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The Duck Factory (1984)
Coulda been a contender
My grade is projecting on a curve. Almost every sitcom starts slowly (in the first few episodes), because it has to set up the premise and introduce the characters. It spends the next few episodes trying to decide which characters deserve the most airtime. After 8-10 shows run, the show gets feedback from viewers, critics and the industry and fine-tunes. If it's going to be any good, it builds.
THE DUCK FACTORY got only 13 episodes-- and was screwed from day one. NBC originally intended to air it in the fall, but the network decided to give BUFFALO BILL (a low-rated well-reviewed sitcom) another chance. So the show got pushed back as a mid-season replacement.
That meant the creative team-- Creator Alan Burns (who co-created the Mary Tyler Moors Show), Director Gene Reynolds (M*A*S*H and Lou Grant), Producers Rod Daniel (WKRP In Cincinnati) , Thad Mumford (M*A*S*H, Maude) and Dan Wilcox (M*A*S*H, America 2-Night)-- had to work in a vacuum
Given their resumes, they probably would have figured it out. But NBC also ran the episodes out of order.-- even though the show used a continuing storyline. How bad was it? The pilot episode featured a cliffhanger-- the second episode (which resolved it) was the 13th episode aired. The tenth episode produced aired third
(If you want to go to YouTube and watch the show in sequence, the correct order is episode 1-13-10-3-4-6-8-2-5-9-11-7).
After airing seven episodes NBC pre-empted it for one week-- then switched the timeslot from Thursday at 9:30 to Wednesday. Audiences-- already disconcerted by watching episodes out of order-- probably assumed it had been cancelled. Which NBC soon did.
Was it good? Not eight stars- maybe six. It was so busy setting up its premise (which was involved) that it had to shortchange on jokes a bit.
All-American Boy grew up in Duluth Minnesota watching Dippy Duck cartoons. Once he graduates, he sends Dippy's creator his portfolio-- and gets hired. He moves out to Hollywood-- and arrives the day of the creator's funeral.
It turns out the boss was a control freak who ordered everyone around, so his staff is now rudderless. The network head is new and doesn't like the show anymore. Oh, and the boss married an airhead topless dancer three weeks before he died.
So young Skip Tarkenton (who idolizes all the employees because he's such a geek that he watches credits) has to save the day.
Burns got his start working for Jay Ward, on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. Ward was allegedly a lot like this show's dead boss. So there are a string of jabs at cheapskate owners who hump the help, clueless network and the cut-throat industry. The heroes of the show are the underpaid, overworked shoestring staff.
If you know how cartoons are made, the show is VERY funny. If you come in cold, your mileage might vary. One episode has the voice of Dippy (played by Don Messick, the voice of Scooby-Doo, Bamm-Bamm Rubble, Muttley, Boo-Boo and Ranger Smith) temporarily forgetting how to do his voice-- and running the risk (they can't wait for him to work it out) of being replaced.
Something like that nearly happened to a legendary voice actor. You might not buy the premise if you don't know it. A lot of the jokes (the production is outsourced to Panama, where the peons make 50 cents a day) seem over the top. ("Could it really be that bad?" you wonder. Actually, yeah (or pretty close).
One thing that disappoints everyone who digs episodes up. Yes, the star of the show is Jim Carrey. But he's 22, playing his first major role-- and he's playing "Naive midwestern kid in the Big City." Of course he is bland. Carrey starts to get more whacked out as the show progresses-- one can imagine him becoming hilarious in season two.
But the show never got that far.
Jack Gilford (as a legendary animator), Messick, Theresa Ganzel (the wife) and Julie Payne (the hard-nosed business manager) are all funny. Everyone else seems to have potential to be at least pretty good.
But NBC killed it before the show got rolling-- thereby proving the cracks about the network were on-target.
Better Off Ted (2009)
Better Off Not Watching
The upside to going with a streaming service is that you get a chance to watch all the low-rated critical darlings that got cancelled too soon. The downside is that you learn how awful many critics are.
"Better off Ted" lifts its title-- and its general attitude-- from a 1985 teen movie starring John Cusack. Deadpan hero trapped in an insane world, trying to make sense of life and behave decently. Jay Harrington runs the R&D lab for an multinational corporation devoted to making money through the pursuit of evil. He follows orders, occasionally trying to make it more competent and less venal.
It's the same territory mined-- in different ways and to varying levels of competence-- by "The Office", "30 Rock", "Scrubs", "Ally McBeal", "Desperate Housewives". "Dilbert", "Parks And Recreation", "Superstore", "Arrested Development" and "Mr. Sunshine" (the Matthew Perry-Allison Janney comedy, not the Netflix thing). Every personality is cartoonish, each is incompetent in different ways, the plots are silly and get resolved in eye-rolling ways..
Except when the show goes after IT and HR, the 'satire' is flabby and unrealistic. To give you an idea of the level of verisimilitude aimed at, R&D once created an "octochicken." No explanation why-- not even "four times as many wings"-- just there for a punchline.
You can tell basically no one attached to the show knows anything about how multinationals work. If they had, the punchlines would sting. I consult at Fortune 500 firms, so I should have loved this. I averaged one chuckle per show.
Watched the first six hoping they were having growing pains; realized they had no intention of growing by the end of the first season. Because many reviews insisted season two was better, because I could watch in a steady stream (without 10 minutes of ads per show) and I knew there were only 13 more, I powered through the rest.
Had I had to wait a week for shows and sit through ads, I would have bailed..Any of the ten shows I listed earlier was better. Serves me right for watching a show created by the guy who also birthed "Andy Richter Controls The Universe."
A Home of Our Own (1993)
A Heartburning Saga
Patrick Sheane Duncan's screenplay for MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS got a little cheesy or saccharine at times. But there was enough grit in every scene to make it believable. The script of A HOME OF OUR OWN ladles on the Velveeta and Karo Syrup to the point where you'll smack your head in every scene.
Kathy Bates is a single mom with six kids. She pours abuse on her absent husband every time she refers to him (but never by name). He abandoned her, you assume.
D'OH!!! He died. And she loved him desperately. M. Night Shyamalan couldn't have done that twist more cringefully.
Bates is working in a potato chip factory where a boss grabs her butt. She beats him up, then slugs his boss (who tries to break it up) for good measure. HOLY PLOT DEVICE, BATMAN!!! Bates loses her job. Better leave LA and drive to Idaho to start a new life.
Bates tells eldest son Ed Furlong that she wants to find a nice home to raise her kids, and she'll know the right place when she sees it.
She finds an a half-finished shack with no roof or windows (holes in the walls). She'll take it!!
Yes, of course they live comfortably. In a shack with canvas tied over the rafters. In Idaho. In winter.
No, nobody from Child Welfare tries to take the kids away. Yes, Bates manages to feed seven people on her earnings as a waitress in a bowling alley in BFE. No, Bates won't apply for relief-- or even take donations from the local priest. Yes, she reams him out every time she sees him.
It's like Performance Art; I kept watching to see how high the movie would stack the stoopid. Other than Furlong, only one of the moppets gets to be a person. Second son-- who has to sit next to Mom in the outhouse in one memorable scene-- gets a job at a junkyard so he can buy the family a toilet with his wages.
When he finally gets it hooked up, he decides to celebrate by burning down the outhouse. And remember that tarp serving as the roof?
You can guess the rest. But don't worry-- the neighbors show how much they love the plucky "Lacey Tribe" in the last scene.
DIrector Stephen Herek saved HOLLAND from excess by pulling back hard on the reins in many scenes. This movie goes down because Director Tony Bill keeps asking viewers "Would you like Kool Whip and Bacos on your Cheez Whiz?" in every scene.
Bates, who refuses to play even remotely likable (think Lewis Black with boobs) helps. Furlong tries, but the narration by his future self is just too much freight to carry. Jean Lepine's photography is pretty; Michael Covertino's portentous score drenches the film in deeply meaningful strings.
Yes, you could call this a "feel good" movie. It made me feel good about how good Robert Benton's PLACES IN THE HEART is.
Unless you're willing to mock it-- or willing to clutch every manipulation to your breast-- this is a "Straight to Lifetime Movie Network" deal.
Whiskey Cavalier (2019)
Covert Affairs In Plain Psyche of the Burn Notice
Do you miss the old USA Network caper shows and want new programming in the worst way? WHISKEY CAVALIER is exactly that. It's a spectacularly bad mashup of all the teeth-gritting elements of the shows that featured a team of stereotyped characters wisecracking their way through faux danger.
But USA shows did try to make things feel authentic and offers protagonists who seemed competent. WHISKEY CAVALIER fails on both counts. The 'hero' is allegedly a world-class FBI agent who gets dumped by his fiance and turns into a weepy mess. His bosses know he's drunk-dialing fellow agents at all hours, asking them for relationship hints-- when he isn't breaking protocol on his assignments. (He gets two people killed in the first five minutes. Don't worry-- they're just bad guys.)
But the agency whose recent directors include Robert Mueller and James Comey doesn't suspend him-- they send him after an NSA analyst (read: Edward Snowden-style computer genius).
He encounters a CIA operative-- naturally a stone fox with no emotions. She's flawed too (she's been sleeping with a mercenary who sells her out to the Russians). The NSA analyst just happens to be a Hannibal Burress knockoff. The other CIA agent is an Indian channeling Kunal Nayyar; the other FBI agent is a smokin'-hot all-knowing profiler who's chosen to be "just friends" with Trainwreck Mulder.
The show is so monumentally unsubtle that it becomes clear they will all form a LEVERAGE-style team about 25 minutes into the pilot.
Will they be able to save the world? Which of the team's hotties will bump uglies with the bereaved 'hero'? Will the two colored guys ever realize their best chance for a relationship is to go gay on each other?
Tune in next week for the answers. I'm outta here...
Lost in Space (1965)
What a Colossal Joke
LOST IN SPACE might be the original example of someone saying "That's not a bug-- it's a feature!" The show was always hideous, but its awfulness came in two varieties. In the first season, when it was in black & white, it was ridiculous and unbelievable. In its second and third seasons, it was ridiculous and amusing, in a cubist sort of way.
LOST IN SPACE was originally intended (to use programming parlance) to be "Swiss Family Robinson in Space." Schlockmeister Irwin Allen got the idea to send a typical American family into space, but get them lost on a deserted planet. CBS bought the show and took it into production.
Soon afterward, the show received a lucky break when another writer- producer sent them a proposal for a show he described as "Wagon Train to the Stars." CBS read the pitch and pulled Gene Roddenberry into a lengthy meeting, where they asked questions about what the ship should look like, what type of music to use and stories he might run.
Among other things, Roddenberry told CBS that his music would probably borrow from Bernard Herrman's score for THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and his ship might be based on something like the United Planets Cruiser C57-D in FORBIDDEN PLANET.
CBS thanked him for coming in and explained that they already had a show they liked better (their show had kids). But LOST IN SPACE took Roddenberry's advice about Herrmann's music, and borrowed the look of the ship (and, soon, another element) from the 1956 movie.
The show hit a bump when the original pilot, which showed the ship getting lost due to mechanical failure, was rejected. In the 19690's, the US was trying to beat the commies to the moon, so you DID NOT make a TV show that even hinted our rockets might have ANY problems.
Allen's solution? Make the cause a saboteur hired by a foreign government. In the rewrite, he also added a character based on FORBIDDEN PLANET's Robby the Robot.
If the show had followed Irwin's original idea (have Dr. Smith killed or marooned), the show might have been less goofy. But it was too dark for a 60's show aimed partly at kids, so the show asked the audience to believe that members of a government mission-- which had been successfully sabotaged-- would bring the saboteur along, trust him and take risks to save him.
The show got abysmal reviews and wasn't very popular-- and by the middle of season one, it had exhausted both Roddenberry's ideas and the limited vein of creativity of its staff. (A major problem was its constant attempts to build suspense by making you wonder if the ship would be destroyed and everyone on it would die. Even six-year-olds realize that won't happen.)
Looking for a fix, someone noticed that LOST IN SPACE was about a group of people trying to get home-- and CBS already had a hit show about a group of people in pretty much the same fix.
So the evil Dr. Smith got turned into the intergalactic Willy Gilligan, the Robot became Jonas Grumby, John Robinson the brilliant scientist became Roy Hinkley-- and the show became "Cretin's Island In Space." The three women and extra man got swept aside as SMith, the robot and the cute kid had adventures. When ABC's mid-season replacement (BATMAN) became a hit and any attempt at plausibility went out the window.
If you grew up with these shows-- if you came home from school and it was either this on channel 43 or THE MUNSTERS and THE ADDAMS FAMILY on Channel 61-- you watched. At some point, you began making fun of the idiotic premises and stupid plots while being amused by the comedic performances and campy one-liners. In effect, it was like watching MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER.
And some of it grew on us. If my brother doesn't want to throw something fundamentally worthless away, he "My cosmonium-- never!" (Episode 30) I wakened my college roommate by saying "Get up little master!" and pumping my foot up and down on the bed like the space hippies drilling in #68.
When I wanted my brother to sell me some stereo stuff, I brought him a plate of plate of beef stroganoff (Dr Smith trades the ship's control system for this in #83). When he wants a beer, he says "Moisture! I need Moisture!!" (as the giant talking carrot does in #82). There are performances from Harris, Stanley Adams, Fritz Feld, Ronald Long and Strother Martin that where you wonder if the whole production company was high during the filming.
If you like to make fun of bad science fiction, try season 2-3 and a few from 1. But understand what you're getting, because there are black holes that suck less than LOST IN SPACE.
Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night (1988)
Not much icing, but very good cake
When this concert was filmed in 1988, Roy Orbison had come back from the creatively dead. He hadn't recorded since 1979-- hadn't had a record hit the chart since 1966 (a greatest hits compilation snuck into the Top 100 at #95 in 1972). People knew the name, but had forgotten the music.
But when David Lynch used Orbison's "In Dreams" as the centerpiece of BLUE VELVET, everyone who saw the movie wanted the song-- and Orbison was suddenly hotter than he'd been in decades. This film was his "coming out" party-- a small-club performance (LA's famous Coconut Grove) of his greatest hits with a superstar band, filmed in high-definition black and white.
The people whop put this show together had the good sense to hire T-Bone Burneett (who assembled the music for O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? and put Alison Krauss and Robert Plant together) as musical director. For the rhythm section, he reunited Elvis Presley's "TCB Band" (Takin' Care of Business): pianist Glen Hardin, bassist Jerry Scheff, drummer Ronnie Tutt and James Burton (who has made the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame as a sideman) on lead guitar.
Because Orbison was (a) exceptionally talented, (b) a genuine hard-luck story (his wife and two sons had died in different accidents) and (c) one of the nicest guys ever to walk the earth, scads of people offered to help, thinking their name might boost sales.
So there were two trios (one male, one female) of backing vocalists. The men were singer-songwriter (five hits for the Eagles) J.D. Souther, Dylan sideman Steve Soles and Jackson Browne. Not a bad trio.
The least talented of the trio of women (Jennifer Warnes) performed three songs that won Academy Awards for best song. Her partners were K.D. Lang and Bonnie Raitt. Plus, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen also played backup on at least one song.
My concern, when I saw all these names, was that the show would be a self-indulgent superstar cabaret (like the finales of the R&R HOF), with half-drunk egotists who sort-of-knew the songs taking turns upstaging Orbison by performing with him and delivering self-indulgent tributes in between.
Didn't happen. With a few exceptions, everyone keeps their egos in check. When Lang windmills during "(All I Can Do is) Dream You", she looks genuinely excited by a strong performance of an uptempo song. And that is one of only two songs from the upcoming comeback album, All the hits are here; only an Orbison scholar might quibble about one or two minor hits being missing.
So why two stars off? For one thing, Orbison is a dull live performer. He's a great singer and a good guitarist. But all he ever did was stand there. Between songs, he says "Thank You"-- no stories or memories like you'd get on a VH-1 retrospective. There's no backstage bits or insights from the band (like the astute comments about Chuck Berry that punctuate HAIL HAIL ROCK AND ROLL). All you get is the music.
The director tries to jazz things up by constantly cutting to show one star or another-- but since everyone is dialing it back so as not to upstage Orbison, you're not gaining anything by watching this film instead of listening to the CD.
The arrangements try very hard to clone the originals-- since there is a string section, nobody can improvise. They're excellent performances... but it's like hearing the greatest hits album with better sound.
Except for one spot, there's nothing spontaneous. And that one spot made me grind my teeth.
In the middle of "Pretty Woman", they stage a guitar duel between Burton and Springsteen. To my ears (I play guitar), this is like watching a duel between a wolverine and a hamster. It's precisely the sort of nightmare I dreaded. And it eats up 6 minutes of the 60.
It appears on PBS a lot, and I'd encourage you to watch it (8 stars is a B+). But if you want to buy something, get the CD, as opposed to the DVD or paying to watch it. The CD costs less, it has three more songs and you really don't gain anything from the video. The cake (the music) is wonderful, but there isn't enough icing to justify something more.
The Defenders (1961)
The Best 'Cable Drama' in Network TV History
The "Golden Age of Television"-- the era of live dramas about topical events-- officially ended in 1961, when PLAYHOUSE 90 went off the air and director John Frankenheimer left for Hollywood.
By that time, almost all its great writers-- Paddy Chayefsky, Gore Vidal, Horton Foote, Tad Mosel, Robert Alan Aurthur, Arnold Schulman, J.P. Miller, Frank Gilroy, Abby Mann, Leslie Stevens, Paul Monash and William Gibson-- had left television for Broadway, books or Hollywood.
Writing for TV was an exhausting, infuriating occupation. Getting any meaningful idea from page to screen required endless fights with sponsors and censors. Rod Serling, who submitted a script based on the lynching of Emmitt Till, a 14-year old black in Mississippi, saw his victim transformed into an immigrant in New England. The sponsor even forbade residents to be seen drinking Coca-Cola, out of concern that it might suggest the South-- and racists might protest.
Two writers had the courage to remain in TV. Serling created THE TWILIGHT ZONE, so he could use allegory and allusion to disguise social comment (nobody protested scripts where Martians were lynched, he cracked).
Reginald Rose, who wrote "12 Angry Men" and "Thunder on Sycamore Street" simply challenged the industry head-on. THE DEFENDERS was based on his two-part STUDIO ONE script, where a father-son team of lawyers (Ralph Bellamy and William Shatner) defends a 19-year-old (Steve McQueen) charged with murder that he insists he did not commit.
In the series, E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed played defense attorneys committed to making sure every defendant gets his rights under the law.
Marshall's Lawrence Preston is very like his "Juror 4"-- careful, logical and impossible to move with appeals to emotion. Reed's Kenneth has a social conscience and burning desire to see what he considers justice done, even if it violates the letter of the law. (Some of the most effective scenes occur when two actors argue their convictions to each other.)
A shorthand description of an episode for contemporary audiences would be "Keith Olbermann's Law and Order". Every one of the 132 shows argued legal issues that are still hot-buttons today. Remember: in 1961, abortion and birth control were illegal. Segregation wasn't. The US was fighting in Vietnam. Falsely-accused Communists were still blacklisted.
But the Prestons defended a neo-nazi arrested for inciting the crowd to beat a protester. They defended a Dr. Kevorkian, civil rights demonstrators, abortionists, immigrants without citizenship, draft- dodgers, pornographers, atheists and road rage murderers. (The only thing I don't remember seeing was a homosexual.) As I remember, the Prestons lost more cases than they won. But they made sure everyone got his or her day in court and a full and fair hearing.
THE WIRE, DEADWOOD, MAD MEN, OZ, BREAKING BAD and THE SOPRANOS are all good shows. Put in the context of their eras, not one compares to what THE DEFENDERS achieved. It still has the power to enrage. Wingnuts I've sent to YouTube to watch it die of apoplexy when they hear unapologetic advocating for civil liberties (even though their side gets equal time).
THE DEFENDERS was a top-30 show when there were only three channels. It won 13 Emmies-- Best Drama three times, Marshall for Best Actor twice, four for best writing, three for best direction. The shows still hold up well. They're talky, some of their dramatic conventions, psychology and sociology has dated. But the ideas are timeless, the writing is stellar and the acting and directing is often stunning.
There's a reason both MAD MEN and BOSTON LEGAL paid tribute to THE DEFENDERS in an episode. It's an outrage that a full run of this groundbreaking show isn't available on DVD-- while that execrable impostor starring Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell already is.