayal of Klink earned him two Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor.

Mariposa
Wonder Woman
Diminutive, mild-mannered Henry Gibson, garbed in a shiny purple jumpsuit, plays the ruler of a tiny island nation, who kidnaps the world’s top athletes and blackmails them into competing under his flag at the Olympics. This frankly insane episode was called “Screaming Javelins” and also featured Melanie Chartoff as a Russian gymnast and Rick Springfield as her boyfriend. Gibson’s take on Mariposa must be seen to be believed – he’s like some twisted offspring of Liberace and Julian Assange. 



Glitter Rock
ElectraWoman and DynaGirl
I have a confession – if I were forced to spend my remaining days on a desert island and could only take a handful of television shows with me, one of them would be this typically eccentric Sid & Marty Krofft creation – an episode pitting ElectraWoman and DynaGirl against a green-afroed rock musician who hypnotized people with his guitar. Check out the photo - even Freddie Mercury thinks this guy needs to tone it down. As a villain Glitter Rock wasn’t much. As a symbol of everything that was wonderful and terrible about the 1970s, he was unforgettable.