Terrible Shows I Like: The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 

I thought I knew my Hanna-Barbera. Not just The Flintstones and Jonny Quest and the other big guns, but all the Scooby knock-offs that filled my Saturday mornings in the 1970s – Clue Club, Funky Phantom, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids. I can banter on The Hair Bear Bunch, discuss the finer points of Devlin and name each member of the Chan Clan.

So it was humbling when, last year, I discovered an H-B series that I had not only never watched, but never knew existed.

The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn debuted in 1968 on NBC, airing Sunday nights at 7pm. Canceled after 20 episodes, the series was rerun as part of The Banana Splits Hour in the 1970s. 

That’s the part that confuses me because I watched the Banana Splits as a kid and remember several of the features between the Splits’ skits, like The Three Musketeers (who could forget that annoying pissant, Tooly?), Arabian Nights and the wacky serial Danger Island. But if I had watched Huckleberry Finn I would remember, because bizarre concepts like this one are hard to forget.

For those as oblivious to its existence as I was, here’s a brief introduction. Mark Twain’s iconic literary characters Huck Finn, Becky Thatcher and Tom Sawyer (all played by real actors) are chased into a cave by the villainous Injun Joe. They emerge on the other side and become lost in an ever-changing world of Hanna-Barbera animation. 

For the remainder of the series, the three young friends wander into jungles and deserts and pirate ships and frozen wastelands, surviving various escapades while always trying to make their way back to Hannibal, Missouri.

I found it all rather ridiculous on first viewing. Why these characters, and not three present-day teenagers with whom young viewers could more easily identify? Perhaps the idea was to leverage their built-in name recognition (this was the era before Huck Finn was banned from school libraries). But while it’s more enjoyable to read Twain than most novels assigned in English class, I doubt there were many students eager to follow Tom, Huck and Becky into more adventures.

The cast was unable to convey the same qualities that made the characters memorable in the books. Michael Shea’s Huck is not the crude outcast Twain envisioned, but a wide-eyed, easygoing country boy given to exclamations of “Criminy!” while fleeing from Mongol hordes or Egyptian mummies.

Lu Ann Haslam’s Becky is sweet but not as clever as she had to be in the book to catch Tom’s eye. Here she’s given little more to do than cheer on the boys as they deal with the villain of the week (“Hurry, Tom!” “Watch out, Huck!”). Only Kevin Schultz’s Tom Sawyer retains some of the mischievous wit and heroic streak he had in Twain’s novels.  

The blend of live-action with animation was uncharted territory for Hanna-Barbera, though audiences had certainly seen this trick before – most famously perhaps in Mary Poppins. It’s handled well here, which is surprising as the H-B studio has never been synonymous with technological wizardry.

The young leads do their best to react to hand-drawn backgrounds and characters, with inconsistent results. In “Menace in the Ice,” you would think barefoot Huck might look a little more uncomfortable after walking across miles of snow.

So, not a great show, though I will understand if I hear opposing views in the comments from those who grew up with it. Nostalgia certainly makes it easier for me to happily overlook the flaws in Wonderbug and The Secrets of Isis.

But against my better judgment, I do enjoy it.  There’s irresistible comfort in watching H-B animation from this era, and hearing the familiar voices (Don Messick, Janet Waldo, Daws Butler, Paul Frees) featured in all of the company’s shows.

And just when you think you’ve got its formula figured out, The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will surprise you. In an episode called  “The Gorgon’s Head” there’s a quiet moment when Huck and Becky talk about how long they’ve been away, and how summer has turned to fall back in Hannibal, and about the people that must be missing them. You’d never see that kind of raw emotion in Speed Buggy.

I also really like the theme song, another H-B asset (sometimes their songs are better than the shows!). It plays over a live-action closing credit sequence set on a Mississippi steamboat, which makes me wonder if it takes place before the characters got lost, or is meant to be reassurance that they eventually do find their way home. It’s the only time you see the three friends really happy.  

Sadly, there was no final episode to provide any resolution. But how great would it have been if Hanna-Barbera characters had been included in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit? When Eddie Valiant drives into Toon Town, we might have glimpsed Tom, Huck and Becky, now in their 30s but wearing the same clothes, still trying to find that elusive cave that will take them back to Missouri.

Other Terrible Shows I Like:

Tabitha

The Amazing-Spider-Man

Classic TV Two-Part Episodes: Hits and Misses

 

Theoretically the two-part episode is an option that should be utilized only in conjunction with a major milestone in a series (births, deaths, new character introductions, weddings, big name guest star) or when a writer comes up with an idea that is so good, it deserves a little extra breathing room to be fully explored.

But think back over the hundreds of two-parters presented in the Comfort TV era – how many of them really needed more time to tell their stories?

Having conducted my own informal study, I would say the results are about 50/50. Too often, these shows were a marketing ploy to leverage the built-in ‘event’ status afforded to super-sized episodes. That’s why they were used so often to open or close a season.

When there is legitimate reason for a “continued next week” freeze-frame, the result is often one of the most memorable moments in a series – think “The Menagerie” on Star Trek, “Fearless Fonzarelli” on Happy Days or “Carnival of Thrills” on The Dukes of Hazzard.

And when there is not enough content to justify a second episode, we’re left with a story that might have worked as a single show, padded and stretched to fill out a longer running time.

This is a big topic and one that may be revisited in a future blog, but for now here are five examples of when TV got it right – and five underwhelming misses.

Good: Family Ties: “The Real Thing”

Alex Keaton had no shortage of girlfriends in the first three seasons of Family Ties, but when he meets Ellen Reed early in season four, the show wanted to make sure we knew this was going to be different. Their opposites-attract romance, bolstered by the strains of Billy Vera’s “At This Moment,” was a major turning point for Alex and for Michael J. Fox, who is still married to the girl that played Ellen, Tracy Pollan. 

Bad: Charlie’s Angels: “Terror on Skis”

A typical Angels plot – protect a government agent from foreign radicals – is hampered by scene after scene of monotonous stock footage of people skiing during the day, at night, and in freestyle competitions. I had a little inside information on this one, having interviewed the episode’s writer, Ed Lakso, for my Charlie’s Angels book. He readily confessed to padding out the story to justify a location shoot in Vail, Colorado, because his wife wanted to go skiing. 

Good: The Dick Van Dyke Show: “I Am My Brother’s Keeper/The Sleeping Brother”

These episodes introduced Dick Van Dyke’s brother Jerry, playing Rob Petrie’s brother, Stacy. The bizarre plot has Stacy trying to break into show business but only being able to perform while he’s asleep (due to a rare, advanced form of sleepwalking). Despite that contrivance the shows are smart and funny, particularly during the cast performances at those Bonnie Meadow Rd. house parties that always made the suburbs looks so cool and sophisticated. 

Bad: Eight is Enough: “And Baby Makes Nine”

Flashbacks are a convenient way to stretch a story, but no two episodes abused that privilege more than the Season 5 opener of Eight is Enough. The saga of Susan’s difficult delivery of her baby not only offers numerous looks back at her romance with and marriage to Merle, it also reprises scenes that aired just ten minutes earlier in the same episode. Why not just play the theme song again while you’re at it?

Good: Get Smart: “A Man Called Smart”

The only thing tougher to pull off than a great two-part episode? A great three-part episode. But the laughs never fizzle in “A Man Called Smart,” an adventure originally conceived for theatrical release but re-cut for the series. One physical comedy sequence with a stretcher and a revolving door is as funny as anything that’s ever been on television. 

Bad: Mission: Impossible: “The Contender”

For all its many outstanding qualities, M:I never got a two-part episode right. I chose “The Contender” because the plot was particularly weak – capturing a guy who fixes prize fights seems beneath the IMF – but I also could have gone with “The Slave” or “The Council” or “The Controllers.” Viewers were accustomed to seeing the team solve any problem in an hour, and writers could never dream up any good reason for some missions to take longer.

Good: The Bionic Woman: “Doomsday is Tomorrow”

Where Mission: Impossible struggled with the two-part format, The Bionic Woman flourished. From the irresistible “Fembots in Las Vegas” to “Deadly Ringer,” the shows that earned Lindsay Wagner an Emmy, the series was always at its best with multi-episode storylines. My favorite is “Doomsday is Tomorrow,” in which Jaime must figure out how to shut off a computerized weapon (with a HAL 9000 voice) capable of destroying all life on earth. 

Bad: The Facts of Life: “Teenage Marriage”

So many shows have built two-part episodes around potential crises that cannot possibly come to pass, lest it mean the end of the series. Here, Mrs. Garrett and the Eastland girls try to prevent Jo from marrying her boyfriend. Had Nancy McKeon announced she was leaving the show, we might have bought into the conflict; but this was her first season, and we all knew she wasn’t going anywhere, extra episode or not.

Good: Little House on the Prairie: “I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away”

The Ingalls family face their darkest hour when Mary loses her sight after a bout with scarlet fever. The scene where Charles must tell his daughter the diagnosis, while barely able to control his own heartbreak, is devastating. Mary attends a school for the blind, where she gradually comes to terms with her fate in a hopeful finale.  

Bad: Laverne & Shirley: “The Festival”

When a two-part episode is inspired by a road trip, it helps if we actually see the characters go somewhere. Here, Laverne, Shirley, Lenny, Squiggy, Frank and Edna all “travel” from Milwaukee to New York, but all they really do is visit a different part of the studio backlot. Not much fun to be had, unless you enjoy watching Penny Marshall climb a greased metal pole.