Episodes

Rerun Junkie Episode–“The Christmas Story”

/ Kiki Writes / 2 Comments

I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas (though I do love a holiday with a theme), but I do have my favorite Christmas episodes of shows, which I’ve listed before. On that list is the Season 2 episode of Dragnet called “The Christmas Story”.

The plot is pretty simple. Friday and Gannon are working right before Christmas when they get a call about a theft at a church. The baby Jesus (Friday keeps calling the child Jesus and for some reason that makes my eye twitch) has been stolen from the nativity scene. The nativity scene was bought by the parishioners years ago and the baby Jesus doesn’t have much in the way of monetary value, but it’s important to the congregation. For some who’ve been coming to that church since they were children, this is the only Jesus they’ve ever known. And for some children who’ve passed away, this was the only Jesus they ever knew.

Do I instantly tear up at that line? Yes. Yes, I do. My Grinchy heart isn’t entirely made of stone. But the takeaway from this is that it’s really important to have that statue back for Christmas mass.

If you’re at all familiar with Dragnet, then you know how serious business and methodical Friday and Gannon are when it comes to investigating a crime. Even though they’re just looking for a baby Jesus statue, the men, knowing how important it is to the church, take the investigation very seriously.

They start by questioning the altar boys and checking in with religious art shops to see if the statue might have been sold. This is Dragnet, so the shop owner we see them converse with is an absolute trip. One altar boy saw nothing, but the other altar boy, who’s played by a pre-Brady Bunch Barry Williams, saw a man leaving the church with a bundle that could have contained the baby Jesus.

They follow this lead to where the man works as the altar boy didn’t know his name, and this leads them to a name and an address at men’s hotel. The man they’re looking for, Claude –played by Jack Webb regular Bobby Troup- is out, but the front desk man expects him back since they can’t do their annual Christmas show without him.

While they wait for the call from the front desk man that Claude has returned, Friday and Gannon continue to check pawn shops in the hopes of finding the baby Jesus.

The Bah Humbug of this episode comes in the form of their captain. Friday and Gannon have been waiting to hear about a suspect in another case and when he’s pinched, the captain orders Friday and Gannon to run up and fetch him, which will take several hours. They plead their case –or rather Father Rojas’s case- about the missing baby Jesus, but the captain feels that’s something the Foothills Division can do. Friday then whips out a manipulation Uno reverse by asking the captain to call Father Rojas and explain to him that they won’t be able to look for the baby Jesus statue until after Christmas. The captain wisely relents rather than risk the disappointment of a priest.

Friday and Gannon finally get their opportunity to interrogate Claude in sort of a sad scene. Claude thinks they’re questioning him about a car he was allowed to borrow, but this time he didn’t ask first. When questioned about the bundle he was taking out of the church, he explains that it was his other pair of pants that he had fixed for the Christmas show at the men’s hotel. It’s established early on that Claude has a rap sheet, but it’s made pretty clear that this guy has given up his criminal ways (minus taking a car without explicit permission) and has fallen into what Friday and Gannon might consider a pathetic life, though there’s something sweet about how much the Christmas show means to him and the other men at the hotel.

Out of leads, out of luck, and out of time, Friday and Gannon have no choice but to go to Father Rojas and say they won’t be able to get the baby Jesus back in time for Christmas mass. Father Rojas is understanding, but disappointed.

But since this is a Christmas episode, it’s only right to have a miracle. Or in this case, a Paco.

As the men are standing there feeling sad about the lack of baby Jesus in the manager, a little boy by the name of Paco comes up the aisle pulling the missing statue in his red wagon. It seems that Paco has been asking for a red wagon from Santa for years, but this year he prayed to the baby Jesus for one and promised that if he got a red wagon, baby Jesus would get the first ride. Thanks to the local fireman who collect and refurbish old toys, Paco got his red wagon and kept his promise.

christmas story paco

Do I cry at this ending scene every time I watch it? Yes, I do. Did I tear up while writing about it? I absolutely did.

As someone who isn’t religious, this Christmas episode about a missing statue of baby Jesus might be considered an odd choice as a favorite for me. I do tend to avoid the overly religious aspect of the holiday season as Christianity has effectively alienated me, particularly in recent years. But this one is just too good for me to dislike. It’s a wonderfully weird melding on the “just the facts, ma’am” Dragnet episode and a sweet story about a little boy getting his Christmas wish and keeping his promise.

This episode carries the innocent spirit of the holiday season, stripped of tinsel and preachiness. The baby Jesus at the heart of the story is so much more than some religious symbol. The sentimental value attached to it is so much deeper not because of the religion, but because of the community surrounding it. And it’s a member of that community that ends up honoring his faith in such a sweet and unique way.

Merry Christmas, Paco.

Rerun Junkie Episodes–“Out of Time”

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There’s a genre of TV show episode that I like to think of as “How the Band Got Together”. It’s basically a flashback episode (not a clip show) showing how characters that we’ve always seen to have known each other first met. A great example of this is the first season finale of The Golden Girls. It literally shows how Blanch, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia all came to live together.

The eighth season premier of CSI: Miami, “Out of Time”, is one of these episodes, but it does a lot more and I love it.

Season 7 ends with Delko helping his Russian mob connected father escape from a shootout and in the process gets shot at by Calleigh (which put a damper on their relationship). Delko ends up wrecking the car and goes wading off in a marsh, leaving his unconscious father inside, and Horatio and the team searching for him.

Season 8 opens with them finding an unconscious Delko on a road by the marsh. The bullet shrapnel left in his head from being shot in Season 5 has shifted and put his life in danger. As Delko fights for his life, we see how the band got together back in 1997.

We see the lab before it was The Lab, before CSI was actually a thing. It was literally a broom closet. We meet Detective Horatio Caine without his trademark sunglasses and his partner Detective Sullivan. We meet the fresh-faced, enthusiastic lateral transfer Calleigh Duquense. We meet Jesse Cardoza on his last day as he’s transferring to L.A. We meet Officer Frank Tripp in uniform and sporting an amazing mustache. We meet Dr. Alexx Woods working in a much less nifty basement morgue. We meet Eric Delko…who’s not in law enforcement. He’s driving a tow truck and recovering items he finds that people have ditched. When he goes to pull an old stove out of the marsh -yes, the same marsh where Horatio found him unconscious at the beginning of the episode- he finds a submerged car. He tows it out, sees bloody water pouring out of the trunk, and calls it in. From the way Delko greets Sully and Horatio, and teases Horatio about not having sunglasses with Horatio coming right back by saying he’s supposed to find some for him, it’s clear that they’re not strangers. But at the same time, this case will be the first time Horatio and Calleigh meet.

The case of the murdered woman found in the trunk illustrates how far the team and CSI and forensics as a whole has come as we go between the past and the present of Delko fighting for his life and the rest of the team keeping watch. While old school Sully prefers the obvious suspect -the husband- Horatio, Jesse, and Calleigh follow the evidence to the killer -the gardener. With Delko’s help. At the conclusion of the case, Jesse leaves for L.A., recommending a guy by the name of Tim Speedle who’s working in St. Petersburg for Horatio’s newly established CSI department. Horatio, recognizing talent when he sees it, also encourages Delko to become a police officer and then come find him.

We’re also gifted with the beginnings of Horatio’s style as he ditches his tie and accepts a pair of sunglasses that Delko recovered during one of his salvages. They are THE sunglasses famed in gif and meme and they’re made even more special knowing that they came from Delko. And Delko’s life becomes even more precious knowing that it was Horatio who got him started in law enforcement.

Because this episode does more than just show how the band got together. It’s always been clear that Horatio has a special relationship with his team, but here it’s established just how special his relationship with Eric is. One of the few present day scenes is Horatio talking to a comatose Eric after brain surgery, begging him to stick around and fight because he can’t lose him after losing Marisol, Ray, and Speed. It’s an unexpectedly tender scene that I love and makes the final scene of Delko waking up surrounded by the entire team even sweeter.

The episode also establishes the groundwork for the season despite spending most of the time in the past.

Delko’s injury paves the way for him to take a leave of absence from the team as post-surgery he feels less enthusiastic about the job. Obviously, he doesn’t stay away, but it was a convenient storyline for Adam Rodriguez to step away from the show for most of the season. At the same time, it introduces us to Jesse Cardoza as his character is first leaving for L.A. in the past and returns in the present of the next episode with Eddie Cibrian joining the cast for the season. And Sully, who could have been a one-off past character, ends up being a familiar face who returns a few times later in the season.

Now does the ep have its faults and fudge the facts and timeline some? Yeah. Whatever de-aging they did to David Caruso makes him look like he escaped Whoville part of the time (I said what I said). I also feel they could have gone more late ’90s with everyone’s wardrobe, particularly Calleigh’s, but that’s neither here nor there.

It’s said that Horatio is going to head up the newly established CSI at the end of the 1997 portion of the episode, but as the first episode established, Megan Donner was actually in charge until she took a leave of absence due to her husband’s death and Horatio ended up with that job (Horatio does mention her in this episode, though, saying she’s out in the field and that’s why he needs Jesse’s help on the case). There’s also the insinuation that Horatio went right from the bomb squad to CSI, but during the course of the series, he also spent some time being a detective in NYC, but was working Miami at least in 1987. He has a very interesting career history.

Also, the 1997 start date is questionable. Horatio and Megan both worked the ValuJet crash of ’96 and it’s insinuated that CSI was a thing then. Also, Delko mentions playing baseball for the Miami Hurricanes for a couple of seasons (consistent with something said in a first season episode), but if you go by the birth year on older sister Marisol’s headstone, 1978, then Delko is at most 18 in ’97. So, either he graduated high school early, or I’m paying more attention than I’m supposed to.

I’m also not fond of them putting Natalia in the flashback. They could have just kept her in the present like Ryan and it would have be fine. But I recognize that this complaint is a me-thing, not an actual issue.

But obviously, none of this detracts from my enjoyment of the episode or how well it was done. Seeing the team come together and the birth of the Horatio that we know is terrific. Getting to see Calleigh at her most bubbly, which by this point in the show had decreased in the face of her lived experience, is so wonderful. Also the hilarious wink wink nudge nudge when she says that she’d never even think of socializing with anyone remotely connected with her work when the three men we actually see her in romantic relationships with -Hagen, Berkeley, and Delko- are her coworkers. And that instead of this episode being a stand alone emotional gut punch, it actually puts in place multiple pieces for the season is clever and well-done.

Also the fact that they used Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” to establish the 1997 vibe is nothing short of magical.

horatio new 1997

Rerun Junkie Episodes–“The Duke of Squigman”

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In case it escaped your attention, I guested on an episode of Night After Night to talk about this episode as Squiggy is my favorite. During our discussion of the episode, I said I could write a blog post about the tag scene.

This is that blog post.

Because I feel that the tag scene of this episode is a perfect example of how reruns should be viewed in two different contexts.

If you haven’t seen “The Duke of Squigman” and/or listened to me, Lisa, and Chris discuss it (why the hell not? you’re missing out on some good shit), the quick synopsis of the episode is that Squiggy has been sleepwalking and when he does, he adopts the persona of -you guessed it- the Duke of Squigman. It turns out the reason that Squiggy is sleepwalking is because he can’t accept the fact that some people just don’t like him.

I know. I find that hard to believe as well.

The episode does a fabulous job of balancing the funny, the sweet, the absurd, and the emotional.

And then there’s the tag scene.

After the emotional conversation between Lenny and Squiggy about the psychological motivation of Squiggy’s sleepwalking, the boys are at the Pizza Bowl and Squiggy is attempting to hit on a woman sitting at a table. Naturally, she rejects him. Squiggy consults with Lenny about whether or not his feelings are hurt by this and Lenny affirms that they are. Squiggy acknowledges this and decides that he doesn’t care. He then proceeds to kiss the woman right on the mouth.

It should go without saying that this has aged poorly.

In the time this show was set (late ’50/early ’60s) and the time it was filmed (mid-late ’70s/early ’80s), this type of mild sexual assault was normalized and typically played for laughs. Of course it was. We don’t want to think of our favorites as sex pests.

Watching this scene in the context of the now, it’s not the laugh that it’s supposed to be. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t necessarily spoil the episode, but it definitely ends it on a sour note. As a woman, if a dude I had rejected forced a kiss on me, it wouldn’t be funny. It’d be a felony. ‘Cause I’d be going to jail. Living in a society in which there is a constant struggle in regards to the entitlement men believe to have to women’s bodies, in which violations of these boundaries are categorized and graded and the acceptable responses to them dictated by a certain script that ultimately makes them easier to dismiss, it’s kind of difficult to find the humor in the joke.

However.

In the context of the narrative, it makes complete sense.

Squiggy has confronted the issue that makes him sleepwalk. When presented with his next rejection, he checks in with Lenny, acknowledges that his feelings are hurt, and then soldiers on. That’s growth. Not a lot of growth, but it’s the growth that you’d expect to get from a character like Squiggy. At least he’s acknowledged that the woman has rejected him and that, yes, his feelings are hurt. But he ultimately decides that he doesn’t care. Now whether or not this is another form of denial is another story. But for Squiggy, just acknowledging it is progress.

Could this be accomplished without the forced kiss? Sure. No doubt that Squiggy could have showed his little bit of growth before insinuating himself into this woman’s space without forcing affections, and probably could have been done in such a way that would have garnered the same volume of laughs, with the added benefit of retaining much of those laughs in future viewings.

However, in the context of when the show was set and when it was written, it makes perfect sense that this would be the gag used to convey Squiggy’s limited growth, especially given the established behavior of the character being just a little bit slimy with the opposite sex sometimes.

In viewing the episode in these two contexts, I’m able to both acknowledge the problematic content without condemning the entire episode. I’m not absolving it of its offenses, but I am putting those offenses into proper perspective.

This approach allows me to have a more enjoyable viewing experience.

Rerun Junkie Episodes–“To Kill or Be Killed”

/ Kiki Writes / 2 Comments

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Season 3 Hawaii Five-O episode discussed in Episode 34 of Book ’em, Danno. Do not read this post if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to be spoiled for a fifty year old show.

Trigger Warning: This post also contains mentions of suicide, so please take care of yourself accordingly.

In the third season Hawaii Five-O episode “To Kill or Be Killed”, the death of a soldier just returned from Vietnam sparks a search for his draft-dodging brother in an attempt to find out the truth about the soldier’s death. It seems draft-dodger Michael had gone to talk to his brother Jack just before Jack either jumped or was pushed from his apartment balcony.

According to their General father, Jack was the perfect son who’d sacrificed friends and his girl to enlist in the military and serve is country. Meanwhile, in the initial interview with McGarrett, he doesn’t even mention Michael, something Steve asks him about later. Though the General says he didn’t think it was relevant even though he knew Michael had gone to see Jack just before he died, it’s pretty clear by his demeanor in his son’s anti-war pad that’s he’s not exactly proud of the kid.

In Five-O’s efforts to solve the mystery of Jack’s death, they discover that someone had Jack under surveillance. Turns out that it was the army. The General pulls ranks to hear the tapes they made, but even he is stonewalled. The officer in charge can only assure him that Michael didn’t kill Jack. It’s a heartbreaking scene, watching the General as he begs to hear the surveillance tape so he can finally know what happened to his son.

The final scene in the office with everyone listening to the tapes is devastating. And the very end…infuriating.

We knew that Michael was going to talk to his brother about being drafted. He was struggling with it and needed advice. The tape revealed that he found Jack in his apartment about to kill himself with a gun. They struggled for it and after Michael got it away from him, Jack explained that he was involved in a terrible incident in Vietnam in which his squad wiped out a bunch of innocent villagers (hence the army surveillance once he got back). Jack was overcome with guilt about it. Michael thought he’d talked him out of suicide, but after Michael left, Jack jumped from the balcony.

The war destroyed him.

And what is General Dad’s reaction to hearing the tape?

He tells Michael that an incident like what Jack was involved in was a rare mistake and that he should still serve his country like his brother. But Michael chooses to go to jail instead and General Dad declares he’s lost both of his sons.

Yes. He disowns his son for not serving after his other son died as a direct result of his service.

I very nearly broke my no-spoilers-without-Dan rule on the podcast because I so wanted to discuss the final scene. The ending of this episode makes me viscerally angry. You’re not a real fan of the General because he lauds one son over the other, but his heartbreak is so genuine that you can’t help but feel for him. And you think he just might have a change of heart after what he’s heard on that tape.

But no.

I think what pisses me off the most is that it’s such a believable reaction. The denial of a man who has dedicated his life to the military being confronted with the brutal reality of how his blind service contributed to the death of his son. He can’t accept it. He can’t accept that he has in anyway participated in a bad thing, that war is not the glorious, brave mission to keep the world safe like he’s been told and like he’s told his sons. War is brutal and ugly and destructive and takes more peace than it gives. Vietnam in particular stripped away all of the spit shine that made war look like a valiant act.

The General can’t handle any of that.

He’d rather have a dead son.

It’s a crushing final blow to Michael who ends up losing his whole family to not only do what he feels is right, but to also avoid the same fate as his brother.

Not every episode is guaranteed to have a happy ending, but when it comes to those unhappy endings, this one is certainly one of the most effective.

Police Involved Shooting

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In the world of cop shows, there are two kinds of very special episodes: a cop gets shot or a cop shoots somebody.

This post is about the latter.

Here’s how the episode usually goes: One of our cop heroes shoots somebody. There is then an investigation into the shooting in which there’s an underlying implication that this investigation isn’t fair because our good guys always have good shoots. There’s some drama. Then our shooter is once again declared a cop hero.

Obviously, there are variations and not every episode follows this format, but that’s basically it for many of the episodes I’ve seen.

The police involved shooting episodes of Dragnet and Adam-12 are probably the most technical I’ve ever seen due to Jack Webb’s dedication to the manual. While we do have that little bit of angst that comes from our hero being questioned, there’s still an objectivity about it. This is how the process is supposed to work. Jack Webb very much so believed that police officers were meant to be held to a higher standard which is why these episodes stand out. This treatment of our good guys isn’t exceptional -it’s routine.

Despite Jack Webb’s good intentions, this sort of intense scrutiny is an idealization of what we’d like to believe happens during these investigations, but we know doesn’t.

I pointed this out when I was covering the Hawaii Five-O first season episode “And They Painted Daisies on His Coffin” on Book ‘em, Danno that the investigation into Danny shooting the supposedly unarmed young man and him subsequently getting arrested for murder was idealized. It’s only in the most extreme circumstances that a police officer is arrested for this kind of shooting today. You can’t tell me that it happened more often when there wasn’t the prevalence of video.

A first season episode of Starsky and Hutch called “Pariah” dealt a little with the public fallout of a police involved shooting. Starsky ends up shooting an armed robber who turns out to be only sixteen. The kid’s mom is devastated and Starsky feels incredibly guilty over the death. The public isn’t exactly thrilled with the circumstances, particularly one guy with an agenda who says if Starsky is cleared, he’ll start killing cops. Starsky is cleared of any wrongdoing because of course and the killing spree begins and will continue until Starsky resigns. So this is an example of taking our very special episode and upping the ante by adding in public scorn and then throwing in a vendetta for good measure.

The police involved shooting episodes are always very special episodes because they’re the only episodes in which the violence our heroes inflict on the criminals is ever questioned. In any other episode, they’re offing the bad guys without even the slightest mention of the paperwork. Every other shooting is completely justified, no question.

One exception to this rule (at least that I know of because I haven’t seen every cop show–yet) is Barney Miller. Possibly because it’s a comedy that primarily deals with the mundane and oddball aspects of police work, the show had a unique take on the police involved shooting.

For one, perps weren’t getting shot every week. The members of the 12th precinct got shot at more than they shot and even those instances ended up funny and mild. So, they didn’t need a very special episode about a police involved shooting to separate it from all of the other police involved shootings that were never questioned.

Because in the entire run of the show, there were only three episodes in which a member of the 12th shot someone. In the first season “Hero”, Chano infiltrates a hostage situation in a bank and ends up killing the two would-be robbers. It’s quickly apparent that Chano isn’t handling it well at all despite the incident being considered a good shoot. By the end of the episode, he breaks down into sobs in his apartment.

Dietrich has a similar reaction to his shooting in the seventh season episode “Resignation”. After shooting a suspect in the backside, Dietrich decides that this part of the job goes against his morals and attempts to submit his resignation. Though Barney susses out the real root of Dietrich’s angst, which goes a little sideways from just his morals, it still illustrates the negative effect of a shooting on the firing officer.

In the eighth season episode “Inquiry”, Wojo faces an investigation after shooting a suspect, winging him in the arm. In this episode, there’s doubt that Wojo was justified in the shooting, particularly with his history of being rough with suspects. We’re also introduced to the then-current requirements for the investigation: Wojo is suspended, put on desk duty, has his sidearm confiscated, and advised of his rights before he’s questioned. What’s startling is that during the questioning, a clearly frustrated Wojo admits that he was trying to kill the suspect. Which is what the police are trained to do. Center mass. Shoot to kill.

Everything turns out in Wojo’s favor, of course, but he’s still rattled and to be honest, so are we. Our Wojo can be rough, but a killer? It’s hard to believe. It’s harder to acknowledge that our good guys were trained that way.

Which is probably why the police involved shooting episodes of Barney Miller are so much more impactful than the very special episodes from other cop shows. They aren’t shooting it out every episode. There’s barely any shooting during an entire season.

Which is more true to life than you might think.

But this is fiction.

And in fiction, tension comes from putting our heroes under the gun.

So to speak.

Have Yourself a Jeanette Nolan Christmas

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I think I’ve made it pretty clear that Jeanette Nolan is one of my favorites, so it should be no surprise that I could find a way to elevate your holiday TV viewing with her presence.

Here are two Christmas-themed episodes of television shows featuring this holly jolly lady.

Okay, maybe she’s not so holly jolly in “PS Murry Christmas”, a Season 17 episode of Gunsmoke. In between appearances as Dirty Sally (and three years before her spin-off series of the same name), Jeanette played Emma Grundy, strict headmistress of a group of orphans that included Erin Moran, Jodie Foster, Willie Aames, and Todd Lookinland (Mike “Bobby Brady” Lookinland’s brother). In her employ is a handyman by the name of Titus Spangler, played by Jack Elam. That casting right there guarantees a hit.

When Titus, who is Jack Elam and therefore anything but subtle, embarrasses Emma in front of the orphanage’s benefactors during their annual Christmas visit, she fires him. The children, orphaned and impoverished, decide that going on the lam with Titus is a much better life and they convince him to take them along. Naturally, they all end up in Dodge City with Emma following. The plight of the children comes to light when Titus is arrested and Miss Kitty attempts to give the children a decent holiday with a party at the Longbranch Saloon, a gesture Emma refuses. It seems like she’s a straight up Scrooge, but there’s something a little more to Miss Emma than meets the eye.

It’s a sweet episode. You’ve got cute kids, the meaning of Christmas, and Jack Elam being Jack Elam. And at the heart you have Jeanette Nolan playing this very uptight character that goes beyond the stereotype of a heartless orphan-minder.

Jeanette isn’t who she seems to be in the MacGyver Season 5 episode “The Madonna” either. MacGyver takes a break from saving the world to try to bring a little holiday joy to some kids at an underfunded youth center. Sadly, the place is in danger of closing due to those lack of funds and kids like Katherine Isabelle (of Ginger Snaps fame) and Alessandro Julio (who went on to play Lt. Felix Gaeta on the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series) won’t have a place to go. And it’s tough out there on them streets! As we witness a couple of young punks roughing up an old homeless lady who appeared not long after a Madonna statue went missing from a local church. Nothing suspicious about that.

Turns out that everyone BUT Carol the homeless lady is short on Christmas spirit. MacGyver has a case of the holiday blues. The youth center needs $9,000 to stay open. Cynthia (Roxanne Reese), who runs the center, is at the end of her rope. Breeze (Charles Andrew Payne) has no love for the holiday he’s never had. The man who carved the Madonna, Vincent Battaglia (Anthony Holland), is all over sour. And Father Pat (Jackson Davies) isn’t too hopeful about the missing Madonna being returned before Christmas morning. Hell, even the Santa ringing a bell for money is down on his luck.

MacGyver works to both find the missing Madonna for his friend Father Pat and help the young people work to put on their Christmas show to get funds for the youth center, where Carol is now staying. And she helps out in her own special way.

It’s also a sweet episode with cute kids and Pete dressed as Santa and it ends just like you think it will (happy endings all around), but that doesn’t lessen the enjoyment. And Jeanette Nolan shines as the fount of Christmas Spirit. I mean, she takes a broom to a drunken Santa Claus and hustles 8 ball. Can’t get more spirited than that.

So, deck your halls, jingle your bells, trim your tree, and have yourself a Very Merry Jeanette Nolan Christmas.

Rerun Junkie Episodes–“The Peace Pipe”

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If you’ve never watched Emergency!, you should. It’s a fun show with a lot of daring rescues and medical drama. It also features a frenemy relationship between paramedic John Gage and firefighter Chet Kelly. These two know how to get on each other’s nerves and many times take delight in doing so, usually with Chet acting as the thorn in Johnny’s side.

In the season 2 episode “Peace Pipe”, Chet spends the episode aggravating Johnny about his Native American heritage.

While you could easily dismiss this episode as Chet just being annoyingly racist (in fact, John does call him a bigot at one point), what you cannot dismiss is that Johnny effectively destroys all of Chet’s stereotypes, something that really hadn’t been done much at the time.

When this episode aired in October of 1972, Gunsmoke was in its 18th season and Bonanza in its 14th and final season, two popular Westerns that had spent decades depicting Native Americans as either noble savages or just plain savages, but either way, something less than white men and their much more progressive ways. At the same time, Hec Ramsey was just beginning its Sunday Night Mystery Movie rotation run. The show centers on a lawman at the turn of the 20th century using the latest techniques to solve crimes. Innovative, but the depiction of Native Americans was largely the same as it had been. Emergency! directly ran against another Western at the time the episode aired, Alias Smith and Jones. So, the TV viewing audience knew well the depiction of Native Americans in Westerns back in the olden days, but their exposure to contemporary Native Americans was limited.

Enter Johnny Gage. Not only was the character Native American (as is the actor Randolph Mantooth), but he was a Native American in the now. He wasn’t living on the reservation, but he’d grown up there. He wasn’t some noble savage, but he had a deep respect and honor for his heritage and traditions. For the most part, his life didn’t differ that much from your average, everyday white guy. Instead of being some distant “other” locked into a specific long-ago time, he was an actual person existing in the present.

The whole back and forth between Johnny and Chet starts with Chet going on about the historical significance of a Western they’d just watched. According to Johnny, however, the whole film is nothing but propaganda to make white guys feel more comfortable and ignores that they were land-grabbing treaty-breakers. Chet does us all the disservice of warning Johnny that his “hot Indian blood is beginning to boil” before letting Johnny know that he’s got some Native blood, too. When Johnny correctly guesses that it was a Cherokee princess on his mother’s side, he tells Chet that they call it White Man Royalty Syndrome.

Later Chet asks Johnny why he left the reservation since according to the anthropologist he’s reading, it’s suppose to be “against his cultural instincts to leave the tribal environment.” Johnny then enlightens Chet on the nature of anthropologists. When he was growing up, they’d come to the reservation to observe them in order to prove whatever their latest theories were, get federal grants to write their books, and then do it all again the next year. Chet, of course, defends the scientists, in particular the one he’s reading. As it turns out, Johnny knows him. He spent ten years and five and a half million dollars studying how to eliminate a tribe’s poverty problems, pointing out that if a small portion of that money had been given to that tribe, they wouldn’t have the poverty problem to begin with.

Chet decides to apologize for joking around about Johnny’s Native heritage and swears no more jokes about it, which Roy protests because he likes a good joke. As John and Roy argue about Johnny’s perceived sensitivity, Chet again wants to apologize, this time for putting friend against friend. He then produces a peace pipe and says they should smoke. This time Johnny tells him it’s not funny and walks away.

In a final act, Chet apologizes for making a joke about the peace pipe, while holding a fire ax adorned with a feather. He then proposes a treaty, which Johnny scoffs at. This last bit is interrupted by an emergency (because that is the name of the show) in which the firefighters and paramedics have to retrieve an injured and unconscious man from a bit of scaffolding as a sniper shoots at them. Johnny gets the idea to use a tarp to help conceal them as they rescue the man. Back at the firehouse, he explains to Chet that it was Native instinct because everyone knows how much they love blankets, effectively ending the prodding from Chet because it’s only fun if Johnny isn’t in on the joke.

The real joke, though, is how even today the history of indigenous people is still white washed and their lives stereotyped. But at least for an episode in 1972, some harsh light was thrown on it.

***

Sadly, Tim Donnelly died suddenly September 17th. A Jack Webb show frequent flyer, he turned up on Dragnet and Adam-12 several times, including two memorable stints on Dragnet, one of which saw him don a super hero costume and another featured him as the pot-smoking father of a child who later dies of neglect and scarred me for life as a kid. He also often turned up in things directed by his brother Dennis, including the film The Toolbox Murders. And he was pitch perfect as the sometimes annoying, sometimes obsessive Chet Kelly.

Station 51 won’t be the same without him.

May he have safe travels beyond the horizon.

Rerun Junkie Episodes–Lysistrata, The Patriarchy, and Gilligan’s Island

/ Kiki Writes / 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my post about educational television, I learned about Lysistrata thanks to Gilligan’s Island.

In a first season episode titled “St. Gilligan and the Dragon”, Mrs. Howell invokes Lysistrata to kick off a battle of the sexes. While the play had the women refuse the men sex, a 1960s sitcom couldn’t get away with that sort of raciness (it could barely handle women’s navels) and instead had the women refuse to do anything for the men.

The women move to a different part of the island and predictably, the men can’t hack it doing women’s work while the women get along just fine. Do the men realize the error of their ways and go to the women to apologize? Of course not. Instead, they come up with a plan to scare the women into needing their help through a dragon-type monster they some how made from paper mâché. The women stumble onto their plan and meet the monster with force (led by Mrs. Howell, who remarks with a joyful viciousness, “We’ll kill it and send its head back to the men!”).

In the end, the women are scared back to the men due to a downed weather balloon that’s billowing in the jungle like some weird, large lady bug looking caterpillar whatsit. Gilligan “kills” it, and kills a chance for rescue. Because after all, Gilligan ruining their chances to ever return to civilization is the theme of the show.

As a kid watching it, I was like, “Wow, these guys are dumb. The girls shouldn’t be scared!”

As an adult watching it I’m like, “Wow, these guys are dumb. The girls shouldn’t be scared!”

Yes, the words are the same, but the tone is different. When I was a kid, I thought it was funny. Run-of-the-mill sitcom tomfoolery. Today, it’s still funny, but in the “oh sweet Mary, this shit is ridiculous” kind of way.

In true sitcom fashion, the men absolutely go to pieces without the women. The implication is, of course, that they’d never had to lower themselves to learn “women’s work”, which is a little baffling considering that Skipper, Gilligan, and the Professor are bachelors. How the hell did any of them survive? I suppose the answer is barely because attempting to do it in the face of some adversity is a complete disaster. Mary Ann can make a coconut cream pie, but these men can’t cook a fish without turning it to ash.

And then there’s an extended fantasy sequence in which they all imagine the women doting on them and needing them.

I’ve come to view this episode as a glorious illustration of the patriarchy. The men believe they deserve to be worshiped simply for being men, but in reality, they would have starved to death without the women. The men are incapable of taking care of their own basic needs because it’s somehow considered unmanly to do so. They’re entitled to be catered to by the women because of reasons. Meanwhile, a woman’s request is framed as nagging. They’re unreasonable and emotional and they can’t survive without the men to protect and provide for them, except that they pretty much do. In fact, in the day to day, the women are the ones keeping this clownshow from going full Lord of the Flies circus.

And so, their progress and independence has to be undermined in the most absurd way: by scaring them with a monster. Sitcom logic, to be sure, but it could just as easily be seen as a metaphor for the big, bad world that could easily devour the women alive. After all, that’s a man’s role: to protect women. Never mind the fact that the monsters are usually men. Kind of like the men pretending to be a rogue dragon from a Chinese New Year celebration. The men create the problem and then the men “solve” it.

Just think. If it hadn’t been for that downed weather balloon, the men might have actually had to apologize.

Rerun Junkie Episodes–“The Fugitive”

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You can blame Tom Elliot and The Twilight Zone Podcast for this. And then you can go listen to Tom Elliot and The Twilight Zone Podcast (and support him and the show on Patreon!) because both the host and show are damn nifty.

In a recent episode of the podcast, Tom discussed The Twilight Zone episode “The Fugitive”. While I encourage you to give the whole episode a listen, particularly if you’re not familiar with the episode at the heart of the discussion, I’ll give you a quick rundown here:

J. Pat O’Malley plays Old Ben, a kindly old man that plays with the neighborhood children and has a particular kinship with one little girl with a lame leg named Jenny. Jenny has it pretty rough. The other kids don’t like playing with her because she’s a girl and she wears a leg brace. The aunt whom she lives with is horribly abusive towards her. Old Ben is a bright spot in her life.

Old Ben can do magic, like turn himself into other things, because he’s really an alien. When two men show up looking for him, he first tells Jenny it’s because he’s a fugitive. He then heals Jenny’s leg and leaves. In an attempt to get Old Ben to come back, the men zap Jenny into a kind of coma. He shows up to heal her and that’s when the real truth comes out: Old Ben is actually a king. In the end, he takes Jenny with him to his planet. Rod Serling’s closing narration informs the audience that the picture Jenny left under her pillow for her aunt to find is of Ben’s true form. He’s actually a young man. And her aunt will never guess that her niece will one day be a queen.

The discussion of this episode brought up an uncomfortable, but valid interpretation of the relationship between Old Ben and Jenny, insinuating that Old Ben’s interest in Jenny was more than platonic and the fact that he’s actually a young man in disguise doesn’t really make it better since the king in the picture could easily be nineteen or twenty and Jenny is only about twelve. It makes certain scenes and some dialogue rather squicky and distasteful when viewed in this particular light.

Now, like I said. It’s a perfectly valid interpretation of the episode, though I don’t think it was all written with that intent. It was meant to be something like a sci-fi fairy tale. And I’ve never even thought of it in that light when I’ve watched it. That could, of course, be my J. Pat O’Malley bias here. I love that man and I really need to write a post on him. It might be why I always looked at Old Ben as a kindly grandfather figure, someone who went an extra mile to be caring with Jenny because she had so little caring in the rest of her life. Even the reveal at the end didn’t sway my perceptions. I never took the relationship to be anything more than innocent.

And that’s probably because of the fairy tale aspect of the story.

Little girls are groomed from baby-age to be princesses and aspire to be queens. That Old Ben was really a young king and wanted Jenny to be his queen is supposed to be every little girl’s dream, age of consent be damned. We’re actually taught to look for someone older to take care of us. That this would be the ending to this fairy tale isn’t at all out of the norm.

It also plays on another trope common in children’s stories: the abused/neglected kid somehow being special and escaping their situation. That’s what the story really struck me as. That fairy tale of escaping some hostile situation that you, as a child, are powerless to change. That Jenny became queen later never felt that important; you could have left it out all together and the story would ring just as true. If Jenny had been Danny, there would never have been a need for any postscript crowns.

And if Jenny had been Danny, I doubt that as many people would arrive at the less-than-innocent interpretation of the episode because people still struggle with the idea that boys are also sexually abused.

There’s a societal conditioning concerning gender roles that I think plays into both interpretations of the episode. Old men prey on little girls. Little girls want to be princesses and queens.

And while the episode is definitely a product of its time, the lens we view it through hasn’t aged as much as we think.

Rerun Junkie Episodes–Favorite Christmas Episodes

/ Kiki Writes / 1 Comment

Bah humbug.

Yes, we’re all very aware that Christmas isn’t my favorite time of the year. Too many years working retail and running the holiday gauntlet have put a permanent crimp in my holiday spirit. And that goes for my reruns, too. I find most Christmas episodes to be too saccharine and overly-sentimental. They run that commercialized holly jolly through the society-approval filter and trim it with some moral lessons and it’s just enough to be nauseating.

However, there are a few episodes that have captured my heart, either because they forego these tropes, skewer them, or dress them in a silver pantsuit that’s absolutely to-die-for.

“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”, The Golden Girls– The women are all planning on spending Christmas with their families. The bemoaning of the commercialization of Christmas leads them to exchanging homemade gifts, including Rose’s whittled maple syrup spigots and Blanche’s “Men of Blanche’s Boudoir” calendar, opened the night before they leave. On Christmas Eve, Blanche and Dorothy show up at the counseling center to pick up Rose, who is working a morning shift, only to be held up by a Santa (Terry Kiser), who demands they all celebrate Christmas together. Thanks to Sophia, they’re able to get out of that jam and to the airport, only to see their flights home cancelled. Later, at a diner, the women realize that they already are spending Christmas with family.

The ending is a bit sweet, what with it snowing in Miami and all, but Rose hitting “Surfin’ Safari” on the jukebox instead of a Christmas song saves it. Though I’ve always found it bizarre that they decorated the house, tree included, even though they wouldn’t be there for Christmas, I’m glad they did. They have some really lovely decorations and the tree is gorgeous. And Blanche’s pantsuit is fabulous.

“The Christmas Show”, The Monkees– The Monkees, in their forever pursuit of the next gig, end up getting hired to mind Melvin (Butch Patrick), a disgruntled forty-year old trapped in a twelve-year old’s body, while his aunt is away on a Christmas cruise. Turns out, Melvin isn’t much for Christmas. When the boys try to get him into the holiday spirit, they end up blowing through all of their money and aggravating Melvin to the point that he goes home. It’s only then that Mike realizes what’s been missing the whole time.

It could be a typical “lesson of Christmas” episode, but it’s The Monkees. They don’t do typical. Instead, they do madcap that involves them chopping down their own tree (while apparently stoned), Peter wrecking a department store while shopping for toys, Micky and Davy dressing as Santa and his elf and going down the chimney, a happy ending, and capping the whole thing off with an a capella version of “Riu Chiu”. It’s zany and sweet and the crew getting their time in front of the camera during the credits is a lovely gesture.

“Dear Sis”, M*A*S*H– In a letter home to his sister, Father Mulcahy expresses his frustration in not feeling very useful. Most everyone in camp has the holiday blues, but it seems that it’s hitting Father Mulcahy the hardest as nothing he does is really helpful. He even ends up decking a combative patient (who hit him first, so he had it coming). It’s only during the Christmas party in the mess tent that Father Mulcahy realizes that he has made something of a good impact, first when Charles thanks him for having his mother send him his old toboggan cap, and then later when Hawkeye singles him out during a toast.

M*A*S*H did several Christmas episodes during its eleven year run, but this one stands out to me for several reasons. One, it centers much of the episode on Father Mulcahy, which didn’t happen very often. Two, instead of singing a traditional Christmas song, Hawkeye leads everyone in singing a lovely version of “Dona Nobis Pacem”. And three, the episode ends with one of my favorite lines from the series. As the party is broken up by incoming casualties, the voiceover reading of Father Mulcahy’s letter to his sister says, “You know, sis, it doesn’t matter whether or not you feel useful when you’re moving from one disaster to another. The trick, I guess, is to just keep moving.”

“The Christmas Story”, Dragnet– A local church’s baby Jesus has gone missing from its nativity scene and Friday and Gannon are on the case. The statue has little monetary value, but it’s sentimental value can’t be measured and the parishioners would be very sad to go a Christmas without it. Being diligent detectives, Friday and Gannon follow a tip provided by an altar boy (Barry Williams) that leads them to a suspect (Bobby Troup), but he only borrowed a friend’s car and got into a little fender bender; he didn’t take any baby Jesus. Dejected, Joe and Bill go to the church to let the padre know they didn’t find the baby Jesus, but they’d keep looking. Just as they start to leave, a little boy pulling baby Jesus in a wagon comes into the church. It turns out that he’d prayed to baby Jesus for a new wagon and promised Him that if he got it, he’d give Him the first ride.

I’m not one for religion. I tend to cringe and shy away when people ram home the “Christ” in Christmas. But this episode is an exception and it’s all in the handling of the case and the ending. Our detectives are pursuing this matter seriously, as they usually do, but the justice is less nabbing a thief and more doing right for a congregation. The little boy who took the statue was fulfilling a promise, something that is more in tune with the holiday spirit than any of the sappy treacle that often gets splattered on the screen.

“Christmas with the Addam’s Family”, The Addam’s Family– It’s the common holiday problem that all sitcom parents face at one point or another: Santa. Pugsley and Wednesday are told by the Addams’s unkind neighbor that Santa doesn’t exist. The family bands together and elects Uncle Fester to play the role to restore the children’s faith. When he gets stuck in the chimney, each member of the clan takes it upon themselves to prove that there really is a Santa.

This could easily be a mediocre, overly-sweet episode, but this is the Addams family. This delightfully loving family is weird and wonderful and only they could pull off a Santa overload with such sincerity.

“Operation: Silent Night”, Magnum P.I.– While ferrying Magnum, Rick, and Higgins to their various destinations before he catches a flight home to New Orleans, T.C.’s chopper crashes on a deserted island that the Navy uses for target practice. Though Rick is convinced they’re all going to die, everyone else is pretty confident that they’ll get off the island soon enough. T.C. works on the chopper while Higgins forages for food and Rick and Magnum gather firewood for a signal fire. They end up discovering a downed Japanese WWII plane, which Higgins salvages to create a boat, which later sinks. Rick falls in a bog that he thinks is quicksand, which causes him to imagine his own funeral. T.C. despairs over his inability to fix the chopper and as such, he’ll miss his flight home. And Magnum, who was going to play Santa to some orphans, dons the outfit once again and provides the group with a Christmas tree to boost their spirits. All the while, the guys are unaware that off-shore, a Navy commander (Ed Lauter) with no Christmas spirit is about to bombard the island for practice.

What I love about this Christmas episode is how it’s so tangentially related to Christmas. There are obvious Christmas references and elements (Magnum dressed as Santa is hard to ignore), and there’s even a Scrooge in the form of the Navy commander insisting that his crew do drills on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. But the episode isn’t dressed up in garland and lights and bows. There’s no heavy-handed true Christmas spirit bashing us over our heads. It’s four friends coming together in a difficult situation not because of some of magical holiday emotion but because that’s just what they do. There’s also the nod to another December holiday celebration. In addition to Christmas, T.C. also celebrates Kwanzaa, which he educates Higgins (and the audience) about.

Okay, I might have gone on a little long, but don’t for a minute think that’s because I’m having a change of heart about Christmas or Christmas episodes.

Oh no. Does my heart look three sizes bigger to you?