The Unshakeables: John Monroe Welcomes You Into His World

 

A television show succeeds if it holds your attention for the time it’s on. But some episodes stay with you long after the credits roll. The emotions they generate do not dissipate for several minutes – sometimes several hours. And when you think about them months or even years later, you find the imprint they left on your mind remains as formidable as ever.

These are the “Unshakeables.”

 

“I hate women – oh, I know I married one of them, but there was never anything else around.”

 

“I hate children – especially ours.”

 

Those are quotes from the first episode of a situation comedy. If you were to guess, you’d probably consider Married With Children, or one of the multitudes of 21^st century series in which self-important families freely express their hostility toward each other and the dreadful hand life dealt them. But you would be incorrect.

 

The episode in question debuted in 1969, when families on TV still had more in common with the Bradys than the Bundys. Maybe that’s one reason why this particular show didn’t last. It was called My World…and Welcome To It, and it was billed as a series “based on stories, inspirational pieces, cartoons, and things that go bump in the night by James Thurber.”  

 

 

 

At 7:30 pm on September 15, viewers first met John Monroe (William Windom), as he strolled onto their screens in front of a crudely drawn black-and-white illustration of his Connecticut home. He introduces himself as a cartoonist and writer for The Manhattanite, a magazine modeled after the sophisticated urban snobbery of The New Yorker, where many of Thurber’s stories and illustrations appeared.

 

John is in no hurry to arrive home. “I don’t get along with any of them,” he says of his wife Ellen (Joan Hotchkis) and young daughter, Lydia (Lisa Gerritsen). Pausing at the front door he resigns himself to his fate: “I suppose I might as well go in – I don’t have enough money for a motel.”

 

The episode is appropriately titled “Man Against the World.”

 

Heady stuff for the time, and not just in its freewheeling mix of animation and live action that still seems innovative 50 years later. But apparently viewers were not yet ready for such a unique presentation. Maybe they turned it off after that opening scene, wondering why anyone would want to spend the next 30 minutes listening to a gloomy curmudgeon. Or maybe they just preferred to stick with Gunsmoke on CBS. Even now, after many lesser one-season-and-out shows have found a new audience on DVD, My World and Welcome To It remains out of circulation.

 

The first audience to embrace the series consisted of those who worked in the television industry, and understood how rare it was for something truly different to break into a prime time schedule. They recognized a kindred spirit in John Monroe, and the series built around him by writer-director Melville Shavelson. It was a celebration of the artist’s creativity, and an acknowledgement of the sacrifices creators make to bring something special into the world.

 

John is happiest when he is at his drawing board; family obligations take him away from that, out of the limitless realm of his thoughts and into a mundane world of teacher conferences and dull dinner conversation. Whatever invades the sanctity of his attic workspace is an annoyance. 

 

 

Even when John is away from his sketchpad, his mind wanders into fantasies that serve as a coping mechanism in situations he’d rather avoid. Forced to meet Lydia’s teacher, he imagines her as a beautiful young woman who tries to seduce him. When Ellen says “Yes, indeedy,” a phrase that makes him cringe (we all have them), he pictures her hanging from the living room chandelier – and smiles.

 

We know he is good at his job. His work appears in prestigious publications, and affords his family a comfortable existence. Does he need to be the way he is to keep that going? That seems to be the reality, and it is one to which his family has adjusted.  When Ellen speaks to Lydia about her father, she says that allowances must be made for the eccentricities and social awkwardness of creative people.

 

Anyone who has worked 16 hours a day trying to come up with a new idea for a story or a song or a script, as the clock ticks down toward a deadline, would appreciate how those allowances are considered. Those in television understood that reality all too well, which is one reason why My World and Welcome To It won the Emmy for Best Comedy, and William Windom was also honored as Best Actor.

 

And if more viewers stuck around for that first episode they’d have discovered that, thankfully, we do see that there’s hope for John, particularly in salvaging his relationship with his daughter, which until now was based on an understanding that neither gets the other, and they’re fine with that.

 

At first it seems an impossible situation. Usually in a parent-child dynamic where one is clinical and one is fanciful, it’s the parent that’s all business and the kid that can’t focus on serious subjects. But it’s the opposite here, and here the series also benefits from casting Lisa Gerritsen as Lydia, as she was always one of those kid actors that projected a maturity beyond her years. 

 

 

When Ellen tells John to help Lydia with her history homework, the awkwardness in her bedroom is palpable. At first they fall back into their standard positions – Lydia suggests he just sit there for a while and then leave, and she’ll tell mother he was helpful. “Excellent idea,” he responds.

 

But then Lydia complains about how dull it is to study General Ulysses S. Grant and the close of the Civil War. “There was nothing dull about Ulysses S. Grant,” John responds, and he whips out his sketchpad and draws the scene of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. That becomes a fantasy sequence in which a drunk Grant doesn’t know he won the war and offers his sword to Lee. 

 

 

Lydia laughs at the story, and will soon write a composition based on that scenario that will get both her and John in trouble – but at least this time they are on the same side. “Imagination,” he tells her after finishing his yarn, “is what makes life tolerable.” 

 

And that’s the key line to the whole piece. 

 

As he leaves they smile at each other – perhaps for the first time. It was a moment well earned by a smart script and a talented cast.

 

William Windom would continue to make Monroe’s difficult traits more palatable than they would play from a less likeable actor. 

 

Some of his misogyny was toned down in subsequent episodes as well, but apparently not enough to allow one of television’s most original shows to survive beyond 26 episodes. Our loss, and one that will be felt most deeply by those oddball creative types that see a universe of possibilities in a blank sheet of paper. 

 

I'm no Thurber, but I like to think I'm one of them. 

The Unshakeables: The Last Temptation of Darrin Stevens

 

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

 

What if you could have anything you wanted? Any house, any mate, any car; would it make you happy? Would it satisfy every desire? Would you still be the same person after all those wishes were fulfilled?

 

The premise of Bewitched is simple, but one with layers of complexity beneath the surface: young advertising executive Darrin Stevens marries a witch, but is adamant she live as a typical American housewife – or, as he puts it, “No hocus pocus.” He views her powers as something unnatural, and refuses to accept the benefits they could provide to his career and his lifestyle. He appreciates the value in work, and of struggle when it results in rewards that have been fairly earned. But those beliefs are tested in “A is For Aardvark,” the 17^th episode of the series’ first season.

 

After spraining his ankle, Darrin recuperates in the master bedroom, and runs poor Sam ragged asking for food, magazines and other creature comforts. 

 

After 27 trips up and down the stairs, Samantha suggests putting a spell on their house so it will respond to his requests. At first he protests (“I don’t want any part of that nonsense”) but after acknowledging the strain he had placed on his wife, he reluctantly agrees.

 

Endora, never far away, recognizes what is about to happen – “You’ve given him a taste of power,” she tells her daughter. “It’s Adam and the apple all over again.” 

 

Sure enough, Darrin quickly begins to not only use but to abuse his new abilities. Instead of a holding a book he has it float in front of him. He could light his own cigarette but has the house do it instead. 

 

 

And that triggers an epiphany – one that upends his entire worldview – why shouldn’t he take advantage of having anything he wants just a nose-twitch away? He tells Sam to use her powers however and wherever she wishes. He quits his job. He calls a realtor to sell their home so they can travel and live the good life from now on. “Well, why not, Sam?” he asks.

 

Then a package arrives – something Darrin had ordered before his world changed. A dozen roses and a simple wristwatch, anniversary gifts for his wife. He seems embarrassed now by the banality of the gesture, but Sam is moved to tears, and insists she loves them more than any fur coat or palatial estate she could conjure up on request. 

 

 

That begins to awaken Darrin’s better angels, as he perceives the pitfalls of the life he was about to embrace. And then, in the episode’s most remarkable moment, he acknowledges his own weakness. Having succumbed to temptation once, he honestly cannot assure Sam that he’ll be able to resist a second time. So he asks her to twitch their lives back to before she hexed the house, so he would have no memory of what that power feels like. In the final scene Darrin is back in bed, ringing a bell to let Sam know he needs something. And this time she happily climbs the stairs to respond.

 

I have many questions. Why was Darrin never tempted by what Samantha’s witchcraft could provide, but instantly ready to abandon his principles as soon as he tasted a fragment of that power? And was he right or wrong when he confessed it was ego that propelled his edict that Samantha forsake her magic?

 

But the one that resonates most in this story is the one I already asked – what if you could have anything you wanted? As with so many of the moral and ethical quandaries posed by classic television, it is as relevant today as it was 60 years ago.

 

We all think that if we won the lottery and suddenly had $150 million in the bank, the clout that money brings would not change us. Heck, we’d probably still drive the car we have now and keep our Timex watch, because it works as well as a Rolex. Instead, we’d immediately start building affordable housing in low-income communities, and putting underprivileged kids through college.

 

Some billionaires actually do that. But most do not.

 

We are surrounded by examples of what happens when the world moves within the grasp of those who once lived paycheck to paycheck. It’s the megachurch pastors who fly private jets to arenas and then preach how “a man's life consisteth  not in the abundance  of the things which he possesseth.” It’s the lottery winners that die penniless. It’s the leaders of organizations that guilt gullible corporations into sending them millions to make some lives matter more than they apparently do now, and then buy mansions for themselves instead.

 

What would have happened had Darrin not come to his senses? Could he have ended up like Rocky Valentine, the career criminal in the Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit?” Shot and killed after robbing a pawnshop, Rocky awakens in a world where he can have it all, but can’t figure out how he earned his way into this heaven of booze, casinos and showgirls. He didn’t, of course, because he wasn’t in heaven at all.

 

“A scared and angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he’s ever wanted. And he’s going to have to live with it for eternity…in the Twilight Zone.”

 

My friend and fellow classic TV blogger Mitchell Hadley has been posting a series of pieces called “Descent Into Hell,” in which he selects classic TV episodes that showed where our culture could be headed (and now, arguably, has arrived). While it still fits comfortably into the lighter diversions of a typical Bewitched episode, ”A Is For Aardvark” is also a cautionary tale that illuminates one of the wider pathways to that same destination. 

 

 

The Unshakeables: Will Robinson Meets Santa Claus

 

I’ve mentioned before that “A Vision of Sugar Plums” from the first season of Bewitched is my favorite Christmas-themed episode of any classic television series. But I don’t think I’ve ever explained why. 

 

Start with the obvious – it’s a smart and imaginative script (as most of them were in the series’ early seasons) and it’s a welcome break from the formulas that were recycled through so many episodes over eight years (One of Sam’s eccentric relatives pops in, Endora zaps Darrin with a spell that will embarrass him at work, etc.).

 

Beyond that, it’s a show that endorses a very interesting position on the existence of Santa Claus. I suppose if your audience is already on board with witches, it’s not that big a leap to Santa being real as well. But they took such a bold and definitive stance on the question that, when I first watched it at an age when my own belief was fading, it restored my faith. Sometimes it still does.

 

The story opens with the Stephens’ and the Kravitzes both visiting an orphanage, where each couple will take a child home to spend the holidays (do people still do this?). Darrin has his doubts about Michael (Billy Mumy), who starts a fight with another boy who still believes in Santa. Michael has been through some rough times, not the sort likely to be specified in a sitcom from this era, but clearly they left their mark. Samantha convinces Darrin that this is exactly the kind of boy who could use a couple of days in a happy home.

 

It does not begin well. Michael is polite but sullen, seemingly uninterested in any of the Christmas festivities the Stephens’ have planned. And when Darrin dresses up as Santa, he finally snaps.

 

Darrin: “Don’t you want to see what Santa brought you, son?”

 

Michael: “I don’t care what you’ve brought me. And I’m not your son.” 

 

 

That’s the last straw for Darrin, but Samantha has another idea. She gently asks Michael why he’s so sure that Santa Claus is just a fantasy, and that’s when we learn that Michael once had a father who told him so and…the episode doesn’t reveal what happened to that clearly-departed dad, but we can only assume it wasn’t good.

 

“Suppose I were to tell you it really isn’t exactly that way?” Samantha says, to which Michael responds. “Prove it.” And that’s when Sam does something she rarely did over the course of 254 episodes: she reveals her identity as a witch – and then offers to fly Michael to the North Pole to visit the real Santa Claus. 

 

 

And then another surprise – Darrin, who lives in perpetual fear about anyone learning his wife’s secret, not only assents given the circumstances, he can’t resist taking the trip with them.

 

What follows I will leave for those who have never seen this classic to discover. But as one might expect Michael is transformed by the journey after learning the true meaning of Christmas.

 

But did it really happen? Sam later finds Darrin and Michael both asleep on the living room couch, and then Darrin tells her the crazy dream he had about visiting Santa. So that settles that…except for those slushy footprints on the carpet…

 

 

And as an extra bonus, “A Vision of Sugar Plums” also gives us one more “almost gotcha” with Gladys Kravitz, and a brief guest appearance by Bill Daily one year before I Dream of Jeannie.

 

Billy Mumy is believable, as he was in everything – one of those child actors with a maturity that never seems inauthentic to his age. It’s admirable how Darrin does what he thinks is the right thing by giving Michael a cheerful holiday of sugarplums and giftwrapped presents. But Samantha recognizes how that’s not going to suffice, and relates to Michael with a more direct approach, and in doing so restores his sense of hope and wonder.  Life had knocked him down a few times, but now we can see that he is going to be just fine.

 

This would not be Sam’s last meeting with Santa or her only visit to the North Pole. She flew grumpy old Charles Lane up there in another classic holiday episode called “Humbug Not to Be Spoken Here” (1967). But for me “A Vision of Sugar Plums” has just a little more magic than all of the other Christmas stories I watch every year. And it’s all the proof I need that Santa Claus is real – at least in TV Land. 

 

 

The Unshakeables: Rob Petrie and The Walnuts from Space

 

A television show succeeds if it holds your attention for the time it’s on. But some episodes stay with you long after the credits roll. The emotions they generate do not dissipate for several minutes – sometimes several hours. And when you think about them months or even years later, you find the imprint they left on your mind remains as formidable as ever.

 

These are the “Unshakeables.”

 

You watch a comedy to laugh. And with our favorite classics we watch to spend some time in the company of familiar, likable characters, who can help us to relax and unwind after a hard day’s work.

 

But what happens when those characters stop acting like themselves – when they become something unsettling – even sinister?

 

That’s what happens in “It May Look Like a Walnut,” one of the most famous episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. 

 

 

Written by series creator Carl Reiner, it has been chosen by both Reiner and Van Dyke among their favorite shows, and was selected to TV Guide’s list of the 100 best situation comedy episodes. A newsletter published for series fans that lasted 20 years was titled “The Walnut Times,” another indication of that installment’s enduring fame.

 

Putting sitcom characters in scary situations was nothing new, but viewers were conditioned to expect only comical frights.  Episodes like “Monkee See, Monkee Do” (The Monkees) and “My Master, The Ghostbreaker” (I Dream of Jeannie) were no more frightening than the average Scooby Doo mystery.

 

The Dick Van Dyke Show offered another example of this trope with “The Ghost of A. Chantz,” in which Rob, Laura, Buddy and Sally spend the night in a remote rural cabin that is rumored to be haunted.

 

But “It May Look Like a Walnut” delivered something more potent. Whether by design or merely through the committed performances of a talented cast, they crafted an episode that kept its audience off-balance for most of its running time, before building to a crescendo that must have unsettled more than a few viewers in its day – especially younger ones.

 

I know this to be true because I was one of those viewers. I can’t say for sure how old I was when I first watched the episode in syndication on WGN TV in Chicago, but I still remember how disconcerting it was to my young psyche. As an adult I can applaud its cleverness and creativity – but when I was a kid its impact was so profound that I avoided watching it again for years.

 

The story opens in the Petrie bedroom, where Laura is cowering under the covers to avoid seeing and hearing the science fiction film her husband is watching. Rob is scared as well but can’t turn away as invaders from the planet Twilo replace human beings with pod-people replicants, and rob survivors of their imaginations and their thumbs. They do this to prevent mankind from developing more weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

Rob shows a surprising sadistic streak as he describes all the scary moments to Laura,  who was doing her best to avoid those details. So he’s not surprised the next morning when he finds walnuts strewn across the living room floor, as walnuts played a critical role in Twilo’s plan for world domination. He figures she is getting revenge for scaring her, and takes it in good humor.

 

But then Laura keeps going – to the point where Rob begins to wonder if she could really be so vindictive. He experiences the same odd behavior at the office from Buddy and Sally. Are they all working together to play an elaborate and cruel practical joke? Is he having a nightmare? Or is the Twilo invasion actually happening?

 

 

Panicked, he returns home and into the episode’s most famous scene – when Laura slides out of the hall closet on a mountain of walnuts. And from there Rob finds nowhere to turn as he is surrounded by those he once knew and loved, stalking toward him with expressions of maniacal malevolence, until at last, mercifully, he wakes up from his nightmare.

 

Even now, having watched this episode at least a dozen times over the past 40 years, I approach that climactic scene gingerly, as it revives memories of how it once creeped me out. That’s why the Halloween season seemed like the right time to pay tribute to what was, for me, the original unshakeable, because of how shook I was the first time I saw it.

 

Was I the only one? I hope not, cause that would be pretty embarrassing. 

 

 

The Unshakeables: The Bionic Woman Saves the World

 

A television show succeeds if it holds your attention for the time it’s on. But some episodes stay with you long after the credits roll. The emotions they generate do not dissipate for several minutes – sometimes several hours. And when you think about them months or even years later, you find the imprint they left on your mind remains as formidable as ever.

 

These are the “Unshakeables.”

 

A great twist ending is tough to pull off, but so satisfying when it works. The Twilight Zone was a master of these compelling climaxes, and over the years we’ve seen other memorable examples ranging from the last episode of St. Elsewhere to Bob Hartley waking up from his dream of being a Vermont innkeeper at the end of Newhart. 

 

When they work – and even when they don’t – they stick in our minds.

 

Not sure if I’ll be alone in this memory, but the ending of the two-part Bionic Woman episode “Doomsday is Tomorrow” made a profound impact on me when I watched it back in 1977. And it’s returned to my memory many times since, especially after the series was released on DVD. Even now, watching it again when I know what’s coming, the “reveal” has lost none of its potency. 

 

 

The story begins when eminent nuclear scientist Dr. Elijah Cooper (Lew Ayres), announces that he has created “the most diabolical instrument of destruction ever conceived by man,” a bomb that would “render the entire world lifeless.” The United Nations takes the threat seriously, though it can’t understand why a gentle, soft-spoken, elderly man would make such a terrifying revelation.

 

Turns out he did it because he’s fed up with all the war talk constantly emerging from different countries, so he hopes to blackmail the world into peace: his doomsday device will trigger only in the event of a nuclear detonation anywhere in the world. When one nation thinks he’s bluffing and explodes a nuke over the ocean, the countdown to the end of life on earth begins.

 

Jaime Sommers tries to talk Dr. Cooper out of his plan, bur he dies soon after and control of the bomb is turned over to ALEX 7000, a super-computer that controls the huge underground facility where the device is kept. Series creator Kenneth Johnson, who wrote, produced and directed this episode, clearly modeled ALEX after the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, right down to its mannerly but menacing voice. “So it’s a duel between you and me,” Jaime says. And that’s where part two begins.

 

The set-up is right out of a James Bond movie: Jaime must reach the lowest level of the facility, one mile below the surface, to deactivate the device, while ALEX launches floor after floor of lethal automated defenses to stop her.

 

Kenneth Johnson’s DVD commentary track on this episode reveals that the episode was mainly shot at the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant in Los Angeles. While that setting sounds like it would be more smelly than scary, Johnson creates a sinister mood through the use of lighting, and by shooting Lindsay Wagner from a distance as one woman surrounded by huge industrial equipment that can be programmed to attack her.

 

It’s a memorable and entertaining episode even before we get to the final twist. While her bionic enhancements give Jaime advantages that ALEX could not have anticipated, the computer’s defenses were designed to hold off an army. But as we learned from Lord of the Rings, sometimes a single determined individual can access places where a legion might fail.

 

The only misstep for me was making ALEX too chatty. Since most of part two is the confrontation between Jaime and the computer I understand Johnson’s desire to have more dialogue as the story plays out, but this was a case where less would have been more. As Mission: Impossible proved, long stretches of silence can heighten dramatic tension.

 

How does it end? It wouldn’t be a spoiler to reveal that all life on earth was not extinguished, especially as The Bionic Woman returned with a new adventure the following week. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Jaime was successful in her mission.

 

And now here’s my dilemma – to divulge that memorable twist ending, or to refrain from spoiling its surprise, even if this is a show that aired 43 years ago. In my previous “Unshakeables” pieces on episodes of Lou Grant and The Bold Ones: The Lawyers, I left my readers unspoiled – and I think that is the best course of action here as well. Perhaps that way you’ll appreciate the profundity of how the story ends as much as I did – and still do.

The Unshakeables: Lou Grant Confronts the “Unthinkable”

Halloween celebrated the fun part of being scared. But there are some fears that have no place in such a colorful, festive holiday.

Nuclear war is not a prevalent topic in the Comfort TV era for obvious reasons (“Will a nuclear winter finally give Jack a chance to cuddle up with Chrissy? Find out on tonight’s Three’s Company!”) But it did get a high-profile treatment in the 1983 TV movie The Day After. Back then the Emmy-winning film was considered such a landmark event that it was shown in American schools. 

Much of The Day After focused on what happens in the aftermath of an attack. It left an impression on me as it likely did on anyone who saw it. But there was an episode of Lou Grant that aired one year earlier that I found even more unsettling. Its title was “Unthinkable.”

The story opens with a school bus crash that puts one student into a hospital burn unit – just one of those typical, terrible things that happen almost every day in a major city like Los Angeles. But then the drama shifts from a small-scale tragedy to one that threatens the entire nation.

Lou Grant first figures something serious is happening when a congressman is suddenly called out of a lunch Lou attends with his publisher. He heads back to the newspaper to learn that the death of a king in a Persian Gulf country has left a power vacuum, and the U.S. and Russia are both trying to fill it, in part to secure the oil supply that flows from that nation.

“We’ll show a little muscle, is all,” Lou says. 

But subsequent events are more ominous: The President changes his travel plans. A Russian jet shoots down a U.S. plane. An oil tanker is fired on. Troops mass on the Middle Eastern nation’s border. California hospitals are put on alert.

The most frightening aspect of the story is how plausible each of these steps seems as the world moves closer to the brink of Armageddon. Everything that happens in “Unthinkable” has happened more than once in our real world.

And as unimaginable consequences gradually become more imaginable, the writers, editors and photographers at the Los Angeles Tribune do their jobs as the professionals they are, covering this potentially horrific story from every angle – medical, military, civil defense, even technology (with phone and computer lines vaporized, communication would be completely cut off). 

Grim numbers are collected – one bomb dropped on L.A. would immediately kill two million people; at any given moment, we are a half-hour away from annihilation.

In the midst of this, Animal interviews a man who has maintained a bomb shelter in his backyard for 30 years – which he now shows off with pride.

“You sound like you’re almost looking forward to it,” he says of the potential attack.

“Well,” the man replies, “it’s nice to see your investment pay off.”

And what about that scene with the student in the burn unit? It’s there so Billie can interview the girl’s doctor, who describes the awful effect of severe burns, which survivors of a nuclear attack would experience. From how they are described, many viewers will be with Animal when he says if the big one drops, he’d rather be standing right under it.

The show’s ending was not what I expected. Obviously they were not going to vaporize Los Angeles, since there were still a few episodes left in the season. But they also didn’t want to minimize the crisis with a “See, it was all for nothing” climax. Some may not find it satisfying how they resolved that impasse, but the episode’s message loses nothing from that decision.

Yes, you can sense Ed Asner’s politics informing the script. “Unthinkable” airs late in the series’ fifth and final season, and CBS probably would have picked it up for at least one more had the network not grown tired of his activism. 

But as someone who doesn’t share many of his views, I can still respect them when they are fairly and intelligently presented. Nothing that happens in the episode seems exaggerated or alarmist.

That’s one reason this tale stuck with me. The other reason is one I experience every time I return to this series: its poignant reminder of how journalism is supposed to work. The only thing more horrifying than contemplating the events described in “Unthinkable” is contemplating how they would be covered now by…well, feel free to insert your least favorite newspaper or cable news network here.  

The Unshakeables: “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar”

I’ve always believed that if you are an adult of at least average intelligence, a great work of art will speak to you. 

Wherever you’re from, however you were raised, and whichever demographic box you check on a census form, there is a universal truth in extraordinary creative expression that will be recognized, and will resonate. 

But there are exceptions. “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar,” an Emmy-winning 1971 episode of Night Gallery written by Rod Serling, cannot be fully appreciated by anyone under the age of, say, 45. You may understand what it’s about, and comprehend the emotions of its protagonist, but you won’t feel them in your soul until you reach the age where you can see the world through his eyes. 

Maybe that’s why I was so confused the first time I watched it, back when I was in my 30s. I was relatively new to Night Gallery then, but from the other episodes I’d watched I expected something scary, or at least unsettling. There are no monsters here, no haunted houses, no veteran TV actors and slumming film stars jumping at creaking floorboards. 

But now that I’m 55, I understand how frightening it is. It’s not an external fear – of something chasing you down a dark alley, but an internal one – of feeling out of step with the world, of being left behind, of the things that matter to you no longer mattering to anyone else. 

These are the emotions that haunt Randy Lane, who has spent the last 25 years selling plastics for the same company. He is played by William Windom, who is brilliant from the first moment Lane staggers back to his office, late, hair askew, testing the patience of his boss (John Randolph, who specialized in blowhards) but not Lynn, his loyal secretary (lovely Diane Baker, who turns up in the best episodes of many shows). 

Why was Randy late? Because he spent the last hour standing outside Tim Riley’s bar, which is about to be demolished and replaced by a 20-story bank building. He is consumed by melancholy over the loss of this special place, where he was welcomed back from his time in the military, and where he had the first date with his beloved wife, now long since passed.  And a year from now, he tells Lynn, no one will even remember that it was there. 

Drawn back to the site again after work, he peers inside and for a moment sees the party held in his honor all those years ago, back in full swing. But it disappears before he can go inside. Over the next few days he finds himself reliving other significant moments from his past – some happy, some hopeful, some tragic. 

Is he losing his mind? Having a nervous breakdown? Or, this being Night Gallery, are the ghosts and time-shifts really happening? 

Every scene in this 41-minute drama is beautifully written. There’s a moment outside the bar where Randy commiserates with the cop who has walked that beat for as long as the bar has been around, and also laments its loss. He remembers how, back in the day, he dreamed about being the hero who would capture Al Capone. “Now,” he says, “I walk a little slower and pray for a quiet night.” 

There are parallels here to my favorite Twilight Zone episode, “A Stop at Willoughby”, as well as “Patterns,” the acclaimed 1955 episode of Kraft Theater that first brought Rod Serling to critical and popular acclaim. All of them find something merciless and dehumanizing in executive suites. All of them feature workers under stress grasping for an escape, whether that’s into a simpler, happier time, or into a bottle of booze. All of them give us sympathetic characters who desperately wish to hold on to the past, believing it’s better than the present. 

Obviously, that’s a theme that hits very close to home with this blog. 

Surprisingly, however, “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” is the only one of these three stories to end on a hopeful note. One might expect the opposite had Serling become more cynical with age (as so many of us do). But here, 16 years after the grim final act of “Patterns,” Randy Lane is granted a moment of appreciation that, we hope, will help him cope with the loss of Tim Riley’s bar, and lighten his ennui. 

I’ll leave it to you to judge whether that final scene works. I’ve had discussions with fans on both sides of the divide – and to be honest I’ve been on both sides myself. As of my last viewing, I’m good with it. And I wonder if Serling, then about the same age as Randy Lane, found an empathy with his beleaguered protagonist that wasn’t accessible when he wrote “Patterns” while still in his 30s. I’m glad he threw a lifeline to a fellow traveler, at a moment when the journey no longer seemed worth the heartache. 

Sadly, Serling’s journey would last just four more years – he died in 1975 at the age of 50. 

“They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” is one of those little masterpieces that I wish more people knew about. And it’s probably the only reason I’m holding on to my Night Gallery DVDs. I hope shows like this will one day be discovered by millennials, amidst the 300 new shows TV cranks out each year (and that’s probably just Netflix). Maybe by the time they find it, they will be old enough to appreciate what it has to say. 

The Unshakeables: The Monkees on Tour

I’m sure the passing of Peter Tork sent many of us back to our Monkees CDs and DVDs and playlists. They remind us of happier, more innocent times, and ease the realization that 50 years have passed, and the icons of our childhoods are approaching their final bows, at least here in this imperfect world. 

Those who own the series or are catching up via Me-TV will likely begin their homage with “The Devil and Peter Tork.” It’s arguably the best of the show’s 58 episodes, which is surprising as it aired in the second and final season, when the group had already become indifferent to the series (something that, thankfully, never happened with the music).

But for me the most memorable episode was “The Monkees on Tour,” which closed out the first season on April 24, 1967. 

When Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider created the show, they never could have imagined a season one finale like this. But things happened fast in Monkee-land, as the series about a fictional band evolved in just months into a series featuring one of the most successful pop groups of the 1960s.  

By April of 1967, the Monkees had scored two #1 hits and two multi-million selling albums. Like Pinocchio after a visit from the Blue Fairy, they found themselves unexpectedly transformed from something fake into something real.

“The Monkees on Tour” chronicled the culmination of that realization. It’s an unscripted documentary that follows the group as they land in Phoenix for a live concert before more than 10,000 fans. 

Here, for the first time, the television audience is not seeing the Monkees as characters – dry-witted Mike, love-struck Davy, manic Micky and lovably dense Peter – but four talented singers and musicians with their own outside interests and personalities.

After an intro segment filmed in Samantha and Darrin Stephens’ living room, we cut to an airport in Phoenix, where the band arrives by Lear jet, separated by a chain-link fence from throngs of screaming fans. 

What follows is an oddly compelling mix of schtick, sentiment and Cinéma vérité, as cameras follow the quartet through room service breakfasts, horseback rides and dirt bike jumps, shenanigans at department stores and radio stations, and finally backstage for the concert. 

As this is the only footage that exists of the first Monkees concert tour, my only regret about this episode is that we don’t see more of it. Granted, the snippets we get of “Last Train to Clarksville” and “Steppin’ Stone” are almost inaudible over the cacophony of audience shrieking. But it still would have been a treat (as well as a rejoinder to those who claimed the band couldn’t play) to show at least one song performed from start to finish. 

More interesting is the clips of each Monkee’s solo performance: Peter plays banjo and sings “Cripple Creek”; Mike plays maracas (!) and sings Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover”; Micky sings Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman” while imitating James Brown, complete with cape routine; Davy is the only one who actually performs a Monkees song (“I Wanna Be Free”). 

The audience loved everything, of course. They could have read excerpts from Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and teen girls would still swoon. But the fact that they were allowed to do what they wanted in those solo spots is what makes them interesting. Here was a moment in Monkee history when these four guys went from being along for the ride to deciding they’d rather drive the car.  

I’m not the only one who thought this episode was noteworthy. On the DVD release there are three separate commentary tracks for “The Monkees on Tour” from Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith and songwriter Bobby Hart.

“This is the only show where we weren’t pretending to be four starving, struggling musicians, but actually were a performing band,” Tork says. “It was our ability to play on stage that led us to think we could play on the records, which led to the recording of ‘Headquarters.’”

The episode closes with a reprise of the group at a Phoenix radio station, where Mike tells listeners “We'd like to thank everybody, for making it a great stay. We'd like to thank The Rolling Stones for being a great group. We'd like to thank The Mamas and Papas for making it good. We'd like to thank Lovin' Spoonful for making it happy, but most of all we'd like to thank the Beatles for starting it all up for us.”

Fifty years later, Monkees fans would like to also thank The Monkees, for adding so many songs to the soundtracks of our lives.