So. The Monkees. One of my first instances of appointment television, made easier by the fact that many of the episodes aired during my summer vacation, when I was either home alone or at my baby sitter's. And what's better for an only child than hanging out with four adorable, somewhat hapless-and-resourceful-at-the-same-time friends, who also provide a kick-ass soundtrack? It helps when your real-life friends are equally as into this sort of thing and your parents seem to have no problem enabling. Rock.
As a kid, it's kind of hard to resist grown-but-still-young men acting like they're your age. In this case, a struggling rock group is on their own, but they don't have all the answers yet and still manage to get in trouble, as you do. Improbable in real life - I mean, I don't know too many 20somethings mistakenly purchasing a pair of maracas with secret spy microfilm in it - but as a kid? This concept is amazing. Like, you know when you're really young and there's a party with mostly adults, and then there's that one teenager/young "grownup" who takes an interest in what you're doing and ends up playing with you? And you feel incredibly cool? That's what this show was like when I was younger.
Now, it's a whole other thing. It's certainly not rocket science and a few things are a bit dated, but there are still moments/sight gags that are laugh-out-loud funny. There are also things that make you go "aww", because you're watching it with an adult mindset and the characters are now younger than you (which is quite the mindf***). Like, one of the things that strikes me as I watch this show as an adult is how utterly devoted the characters were to each other. Like, one will get involved in a completely ridiculous situation and the rest don't get annoyed or angry. Nay, without a word or even an eyeroll, they decide to help. Again, probably not how things go in real life, but it's a pretty nice message to send kids: Have patience with other people's flaws/issues, and they will do the same for you. What a concept.
Anyhow, I thought I'd highlight some of my favorite episodes, having watched them at age 9/10 and at 35. Kid KB and Adult KB are totally high-fiving on this right now (even though Kid KB is like "WHAT'S AN INTERNET?"). I'll put links to the episodes in each title, in case you find yourself inclined to see what I'm talking about or want to relive the awesomeness yourself. And I may do a separate post on the "romp" sequences, aka a precursor to music videos, aka totally on-par with the montage-y part of an A-Team episode where they make weapons/booby traps/etc., in terms of Best Things In TV Shows.
But as for episodes:
Monkee See, Monkee Die
Right after Davy died, there was a Monkees marathon on while I was visiting my parents. And we totally watched this episode, which was the first full one I'd seen since probably 1988. It's one of the first of the series, as is evidenced by everyone's hair (Peter and Mike: shortish, no mutton chops. Micky: straight. Davy: Somewhat long). Basically, the Monkees are such nice guys - once returning a wallet with $600 to the man they think is its owner - that the "owner" decides to leave them his library's organ after he passes away. But the guys must go to his creepy island mansion to claim it, and there are other people there claiming their willed gifts, and some who want the old dude's old fortune, and are PISSED when it's left to his grand niece. So of course all these stodgy "adults" want her out of the picture, and the Monkees have to help the gal out — partly because they're nice and can't resist thwarting a scheme, mostly because Davy has fallen in love even before conversing with her, as per episodic custom.
At one point, the guys decide the place is too creepy and they have to decide who stands watch while the other three sleep. Because they are not too macho to act frightened, they shoot fingers for it. And as they do, this happens...:
...which, for some reason, just cracks my s*** up now. As do all of their adorable pajamas, and the St. Bernard Mike somehow manages to summon with some random bones lying in the closet. I remember this episode from when I was a kid because it's where I learned what a seance was. And also where I learned the word "pshaw." I did not question why Micky was seemingly making his own roofies, but I was probably too entranced in his MacGyver/A-Teamness of making a radio into a telephone to notice.
Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
You know why I remember this episode from when I was a kid? Not because Davy is the absolute definition of "I want to put him in my pocket" here. Not because Mike imagines himself a matador when tasked with milking a cow. Not because Peter is crazy crazy awesome enough to make "cream of root beer" soup. And certainly not because a horse is a special guest star. Nay. (See what I did there?) It's Micky and his, um, unique way of calling the pigs home (at the 1:25 mark).
My friends and I? Well, we rewound this scene like sixty times on the good old VCR. I kid you not. It's where I learned what "sooey pig" meant, too, and where else is a tween from suburban New Jersey going to get that sort of information? The Monkees: Bringing you The More You Know before The More You Know was even a gleam in someone's eye. (And, yes, I remember a time on NBC when that didn't yet exist in the world of Saturday Morning Cartoons. Were the Smurfs better without a commercial break "message"? Probably)
Monkees On the Wheel
This is one of those episodes that I don't think you can appreciate unless you've watched a good chunk of the series, because it's the one that kind of goes off the rails in terms of silliness and banks a lot on the guys' chemistry. Also, I'd be willing to bet there was some, um, recreational things, going on during filming. But all the zaniness works here, and I suppose setting it in a casino with Rip Taylor as a special guest star only adds to the insanity. Micky lamenting the nonexistence of his "magic fingers" (and Davy telling him he thinks they're still nice), Peter stealing Davy's usual line of "You must be joking" and Mike blindly wandering into a wall, calling for the token hot girl of the episode all work really well, if complete and utter silliness is your bag (it's my steamer trunk, by the by).
Also, the romp, set to "The Door Into Summer" (a pretty kick-ass little tune, BTW) is pretty awesome, with some wonderful little tongue-in-cheek moments: Mike acting as a scale, everyone getting distracted by the token hot girl, Peter sitting on the roulette wheel and passing out flowers. Because it's the 60s, y'all.
Fairy Tale
I do not remember this episode from when I was a kid, and that's a shame, because taking a stab at fables and putting characters in costume, especially cross dressing, is never wrong when children are involved. But then I do not think I would've been able to appreciate Mike Nesmith's turn as "Princess Gwen" as much as I do now. If only because while also playing a lowly townsperson, he gets to lustfully admire the princess/himself with "A body like that and those sideburns"
And Micky's delivery on the line "Right, sammiches, yeah" kills me for some reason. Also "Hey, Town Cryer, baby." And glass beer stines full of...milk. And the "tall tower" where the princess is being held against her will in the medieval tale is none other than the Empire State Building, which I've posted about before. It was a sight-gag I was not expecting the first time I saw it, and literally LOL'd. Because I'm easy like that. And that's not even to mention Davy as Red Riding Hood/Gretel and Micky as Goldilocks/Hansel. And the fact that they're all wearing their modern-day watches
It's all completely silly, but it works because everyone involved seems to be having a pretty damn good time.
The Devil and Peter Tork
This might be the most sincere and sweetest episode in the whole series. Peter, the sensitive, simple one, gets lured into a music shop, where the Devil takes advantage of Peter's adoration of a harp and swindles him out of his soul for said harp and the sudden ability to play it. Of course, when the guys figure this out they're horrified, but what I really like about it is how it illustrates the depths of their friendship: Davy, upon hearing that Hell is like being in an eternal depression, volunteers to go in Peter's place, for crying out loud. That's friendship, man.
The romp - in which the guys all get to experience Hell to the tune of "Salesman" (one of the more perfect meetings of music and montage in the series) is made up of a bunch of quick shots and is one of the more modern-feeling montages they do. And then, in the trial sequence, where Micky, Mike and Davy do battle with the Devil for Peter's soul, Mike makes a lovely little speech about how Peter's love for the harp and his own abilities made him able to play it, not the Devil's powers or his contract, and nothing can take that away from him (which, sidebar is all sort of a nice little parallel to what the group was going through with trying to gain their musical independence and prove that they could indeed play their own music. It had to be pretty s***ty to have to deal with the criticism they got back then, when they did, indeed want to be part of the musical action), and then Peter's playing makes called-to-trial witnesses Billy the Kid, Blackbeard and Atilla the Hun cry.
Peter's childlike innocence, and the guys fighting to preserve that innocence puts it over the top in terms of good episodes. Also it's pretty awesome given the 20-20 hindsight you can have over saying the word Hell on TV. Oh, how times have changed.
Art for Monkees' Sake:
This episode is, hands down, my favorite episode as an adult, because there is so much awesomeness jam-packed into this one. Basically, Peter is suddenly Thomas Kinkade or something, and while showcasing this ability at an art museum is recruited by two shifty security guards to replicate a famous painting they intend to steal and replace with Peter's copy. They then take him hostage, not realizing he has three friends who don't believe in calling the cops when one of them goes missing.
Why it's awesome:
- When one of the guards impatiently asks Peter to finish the painting - a centuries-old portrait - Peter lovingly adds to it a hat that looks like Mike's. Like so.
- When the other guys discover Peter missing, they split up in the museum to find him. Micky ventures into a room with an artist who is rabidly pretentious and intense (he paints with his hands and his feet) and is therefore terrifying. Mike wanders into a room where a formal-looking audience is prepared to watch a piano concert... or, rather, Liberace - yes, Liberace - destroy a piano with a golden sledgehammer...as performance art? I don't know. But I do know the close-ups of Mike's horrified face, followed by close-ups of a gleeful sledgehammer-wielding Liberace, with Mike Nesmith, the actor, collapsing with laughter in the background are worth it alone.
- The homage to Mission: Impossible, in which the guys break into the museum to switch the paintings, complete with nicknames and rope ladders.
- Micky meowing at random intervals during the caper... because he's a cat burglar, y'all.
- The romp. Oh, this one is wonderful. Between Micky and Mike waltzing with their goggles on, to Peter and Mike mysteriously - and delightedly - floating off the balcony, to the scary artist just happening to show up and spoil Micky's good time, as well as reliving some of Liberace's piano demolition, it's kind of in the pantheon of Monkee romps. For me, anyway.
Too Many Girls
It's rare that I can point to one specific moment in a show that made me fall in love with it. Like, I only know of two current programs that I can say this about (The Office, season one, the Basketball episode when Stanley starts to dribble, and "Mr. Campbell...who cares?" in season one of Mad Men), but it doesn't happen a lot, and the first time it ever happened for me was with The Monkees. In this case, the first 40 seconds of this clip - in an episode where a blinded-by-love Davy gets him tricked into performing in a talent show with a girl - made me this show's bitch. Keep in mind I was 9, but I still get a kick out it :
The bird in the bag, you guys. Oh my god. I remember watching this on Nick at Nite over at my friend Brian's house and both of us literally falling over, howling with laughter. Between the squawk, the pathetic flurry of feathers and then the pained look on Peter's face, I was totally smitten. That's the kind of kid I was. I also watched this episode recently with Davy Jones' commentary, and when this scene came on, he could not stop laughing. So I know I'm not the only one.
It's also awesome because the guys went to such great lengths to keep Davy from getting used by this chick and her stage mother. I mean, since Davy won't listen to his buds on any other matter related to women, they enter this America's Got Talent like show (no, really, people were supposed to call in and vote for their favorite act) just so they can sabotage this woman's scheming and get their friend back from her clutches. It works, and Davy apologizes, and just like that, the guys forgive him.
Friendship, y'all.
