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omorkaSo, I mentioned "Different Drum" yesterday. Given that the version of that song that hit the Top 20 and became famous was the 1967 one with Linda Ronstadt, does that make it yet another half-Monkee, half-(Stone) Poney monster? (Holy Extra E's, Batman!)
Enough of that. On to the next three episodes :
Season 1 Disc 3 Episode 16: The Son Of a Gypsy
Can someone tell me why WWII instantly made antisemitism unkosher, but anti-Roma prejudice stayed current? Is it an exoticism thing? For that matter, how likely is it that anyone involved in this production had ever met a Roma? Did I just answer my own question? And the matriarch is the head villain, although the heavy, one of her sons, gets nearly as many lines.
Anyway, this is basically an extended Maltese Falcon riff that plays with a set of ethnic prejudices that hadn't quite gone stale enough yet at the time. Other than someone once again offering to read tea leaves for Micky (right after he knocks an astrology chart off the wall), at which he protests that he doesn't believe in that stuff and then sits right down and lets them do it anyway (that's two in a row for tea reading), and a reference to phrenology (wait, what? Isn't that anachronistic in the '60s no matter who's doing it?), there's not much to mine for continuity. The romp is in the form of a mock football game for no particular reason.
The running gag of something other than what they attached the dynamite to blowing up occurs here for the second time.
At one point, Mike responds to a threat very dramatically, then asks the others how that was; it's not clear if that's character!Mike asking for reassurance, or a fourth wall break.
Getting Crap Past The Censors: At one point, one of the troupe asks Peter what he thinks of gypsy dancing. His response is a slightly obliqued reference to Gypsy Rose Lee.
Okay. Product of its time, plus lazy writing. *sigh* Why do I love this show again?
Season 1 Disc 3 Episode 17: The Case of the Missing Monkee
Oh, right, this is why. Another Peter episode, with a fairly linear plot: Peter accidentally discovers a plot to kidnap a scientist, and is kidnapped himself; the other three track him to a hospital and search for him, then swap Micky for the scientist, and finally Mike disguises himself as a surgeon to steal Micky back.
There's a minor science fiction element, and again, if this wasn't canon someone would have ficced it: the bad guy scientist/doctor uses a brain-scrambling ray to give Peter amnesia, so he can't give away the kidnapping scheme. The scene in which this happens is 100% Pure Omorka Fetish Fuel - Peter looks like he's being tortured, and we see superimposed images of the other three Monkees calling for him as his memories of them are scrubbed away. Mental invasion + bro!love + hurt/comfort = 13-year-old Omorka not understanding why Peter was suddenly so attractive, or why the chair was so warm.
The other three Monkees manage to scare Peter into remembering them again, allowing the plot to continue. (Probably not the route a ficcer would have chosen, but this was family television.) Shortly afterwards, they swap Micky for the professor under the oxygen mask (he's the impersonator, I suppose), and tell Peter to play dumb when the villain returns. Peter complains that he always has to play dumb, and why can't he play smart for a while? I suspect Tork didn't need to do much acting for that line.
There's one scene with what looks like it's going to be egregious yellowface, but then it turns out to be the bad guy in disguise doing a horrible fake accent, so I'm going to chalk that up to him being a racist asshole, not the writers this time.
There's both a Captain Marvel reference and a Batman reference in this one. Apparently the boys are DC fans.
Davy gives the nurse the wrong address when asked. It's not clear whether that's deliberate, or the writers forgot what it had been previously; if the the latter, that's a continuity error. Also, Peter reads a note from the professor, then gives it to Mike, who reads it later. The wording is slightly different, even though they're both supposed to be reading it out loud; I'm guessing someone muffed the line.
There's a largely unmotivated non-romp dance sequence for Davy (trying to impress a nurse), some cute physical comedy gags when they have to impersonate patients sent for physical therapy, a ladder-climbing sequence that gives us a fairly lingering shot of Davy's, Micky's, and Mike's rear ends (not complaining!), and the Monkees being concerned about each other, in addition to the Fetish Fuel. Oh, and the nurse is a female character who is neither a love interest nor a villainess, although she mostly serves as a plot obstacle. Strong episode all around, and one of my personal favorites so far because I'm a sick, twisted perv (and yes, I really do remember that scene hitting me That Way, which was really confusing for a girl with the upbringing I'd had).
Season 1 Disc 3 Episode 18: I Was A Teenage Monster
And now we swing into sci-fi/horror. A mad scientist hires the Monkees to teach his 7' Frankensteinian android to play rock'n'roll; they give it a shot, which results in broken drumheads and a Beatle-cut wig. They're told by the mad scientist that they can't leave due to the fog (shades of Episode 2), then seized one by one from the guest rooms and strapped to his infernal machine in the lab, which drains them of their musical talent and installs it in the monster. (More mind-messing-with and glaze-eyed twitching, yay! Micky and Peter are both deliciously good at that.) During this process, the baddie tells the boys to sing; they do - giving the first performance of the theme song outside of the credits - although the android takes over halfway through, as they lose their voices to it. The doctor then removes the boys' memories of the event (the method he uses, a device held to each boy's temples in turn, is far less dramatic than the one from the previous episode, but still a teeny bit fetishy for me) and sends them back the guest room.
The next morning, they attempt to play and fail utterly; the mad scientist asks for a refund, then calls the android out to play for them. Naturally, they recognize their own voices, and plot to get them back. This time, Micky gets his memory back spontaneously, and they rush back down to the lab, where the android is tethered to its board again.
Now, here's the interesting bit, and why I just recapped the whole episode: Mike immediately asks whether Micky can reverse the process. Not them as a group, not just any of the others: Micky. Like they just expect him to know how, or at least Mike expects it. Micky says he thinks he can, then that it's a piece of cake, and there are several comedic bits of him messing up one way or another (one of which involves accidentally transferring the android's violence and voice into Mike, and one of which has the android going into a stereotyped interior designer's routine that probably counts as a mild Getting Crap Past The Censors by way of a gay joke).
When the mad scientist discovers them, he releases the android and demands that it kill the Monkees; Peter pleads for it to attack the mad scientist instead, claiming that he wants 60% of its royalties - and it changes direction. This exchange repeats several times, with Peter's final one being "He's a bad man!" before Micky drops the needle on a record in the infernal machine and starts a romp - to "Your Auntie Grizelda," and the audience finally gets to hear Peter singing lead on something!
There's a single female character, the mad scientist's daughter, who is sitting in a closet reading a script; she claims she only appears in the sequel. She gets two different one-line gags, and one sight gag with Davy during the romp. Not much of a character, but the gags require decent timing on her part.
So - reinforcement of important character notes for Micky and Peter, and a slightly less simplistic than usual plot. I'm especially intrigued by the fact that Mike doesn't seem to doubt for a second that Micky can do something with the mad scientist's device, only whether he can fix their situation with it; Micky's having at least a touch of The Spark seems to be just generally acknowledged. And Peter's gentleness once again seems to have nearly supernatural qualities. Between that and Davy's vaguely Cupidic powers, I'm beginning to see Mike as a Kyon-type.
There's a Citizen Kane reference in the end sequence.
One real clunker and two good episodes, both of which have extra flavor for me personally for various impure reasons. I feel like the season has finally really gotten going. We've also been out of the Pad for all three, although I think that changes next episode.
Enough of that. On to the next three episodes :
Season 1 Disc 3 Episode 16: The Son Of a Gypsy
Can someone tell me why WWII instantly made antisemitism unkosher, but anti-Roma prejudice stayed current? Is it an exoticism thing? For that matter, how likely is it that anyone involved in this production had ever met a Roma? Did I just answer my own question? And the matriarch is the head villain, although the heavy, one of her sons, gets nearly as many lines.
Anyway, this is basically an extended Maltese Falcon riff that plays with a set of ethnic prejudices that hadn't quite gone stale enough yet at the time. Other than someone once again offering to read tea leaves for Micky (right after he knocks an astrology chart off the wall), at which he protests that he doesn't believe in that stuff and then sits right down and lets them do it anyway (that's two in a row for tea reading), and a reference to phrenology (wait, what? Isn't that anachronistic in the '60s no matter who's doing it?), there's not much to mine for continuity. The romp is in the form of a mock football game for no particular reason.
The running gag of something other than what they attached the dynamite to blowing up occurs here for the second time.
At one point, Mike responds to a threat very dramatically, then asks the others how that was; it's not clear if that's character!Mike asking for reassurance, or a fourth wall break.
Getting Crap Past The Censors: At one point, one of the troupe asks Peter what he thinks of gypsy dancing. His response is a slightly obliqued reference to Gypsy Rose Lee.
Okay. Product of its time, plus lazy writing. *sigh* Why do I love this show again?
Season 1 Disc 3 Episode 17: The Case of the Missing Monkee
Oh, right, this is why. Another Peter episode, with a fairly linear plot: Peter accidentally discovers a plot to kidnap a scientist, and is kidnapped himself; the other three track him to a hospital and search for him, then swap Micky for the scientist, and finally Mike disguises himself as a surgeon to steal Micky back.
There's a minor science fiction element, and again, if this wasn't canon someone would have ficced it: the bad guy scientist/doctor uses a brain-scrambling ray to give Peter amnesia, so he can't give away the kidnapping scheme. The scene in which this happens is 100% Pure Omorka Fetish Fuel - Peter looks like he's being tortured, and we see superimposed images of the other three Monkees calling for him as his memories of them are scrubbed away. Mental invasion + bro!love + hurt/comfort = 13-year-old Omorka not understanding why Peter was suddenly so attractive, or why the chair was so warm.
The other three Monkees manage to scare Peter into remembering them again, allowing the plot to continue. (Probably not the route a ficcer would have chosen, but this was family television.) Shortly afterwards, they swap Micky for the professor under the oxygen mask (he's the impersonator, I suppose), and tell Peter to play dumb when the villain returns. Peter complains that he always has to play dumb, and why can't he play smart for a while? I suspect Tork didn't need to do much acting for that line.
There's one scene with what looks like it's going to be egregious yellowface, but then it turns out to be the bad guy in disguise doing a horrible fake accent, so I'm going to chalk that up to him being a racist asshole, not the writers this time.
There's both a Captain Marvel reference and a Batman reference in this one. Apparently the boys are DC fans.
Davy gives the nurse the wrong address when asked. It's not clear whether that's deliberate, or the writers forgot what it had been previously; if the the latter, that's a continuity error. Also, Peter reads a note from the professor, then gives it to Mike, who reads it later. The wording is slightly different, even though they're both supposed to be reading it out loud; I'm guessing someone muffed the line.
There's a largely unmotivated non-romp dance sequence for Davy (trying to impress a nurse), some cute physical comedy gags when they have to impersonate patients sent for physical therapy, a ladder-climbing sequence that gives us a fairly lingering shot of Davy's, Micky's, and Mike's rear ends (not complaining!), and the Monkees being concerned about each other, in addition to the Fetish Fuel. Oh, and the nurse is a female character who is neither a love interest nor a villainess, although she mostly serves as a plot obstacle. Strong episode all around, and one of my personal favorites so far because I'm a sick, twisted perv (and yes, I really do remember that scene hitting me That Way, which was really confusing for a girl with the upbringing I'd had).
Season 1 Disc 3 Episode 18: I Was A Teenage Monster
And now we swing into sci-fi/horror. A mad scientist hires the Monkees to teach his 7' Frankensteinian android to play rock'n'roll; they give it a shot, which results in broken drumheads and a Beatle-cut wig. They're told by the mad scientist that they can't leave due to the fog (shades of Episode 2), then seized one by one from the guest rooms and strapped to his infernal machine in the lab, which drains them of their musical talent and installs it in the monster. (More mind-messing-with and glaze-eyed twitching, yay! Micky and Peter are both deliciously good at that.) During this process, the baddie tells the boys to sing; they do - giving the first performance of the theme song outside of the credits - although the android takes over halfway through, as they lose their voices to it. The doctor then removes the boys' memories of the event (the method he uses, a device held to each boy's temples in turn, is far less dramatic than the one from the previous episode, but still a teeny bit fetishy for me) and sends them back the guest room.
The next morning, they attempt to play and fail utterly; the mad scientist asks for a refund, then calls the android out to play for them. Naturally, they recognize their own voices, and plot to get them back. This time, Micky gets his memory back spontaneously, and they rush back down to the lab, where the android is tethered to its board again.
Now, here's the interesting bit, and why I just recapped the whole episode: Mike immediately asks whether Micky can reverse the process. Not them as a group, not just any of the others: Micky. Like they just expect him to know how, or at least Mike expects it. Micky says he thinks he can, then that it's a piece of cake, and there are several comedic bits of him messing up one way or another (one of which involves accidentally transferring the android's violence and voice into Mike, and one of which has the android going into a stereotyped interior designer's routine that probably counts as a mild Getting Crap Past The Censors by way of a gay joke).
When the mad scientist discovers them, he releases the android and demands that it kill the Monkees; Peter pleads for it to attack the mad scientist instead, claiming that he wants 60% of its royalties - and it changes direction. This exchange repeats several times, with Peter's final one being "He's a bad man!" before Micky drops the needle on a record in the infernal machine and starts a romp - to "Your Auntie Grizelda," and the audience finally gets to hear Peter singing lead on something!
There's a single female character, the mad scientist's daughter, who is sitting in a closet reading a script; she claims she only appears in the sequel. She gets two different one-line gags, and one sight gag with Davy during the romp. Not much of a character, but the gags require decent timing on her part.
So - reinforcement of important character notes for Micky and Peter, and a slightly less simplistic than usual plot. I'm especially intrigued by the fact that Mike doesn't seem to doubt for a second that Micky can do something with the mad scientist's device, only whether he can fix their situation with it; Micky's having at least a touch of The Spark seems to be just generally acknowledged. And Peter's gentleness once again seems to have nearly supernatural qualities. Between that and Davy's vaguely Cupidic powers, I'm beginning to see Mike as a Kyon-type.
There's a Citizen Kane reference in the end sequence.
One real clunker and two good episodes, both of which have extra flavor for me personally for various impure reasons. I feel like the season has finally really gotten going. We've also been out of the Pad for all three, although I think that changes next episode.
