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omorka"Goin' Down" is a really strange song. I mean, the first half is basically a first-person narration of a suicide attempt, and the second half, where the narrator has decided that's a bad idea, is either their hallucination when they finally have gone down for the last time, or the weirdest happy ending ever - Huck Finn without a raft, almost. And the song is really ambiguous about which it is. On top of that, you have Micky's rapid-fire, manic presentation, completely at odds with the lyrics.
It's a good song. I actually like it a lot. But it's strange, and probably would have sounded even stranger to a teenybopper audience at the time.
Season 2 Disc 2 Episode 42: The Wild Monkees
[Unrelated video for "Goin' Down" before the credits] The Monkees, on the road again in what looks like a small desert town, are looking for the hotel their gig is booked at. Looking at the map, Micky claims they should be right there, just before two motorcycle gangs buzz them. They find the sign for their hotel and come around to the front, where Mr. Blauner, the owner, welcomes them, but expects them to act as the gardening staff, bellhops, and restaurant waiters as well as musicians. They're broke as usual, so they agree, just as the first motorcycle gang arrives in leathers, helmets, and scarves. After some struggles trying to help them with their luggage, the Monkees discover that this gang is four Amazonian motorcycle mamas, one of whom takes a shine to Davy. The boys attempt to court them, but find that they're not tough enough to really appeal to these women of the road. In an attempt to take on a tougher image, the boys dress in black leather and pose as a motorcycle gang of their own, the Chickens. The girls, now in civilian dresses, turn them down; they're tired of the open road - that's why they left their boyfriends! The Black Angel gang (the boyfriends in question) arrive, and the Monkees faint in unison and then try to give them the slip, but Big Butch, the leader, wants to know who's been messing around with his woman and offers to rumble. Queenie, the leader of the girls' gang, suggests they have a motorcycle race instead. The Monkees, having failed to skip out, go ahead and race, prompting a ride-and-romp to "Star Collector"; Micky, Davy, and Mike make decent showings, but Peter can't even get his motorcycle started. The girls greet the Black Angels as the victors, and Big Butch is preparing to rip Micky (or Davy, he doesn't really care) to pieces, when Queenie interrupts again and tells him she's tired of the open road and constant violence; she wants to settle down. Blauner offers them the Monkees' jobs at the hotel, and Butch reluctantly agrees, letting the Monkees go.
I think this is the first time a full, unrelated musical segment has happened before the opening credits. Furthermore, it's a mildly psychedelic presentation - we see only Micky, in dark shirt and tight white slacks, against a black background, occasionally in triple- or quintuple-image, with those images tinted in odd shades of blue and orange, combined with occasional glimpses of instruments in the dark - a saxophone, a trumpet, a bass. None of the other Monkees are present (unless that's Peter with the bass), and we never see who's playing those instruments. I didn't know what to make of it on first watching; now, it's a fun presentation, but between the dark lyrics, seeing only Micky, and him dancing around with a mike instead of behind the kit, it doesn't really feel like a Monkees piece. Actually, I take that back - it feels like it belongs with Head instead of the show.
Once again, don't let Micky navigate. He was only a block off, but still.
Davy says "petrol tank" instead of "gas tank" at one point (Mike is having a coughing fit from the dust kicked up by the two motorcycle gangs, and Peter has accidentally brought him gasoline instead of water). Peter repeats the phrasing; it sounds natural enough when Davy says it, but from Peter it sounds really odd.
Mr. Blauner is obviously somehow related to Mr. Babbitt, the Monkees' landlord - not only is he played by the same actor (Henry Corden), he's wearing the exact same outfit that Babbitt wore in his last appearance and using the same voice.
This episode has no laugh track, and Mike is not wearing his hat (although it'd probably blow off in the motorcycle race, anyway).
At one point, all four Monkees pratfall down a short flight of steps. Several scenes later, when the motorcycle mamas are coming down the same steps, they repeat the pratfall (although more demurely, given that most of them are wearing short skirts at that point). Looks like Blauner needs to fix the top stair. The four mamas have a short conversation about it, too, which means we may finally have an episode that passes Bechdel! (Queenie is, once again, a better female character than usual - tough, knows her own mind, has goals that aren't related to the Monkees themselves. The other three mamas are largely interchangeable, but at least they're following her, not a dude.)
At one point Micky ticks off one of the motorcycle mamas and she slugs him in the mouth. He does an unusually believable pratfall over a bed and into a side table, then ups it by knocking the nightstand over when he tries to get up. It's one of his best slapstick bits yet. He also manages to not drop into his Cagney when he's trying to be a biker tough; what he ends up doing is probably intended to be a James Dean impression.
Mike, Davy, and Micky do some of their own motorcycle stunts during the romp. Peter is completely swathed in motorcycle helmet, scarf, and goggles, even though his motorcycle never starts. Coincidentally, the race official is Davy's stand-in, a construction worker whose sandwich is stolen during the race is played by Micky's stand-in, and Mike's stand-in makes an appearance as a make-up/wardrobe guy during the romp. I have seen it suggested elsenet that Peter is absent from the romp completely, and the guy under the helmet trying to get the motorcycle to start is Peter's stand-in. I'm not sure I buy that - the body language looks like Tork's - but it does seem odd that all the other stand-ins would get bit parts there and he wouldn't. Then again, it's odd that the "Star Collector" here appears to be an unfinished mix; it's missing the Moog part completely.
This story is completely linear and seems shorter than normal (probably because the "Goin' Down" sequence isn't short), but at least it's original and the plot actually resolves.
Season 2 Disc 2 Episode 43: A Coffin Too Frequent
. . . Okay, that was really, really weird. For several reasons, but the primary one is that I don't think I've ever seen this episode in its entirety before. There's some sideways Fetish Fuel in here, and one scene that's oddly poignant now that - well, sorry, let me do this first:
Synopsis: The Monkees are bedding down for the evening when they hear laughter downstairs. Thinking it's a burglar, they sneak downstairs with ropes and nets, but Peter sneezes and accidentally tosses the net over himself, Mike, and Davy. Their intruder, a mad scientist named Henry who has set up chairs and candles in their den, claims that their lease includes a stipulation that they be gone from midnight to dawn on this night, so they run upstairs to pack at double-speed, but Henry's aunt, Mrs. Weatherspoon, insists that they stay - Henry is going to perform a seance to bring her husband, Elmer, back from the dead. The guys, not being the least interested, try to leave, but Henry's Frankensteinian goon, Boris, arrives with the coffin and blocks their exit. Mrs. Weatherspoon decides that they can be witnesses, prompting a mostly unrelated fantasy courtroom sequence. Peter sneezes again, and Mrs. Weatherspoon hustles him back to the bedroom and plies him with hot tea. The remaining boys try to sneak out again, but Boris once again blocks the door. Henry shows Micky and Michael the pills he will use to raise Elmer, which leads to a drug joke, while Davy distracts Boris by showing him a dance he used to do with a taller partner. Peter screams for help; the others race upstairs to rescue him from Mrs. Weatherspoon, who has him under a quarantine screen. Davy and Peter try to explain to Mrs. Weatherspoon that the seance is a fraud, while Henry and Boris listen in. Meanwhile Micky tries to peek in the coffin, but Mrs, Weatherspoon makes it down in record time and conks him with her umbrella. Learning that he was trying to protect her, too, she calls Micky, Davy, and Peter angels, prompting a short fantasy sequence of them in white robes and paper wings. Micky and Mike try to subdue Boris by force, which mostly just ends up injuring Micky. The time comes for the seance, when they all take hands; the trumpet sounds, but the ghostly voice from the coffin accused Henry of being a crook! Henry confesses, and the voice tells him to beg and plead for mercy; he drops to his knees - and Micky pops out of the coffin, with Mike realizing he was slipped Mr. Schneider's hand. Henry sics Boris on the boys, and a romp breaks out to "Goin' Down." At the end, the boys and Mrs. Weatherspoon trap Henry and Boris in the coffin. Mrs. Weatherspoon thanks the boys and leaves. Peter notes that he didn't know Micky played trumpet, and he points out that he doesn't; a hand emerges from the casket holding a straight horn, and the episode ends with a coffin/coughin' pun. [Unrelated "Daydream Believer" video follows.]
Okay, so back to what I was saying. The fantasy sequence (of which we see a few clips in the romp as well) has Micky, Davy, and Peter bouncing on a trampoline just below the frame of the shot, with dry ice obscuring much of the bottom quarter of the screen and cardboard clouds and sky backdrop behind them. They're wearing halos, paper wings, and oversized white robes (and Davy has on white tube socks), and the whole scene is done in slightly slow motion. Mike is nowhere to be seen! Okay, so Zero's not in this one, but in the artificial season arc frame I'm imposing on this, there's a lot of odd resonance here - and if those boys are Angels, and Mike's the one who leads them to defeat the Devil, what does that make him? And that's all aside from the separate flavor of watching a young Davy bouncing around gleefully in angel's wings, in an episode about a dead man that ends with "Daydream Believer," after Leap Day 2012.
This episode is really fragmented - scenes cut from one to another rapidly, with no attempt to help the audience across the gaps. There's occult subject matter, and a fairly extended drug joke in the middle (Mike and Micky imply very strongly that they think Henry's dead-raising drug is LSD, although they never name it). This is kind of a tough episode for the teenybopper audience. I'm wondering now if I deliberately turned this one off so that my folks wouldn't decide I shouldn't be watching the show! I think I remember Davy's "Tea for Two" dance sequence, but that's the only part of the episode I remember - and Micky climbing out of a casket during a seance really, really out to have spiked me hard right in the libido, hard enough I shouldn't have been able to forget it. (Not to say that the moment later in the romp where Micky, Davy, and Peter are all piled into the coffin together shouldn't have been equally interesting, or for that matter Mike, Peter, and Davy all together under the net . . . )
As with the last episode involving a seance, the episode implies both that the supposed medium is a fraud and that ghosts probably canonically exist in the Monkeeverse.
I'm now pretty sure there's no story bible for how the Pad is laid out. In Episode 4, there appears to be only one bedroom, and it's on the first floor (behind the kitchen). In another episode in the first season, Micky and Mike share the upstairs bedroom and Peter and Davy share the downstairs one (this is the arrangement used in most fanfic). In this episode, all four Monkees share one bedroom, but it's explicitly the upstairs bedroom (although they use the same set as they used for the downstairs one, just dressed differently). There's also a reference to the basement, which makes sense based on the occasional outside shots of the Pad we get, but which I don't think we've ever seen (there's a shot in the romp that might be the basement, but it looks like a laundry room - which doesn't make sense, as we know from Episode 29 that they don't have a washer!).
This is an ensemble episode, and one of the few of those where one Monkee comes up with a solution on his own and it isn't Mike. Micky's the standout here, and this time it's not because he can make the funniest faces. This wasn't on my list of favorites, but it is now!
Season 2 Disc 2 Episode 44: Hitting the High Seas
Synopsis: After losing a job playing for a bar near the harbor, Micky, Davy, and Peter overhear a pair of sailors talking about the requirements for a job. Faking those requirements, they get hired; one sailor calls his captain and lets him know he hired three dummies for the job. The next morning, all four Monkees arrive on board and are assigned the task of hoisting the mainsail, which they do without unfurling it and have to redo. Micky, Davy, and Peter are struck with seasickness; Micky passes around seasickness pills, which cure them but make Mike seasick, so they send him below. When the ship's roll is called, Peter is stuck in the rigging and can't climb down. When he falls out, the captain threatens to keelhaul and lash all of them, until he finds out he has Davy Jones on his ship (Micky informs him that at age 25, Davy will inherit the famous Locker), at which point he makes Davy his cabin boy and sets Micky and Peter to swab the deck. After encountering several famous captains from literature, Davy finally finds the captain's cabin, but the Captain's having a conference with his parrot and sends the food back to the galley. Davy hangs around and discovers that the captain's plan involves two million dollars in gold. Meanwhile, Peter and Micky are singing an acoustic rendition of "Tear The Top Right Off My Head" belowdecks; Davy suggests that they sneak into the captain's cabin so Micky can impersonate the parrot and they can find out the whole plan. They do (after taping the parrot's beak shut); the captain intends to capture the Queen Anne and steal her cargo, after being dismissed as her captain for what he thinks is insufficient reason. Micky thinks the captain is having a psychotic break, but then he appears in an eyepatch and hands out cutlasses while the first mate unwraps the cannon and the second mate runs up the Jolly Roger. The boys attempt to incite a mutiny, but fail, as no one actually understood what Peter was saying. The three are made to walk the plank, but the lookout sights the Queen Anne and they're temporarily spared as the pirates prep the cannon. In order to stop them, the three boys steal the canon start a romp to "Daydream Believer," which involves Peter and Davy fighting off the pirates with cutlasses while Micky swings in the rigging. At the end, the captain, first mate, and second mate are caught in a large net. The captain of the Queen Anne thanks them, and secures them a promotion to joint first mates - under Captain Horace, the parrot! [Unrelated video for "Star Collector" follows.]
This isn't a Mikeless episode, but he's only in two scenes and the end video. The internet informs me that he genuinely got seasick on the boat, which implies that his lines were divvied up among the other ones in some quick rewriting. (Jones confirms that something like that happened in the commentary track.) I think I can see a few of the places where that happened, and once again, Micky steps up to the leader role in Mike's absence.
Micky does the voice of the parrot, which is why his impersonation is identical to the parrot's actual lines.
There's only one girl in this episode, and she's in a slightly disturbing gag scene - Peter as one of the literary captains (not identified, but he's in what looks like Elizabethan-era period garb) grabs the unnamed girl, announces that he likes 'em with a little spirit, and kisses her; she slaps him, and he stumbles backwards, saying there are reasonable limits for everything. *sigh* Someday we'll be in an era when everyone knows harassment isn't funny, but at least he gets his comeuppance and doesn't try it again.
There's also another slightly disturbing moment involving Peter - during the romp, he stabs one of the pirates using the sword-under-the-arm gag. It's not clear what level of reality that happens on; did our peaceable Peter actually injure someone there? Given that it's during the romp, and the guy who got 'stabbed' is also one of the ones who ends up netted at the end, I'm going to assume not, but this is one of the places that operating at different levels of fourth wall is jarring more than funny.
Watching Peter playing acoustic guitar and singing in the top bunk while Micky sits in the lower bunk and sings along is kind of fun; it's almost a shame to have Davy interrupt it to push the plot forward. (I wonder if that was ad-libbed by Peter and Micky to replace some Mike dialogue there?) Almost every time he's singing for real (as opposed to miming), Micky has his eyes closed, as he does here. It's cute. (I do that too if I know the piece well enough.)
The video is also playing with levels of abstraction - at the beginning, the four of them are in a huddle, all wearing identical white turtlenecks. Davy spins out with the tambourine to start the vocals. Peter spins out next - with no instrument at all, but he begins miming the bass line, doing his usual hip-swaying and jiving. Mike spins out next, and begins miming playing lead guitar, doing his usual standing stock still with a look of intense concentration! Micky never spins, he just steps back behind the single cymbal (I think it's the ride) and picks up a pair of drumsticks that are almost as long as his arms! After he goofs around with them, Mike reaches back and borrows one, which he proceeds to use to mime the guitar part so he has something to finger on. Peter switches to miming keyboards during the Moog solo. Meanwhile, there are psychedelic flashing lights in odd colors, and Mike's blue hat on a stand. It's actually one of their better videos.
There's a commentary track from Jones that's mostly about how much fun it was to shoot on a real boat, although there are some interesting digressions about clothes and songwriting. He also pronounces Moog both ways over the course of the video ([mog] and [mug], if you know IPA), which is sort of unhelpful.
This episode is better than I remember it being; it's not great, but it rises above the usual formula.
Okay, so two better-than-average episodes and one frantic, funky one that is at least partly new to me - and fabulous, if a bit sad in one spot for external reasons. This is Season Two as I remember it, and I think the next two episodes are about the same as this one (the one after that is the Christmas special, which is sort of its own thing). After that we get a run of five that I'm really looking forward to, ending with "The Devil And Peter Tork," which is widely considered the best episode of the whole run. Then there are four I remember being less than the top of their game, including a comedic drag ep, and then the last two, which are two more Fetish Fuel entries for me. I don't know if I'm going to bother with the post-show special, "33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee," as it's not part of the canon and it's generally considered to suck.
Oh, and Micky is wearing white Converse sneakers in some of these episodes. I can't see whether they're hightops or normal sneakers because the bellbottoms cover his ankles, but now I'm tempted to see if I can still get a matching pair. Maybe we'll get a better view of them in another episode; I know we get several shots of his feet in Episode 49, but I don't remember if he's wearing the same shoes or not.
It's a good song. I actually like it a lot. But it's strange, and probably would have sounded even stranger to a teenybopper audience at the time.
Season 2 Disc 2 Episode 42: The Wild Monkees
[Unrelated video for "Goin' Down" before the credits] The Monkees, on the road again in what looks like a small desert town, are looking for the hotel their gig is booked at. Looking at the map, Micky claims they should be right there, just before two motorcycle gangs buzz them. They find the sign for their hotel and come around to the front, where Mr. Blauner, the owner, welcomes them, but expects them to act as the gardening staff, bellhops, and restaurant waiters as well as musicians. They're broke as usual, so they agree, just as the first motorcycle gang arrives in leathers, helmets, and scarves. After some struggles trying to help them with their luggage, the Monkees discover that this gang is four Amazonian motorcycle mamas, one of whom takes a shine to Davy. The boys attempt to court them, but find that they're not tough enough to really appeal to these women of the road. In an attempt to take on a tougher image, the boys dress in black leather and pose as a motorcycle gang of their own, the Chickens. The girls, now in civilian dresses, turn them down; they're tired of the open road - that's why they left their boyfriends! The Black Angel gang (the boyfriends in question) arrive, and the Monkees faint in unison and then try to give them the slip, but Big Butch, the leader, wants to know who's been messing around with his woman and offers to rumble. Queenie, the leader of the girls' gang, suggests they have a motorcycle race instead. The Monkees, having failed to skip out, go ahead and race, prompting a ride-and-romp to "Star Collector"; Micky, Davy, and Mike make decent showings, but Peter can't even get his motorcycle started. The girls greet the Black Angels as the victors, and Big Butch is preparing to rip Micky (or Davy, he doesn't really care) to pieces, when Queenie interrupts again and tells him she's tired of the open road and constant violence; she wants to settle down. Blauner offers them the Monkees' jobs at the hotel, and Butch reluctantly agrees, letting the Monkees go.
I think this is the first time a full, unrelated musical segment has happened before the opening credits. Furthermore, it's a mildly psychedelic presentation - we see only Micky, in dark shirt and tight white slacks, against a black background, occasionally in triple- or quintuple-image, with those images tinted in odd shades of blue and orange, combined with occasional glimpses of instruments in the dark - a saxophone, a trumpet, a bass. None of the other Monkees are present (unless that's Peter with the bass), and we never see who's playing those instruments. I didn't know what to make of it on first watching; now, it's a fun presentation, but between the dark lyrics, seeing only Micky, and him dancing around with a mike instead of behind the kit, it doesn't really feel like a Monkees piece. Actually, I take that back - it feels like it belongs with Head instead of the show.
Once again, don't let Micky navigate. He was only a block off, but still.
Davy says "petrol tank" instead of "gas tank" at one point (Mike is having a coughing fit from the dust kicked up by the two motorcycle gangs, and Peter has accidentally brought him gasoline instead of water). Peter repeats the phrasing; it sounds natural enough when Davy says it, but from Peter it sounds really odd.
Mr. Blauner is obviously somehow related to Mr. Babbitt, the Monkees' landlord - not only is he played by the same actor (Henry Corden), he's wearing the exact same outfit that Babbitt wore in his last appearance and using the same voice.
This episode has no laugh track, and Mike is not wearing his hat (although it'd probably blow off in the motorcycle race, anyway).
At one point, all four Monkees pratfall down a short flight of steps. Several scenes later, when the motorcycle mamas are coming down the same steps, they repeat the pratfall (although more demurely, given that most of them are wearing short skirts at that point). Looks like Blauner needs to fix the top stair. The four mamas have a short conversation about it, too, which means we may finally have an episode that passes Bechdel! (Queenie is, once again, a better female character than usual - tough, knows her own mind, has goals that aren't related to the Monkees themselves. The other three mamas are largely interchangeable, but at least they're following her, not a dude.)
At one point Micky ticks off one of the motorcycle mamas and she slugs him in the mouth. He does an unusually believable pratfall over a bed and into a side table, then ups it by knocking the nightstand over when he tries to get up. It's one of his best slapstick bits yet. He also manages to not drop into his Cagney when he's trying to be a biker tough; what he ends up doing is probably intended to be a James Dean impression.
Mike, Davy, and Micky do some of their own motorcycle stunts during the romp. Peter is completely swathed in motorcycle helmet, scarf, and goggles, even though his motorcycle never starts. Coincidentally, the race official is Davy's stand-in, a construction worker whose sandwich is stolen during the race is played by Micky's stand-in, and Mike's stand-in makes an appearance as a make-up/wardrobe guy during the romp. I have seen it suggested elsenet that Peter is absent from the romp completely, and the guy under the helmet trying to get the motorcycle to start is Peter's stand-in. I'm not sure I buy that - the body language looks like Tork's - but it does seem odd that all the other stand-ins would get bit parts there and he wouldn't. Then again, it's odd that the "Star Collector" here appears to be an unfinished mix; it's missing the Moog part completely.
This story is completely linear and seems shorter than normal (probably because the "Goin' Down" sequence isn't short), but at least it's original and the plot actually resolves.
Season 2 Disc 2 Episode 43: A Coffin Too Frequent
. . . Okay, that was really, really weird. For several reasons, but the primary one is that I don't think I've ever seen this episode in its entirety before. There's some sideways Fetish Fuel in here, and one scene that's oddly poignant now that - well, sorry, let me do this first:
Synopsis: The Monkees are bedding down for the evening when they hear laughter downstairs. Thinking it's a burglar, they sneak downstairs with ropes and nets, but Peter sneezes and accidentally tosses the net over himself, Mike, and Davy. Their intruder, a mad scientist named Henry who has set up chairs and candles in their den, claims that their lease includes a stipulation that they be gone from midnight to dawn on this night, so they run upstairs to pack at double-speed, but Henry's aunt, Mrs. Weatherspoon, insists that they stay - Henry is going to perform a seance to bring her husband, Elmer, back from the dead. The guys, not being the least interested, try to leave, but Henry's Frankensteinian goon, Boris, arrives with the coffin and blocks their exit. Mrs. Weatherspoon decides that they can be witnesses, prompting a mostly unrelated fantasy courtroom sequence. Peter sneezes again, and Mrs. Weatherspoon hustles him back to the bedroom and plies him with hot tea. The remaining boys try to sneak out again, but Boris once again blocks the door. Henry shows Micky and Michael the pills he will use to raise Elmer, which leads to a drug joke, while Davy distracts Boris by showing him a dance he used to do with a taller partner. Peter screams for help; the others race upstairs to rescue him from Mrs. Weatherspoon, who has him under a quarantine screen. Davy and Peter try to explain to Mrs. Weatherspoon that the seance is a fraud, while Henry and Boris listen in. Meanwhile Micky tries to peek in the coffin, but Mrs, Weatherspoon makes it down in record time and conks him with her umbrella. Learning that he was trying to protect her, too, she calls Micky, Davy, and Peter angels, prompting a short fantasy sequence of them in white robes and paper wings. Micky and Mike try to subdue Boris by force, which mostly just ends up injuring Micky. The time comes for the seance, when they all take hands; the trumpet sounds, but the ghostly voice from the coffin accused Henry of being a crook! Henry confesses, and the voice tells him to beg and plead for mercy; he drops to his knees - and Micky pops out of the coffin, with Mike realizing he was slipped Mr. Schneider's hand. Henry sics Boris on the boys, and a romp breaks out to "Goin' Down." At the end, the boys and Mrs. Weatherspoon trap Henry and Boris in the coffin. Mrs. Weatherspoon thanks the boys and leaves. Peter notes that he didn't know Micky played trumpet, and he points out that he doesn't; a hand emerges from the casket holding a straight horn, and the episode ends with a coffin/coughin' pun. [Unrelated "Daydream Believer" video follows.]
Okay, so back to what I was saying. The fantasy sequence (of which we see a few clips in the romp as well) has Micky, Davy, and Peter bouncing on a trampoline just below the frame of the shot, with dry ice obscuring much of the bottom quarter of the screen and cardboard clouds and sky backdrop behind them. They're wearing halos, paper wings, and oversized white robes (and Davy has on white tube socks), and the whole scene is done in slightly slow motion. Mike is nowhere to be seen! Okay, so Zero's not in this one, but in the artificial season arc frame I'm imposing on this, there's a lot of odd resonance here - and if those boys are Angels, and Mike's the one who leads them to defeat the Devil, what does that make him? And that's all aside from the separate flavor of watching a young Davy bouncing around gleefully in angel's wings, in an episode about a dead man that ends with "Daydream Believer," after Leap Day 2012.
This episode is really fragmented - scenes cut from one to another rapidly, with no attempt to help the audience across the gaps. There's occult subject matter, and a fairly extended drug joke in the middle (Mike and Micky imply very strongly that they think Henry's dead-raising drug is LSD, although they never name it). This is kind of a tough episode for the teenybopper audience. I'm wondering now if I deliberately turned this one off so that my folks wouldn't decide I shouldn't be watching the show! I think I remember Davy's "Tea for Two" dance sequence, but that's the only part of the episode I remember - and Micky climbing out of a casket during a seance really, really out to have spiked me hard right in the libido, hard enough I shouldn't have been able to forget it. (Not to say that the moment later in the romp where Micky, Davy, and Peter are all piled into the coffin together shouldn't have been equally interesting, or for that matter Mike, Peter, and Davy all together under the net . . . )
As with the last episode involving a seance, the episode implies both that the supposed medium is a fraud and that ghosts probably canonically exist in the Monkeeverse.
I'm now pretty sure there's no story bible for how the Pad is laid out. In Episode 4, there appears to be only one bedroom, and it's on the first floor (behind the kitchen). In another episode in the first season, Micky and Mike share the upstairs bedroom and Peter and Davy share the downstairs one (this is the arrangement used in most fanfic). In this episode, all four Monkees share one bedroom, but it's explicitly the upstairs bedroom (although they use the same set as they used for the downstairs one, just dressed differently). There's also a reference to the basement, which makes sense based on the occasional outside shots of the Pad we get, but which I don't think we've ever seen (there's a shot in the romp that might be the basement, but it looks like a laundry room - which doesn't make sense, as we know from Episode 29 that they don't have a washer!).
This is an ensemble episode, and one of the few of those where one Monkee comes up with a solution on his own and it isn't Mike. Micky's the standout here, and this time it's not because he can make the funniest faces. This wasn't on my list of favorites, but it is now!
Season 2 Disc 2 Episode 44: Hitting the High Seas
Synopsis: After losing a job playing for a bar near the harbor, Micky, Davy, and Peter overhear a pair of sailors talking about the requirements for a job. Faking those requirements, they get hired; one sailor calls his captain and lets him know he hired three dummies for the job. The next morning, all four Monkees arrive on board and are assigned the task of hoisting the mainsail, which they do without unfurling it and have to redo. Micky, Davy, and Peter are struck with seasickness; Micky passes around seasickness pills, which cure them but make Mike seasick, so they send him below. When the ship's roll is called, Peter is stuck in the rigging and can't climb down. When he falls out, the captain threatens to keelhaul and lash all of them, until he finds out he has Davy Jones on his ship (Micky informs him that at age 25, Davy will inherit the famous Locker), at which point he makes Davy his cabin boy and sets Micky and Peter to swab the deck. After encountering several famous captains from literature, Davy finally finds the captain's cabin, but the Captain's having a conference with his parrot and sends the food back to the galley. Davy hangs around and discovers that the captain's plan involves two million dollars in gold. Meanwhile, Peter and Micky are singing an acoustic rendition of "Tear The Top Right Off My Head" belowdecks; Davy suggests that they sneak into the captain's cabin so Micky can impersonate the parrot and they can find out the whole plan. They do (after taping the parrot's beak shut); the captain intends to capture the Queen Anne and steal her cargo, after being dismissed as her captain for what he thinks is insufficient reason. Micky thinks the captain is having a psychotic break, but then he appears in an eyepatch and hands out cutlasses while the first mate unwraps the cannon and the second mate runs up the Jolly Roger. The boys attempt to incite a mutiny, but fail, as no one actually understood what Peter was saying. The three are made to walk the plank, but the lookout sights the Queen Anne and they're temporarily spared as the pirates prep the cannon. In order to stop them, the three boys steal the canon start a romp to "Daydream Believer," which involves Peter and Davy fighting off the pirates with cutlasses while Micky swings in the rigging. At the end, the captain, first mate, and second mate are caught in a large net. The captain of the Queen Anne thanks them, and secures them a promotion to joint first mates - under Captain Horace, the parrot! [Unrelated video for "Star Collector" follows.]
This isn't a Mikeless episode, but he's only in two scenes and the end video. The internet informs me that he genuinely got seasick on the boat, which implies that his lines were divvied up among the other ones in some quick rewriting. (Jones confirms that something like that happened in the commentary track.) I think I can see a few of the places where that happened, and once again, Micky steps up to the leader role in Mike's absence.
Micky does the voice of the parrot, which is why his impersonation is identical to the parrot's actual lines.
There's only one girl in this episode, and she's in a slightly disturbing gag scene - Peter as one of the literary captains (not identified, but he's in what looks like Elizabethan-era period garb) grabs the unnamed girl, announces that he likes 'em with a little spirit, and kisses her; she slaps him, and he stumbles backwards, saying there are reasonable limits for everything. *sigh* Someday we'll be in an era when everyone knows harassment isn't funny, but at least he gets his comeuppance and doesn't try it again.
There's also another slightly disturbing moment involving Peter - during the romp, he stabs one of the pirates using the sword-under-the-arm gag. It's not clear what level of reality that happens on; did our peaceable Peter actually injure someone there? Given that it's during the romp, and the guy who got 'stabbed' is also one of the ones who ends up netted at the end, I'm going to assume not, but this is one of the places that operating at different levels of fourth wall is jarring more than funny.
Watching Peter playing acoustic guitar and singing in the top bunk while Micky sits in the lower bunk and sings along is kind of fun; it's almost a shame to have Davy interrupt it to push the plot forward. (I wonder if that was ad-libbed by Peter and Micky to replace some Mike dialogue there?) Almost every time he's singing for real (as opposed to miming), Micky has his eyes closed, as he does here. It's cute. (I do that too if I know the piece well enough.)
The video is also playing with levels of abstraction - at the beginning, the four of them are in a huddle, all wearing identical white turtlenecks. Davy spins out with the tambourine to start the vocals. Peter spins out next - with no instrument at all, but he begins miming the bass line, doing his usual hip-swaying and jiving. Mike spins out next, and begins miming playing lead guitar, doing his usual standing stock still with a look of intense concentration! Micky never spins, he just steps back behind the single cymbal (I think it's the ride) and picks up a pair of drumsticks that are almost as long as his arms! After he goofs around with them, Mike reaches back and borrows one, which he proceeds to use to mime the guitar part so he has something to finger on. Peter switches to miming keyboards during the Moog solo. Meanwhile, there are psychedelic flashing lights in odd colors, and Mike's blue hat on a stand. It's actually one of their better videos.
There's a commentary track from Jones that's mostly about how much fun it was to shoot on a real boat, although there are some interesting digressions about clothes and songwriting. He also pronounces Moog both ways over the course of the video ([mog] and [mug], if you know IPA), which is sort of unhelpful.
This episode is better than I remember it being; it's not great, but it rises above the usual formula.
Okay, so two better-than-average episodes and one frantic, funky one that is at least partly new to me - and fabulous, if a bit sad in one spot for external reasons. This is Season Two as I remember it, and I think the next two episodes are about the same as this one (the one after that is the Christmas special, which is sort of its own thing). After that we get a run of five that I'm really looking forward to, ending with "The Devil And Peter Tork," which is widely considered the best episode of the whole run. Then there are four I remember being less than the top of their game, including a comedic drag ep, and then the last two, which are two more Fetish Fuel entries for me. I don't know if I'm going to bother with the post-show special, "33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee," as it's not part of the canon and it's generally considered to suck.
Oh, and Micky is wearing white Converse sneakers in some of these episodes. I can't see whether they're hightops or normal sneakers because the bellbottoms cover his ankles, but now I'm tempted to see if I can still get a matching pair. Maybe we'll get a better view of them in another episode; I know we get several shots of his feet in Episode 49, but I don't remember if he's wearing the same shoes or not.
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Date: 2013-07-25 04:41 pm (UTC)That squicks me out like whoa.
Do episodes 42 & 43 actually have the same title, or was that a braino? It would be unusual, but I can see them doing it for this show.
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Date: 2013-07-26 05:16 am (UTC)Oops!
Date: 2013-07-25 04:43 pm (UTC)