LT Saloon

It was rare when my middle brother and I agreed as kids. When Bullwinkle offered two alternate titles for the next episode we would choose different ones. I’m surprised we even agreed about Bullwinkle or Crusader Rabbit. Since he ran the TV early Saturdays, I finally saw Howdy Doody at the end of the last show.

“Hey that looks like it might have been good!’
“No, it’s stupid.”

(Hence I’m the children’s entertainer with puppets and he’s not.)

But we agreed about Soupy. Soupy Sales offered one of the best versions of slapstick, deadpan looks at the camera and fiction narratives about, amongst many things, his pretty much never seen dog “Fang” during the 60s. I think at best we may have seen a huge paw coming from off camera. “Fang” was specifically funny for us because we had had a dog named Lucky who probably bit everyone in the family we eventually had to put down, adding humor to a very unfunny, tense, then sad situation. He even managed to make pies in the face funny sometimes, amazing even back then when it was already a ho hum cliche’.

I’ll never forget that we were watching when he got kicked off the air for a brief while. He looked into the camera and, with what should have been a trademarked smirk, he said; paraphrased…

“Do you know where your Mommy’s purse is boys and girls? Find the thing inside with green stuff sticking out, put it into a stamped envelope and send it to Soupy Sales, Channel 5…”

I turned to my brother and said, “He’s going to get in trouble for that…”

How’s this for irony…

“He was born Milton Supman on Jan. 28, 1926, in the North Carolina backwater of Franklinton. The Supmans were the only Jews in town. Sales’ father ran a dry goods store that sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.”

“The family name was often mispronounced as “Soupman.” To make matters worse, his parents, who had nicknamed his brothers ‘Hambone’ and ‘Chickenbone,’ dubbed him ‘Soupbone.’ Eventually, Milton became just Soupy.”

Link
Because any good comedian knows where the line is between acceptable and not, they walk that line and may step over it occasionally. I find those who don’t usually beyond “un-funny.”

Soupy knew where that thin line was and his dance down it was a marvel to watch. Since some of his shows were live, if I remember right, his missteps and trips were even better.

So let’s be serious for a moment and remember Soupy…

Courtesy i.zdnet.com

Hard isn’t it? Good. Soupy would have wanted it that way.

Yeah, I’m talking to you Mr. or Ms. barely 20-something who should be looking for a real job, instead of earning more than I’ll ever earn in three or four lifetimes. (Whine, bitch, moan, pity self, then start again.)

To keep this article focused, I’m going to stick mostly with the monster side of this premise: adding just a smidgen of alien too. I suppose the first time I started switching to, instead of away, from this premise was Special Unit 2. Special Unit 2 didn’t take itself seriously. You had a smartass, strong-willed, policewoman who almost loses her job because of what she sees and does… but gets promoted: turned team member… teamed up with a smartass, chauvinistic, male partner: both seeking out creatures of the night (or day) who shouldn’t be noticed in civilized society.

Why is it I’m tempted to type that we’re probably the creatures who shouldn’t be out in the day or night? Well, these two capture and place the dangerous creatures in holding cells. There’s always some place to hold creatures, an idea stolen from Ghostbusters, I suppose. Hey, how about this? The power goes off or someone triggers the cages open in at least two or three episodes? Maybe I should write for Hollywood! That was easy! Nah, I’m, not that cheap. That’s why I’d rather write for a web-site I partially own and pay for the privilege.

Oops-sie.

Special Unit 2 , starring Michael Landes as Detective Nicholas O’Malley, Alexondra Lee as Detective Kate Benson; who almost gets kicked off the police force because of what she does and sees… then gets promoted to Special Unit 2… and the always entertaining Carl the Gnome (Danny Woodburn), started on UPN, and UPN programming was just so above this that… no, it wasn’t. That couldn’t have killed it. No, I’m sure it was the X-er factor. After all this is serious business, damn it! And the everything is true crowd wanted their “everything is true” premise taken seriously.

It was light. It was fun. I liked it. X-ers probably hated it with a passion.

So BBC responded with Torchwood.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchwood, a far more serious endeavor where the monsters; real of course, were quite dangerous. This show had some of the best writing I’ve seen backing up this premise. It also adds in a very strong X-Filer attraction: aliens and alien tech. Far, far less monsters; more aliens.

This program starred John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harness; a man who can’t die, and Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper; police liaison. Same idea. Police woman sees and does things that almost gets her kicked off the force, only to be promoted: snatched away by a secret organization.

Didn’t I already type something like that before?

By now, a big yawn, right?

But other than the great scripting, which featured in one great episode a young ghost who had tried to get attention in life from them, but follows them around in one episode and shows how even his life had meaning, Torchwood has character development plus. Those two stars don’t always outshine the rest of the cast by any means.

Sci Fi ran it for a while and loved it so much they dumped it for the vastly inferior Sanctuary. This should have been a win win for them. Built around a proven acting commodity: Amanda Tapping from the TV version of Stargate, who plays a woman who can’t die. Gee, where have you read that before? These writers really do work hard for their money. They slapped a really bad wig, or hair coloring, on Amanda and now she sports an equally bad Brit accent. That’s bad news, cause Amanda has British roots. Is this a case where doing “American” so long and so well has ruined a lilt, or did Canada strip it from her syntax? Damn Canadians. They’re to blame for everything, or so South Park “informs” me.

Let’s all sing…

“Blame Canada, blame Canada…”

If I remember right there’s also the “someone almost got kicked off” some police-type force type element here as well.

To the writers “doing” (as in rape, I suppose) Sanctuary: hey, guys, didn’t your teacher tell you in school that to mimic others was rude? Especially when your scripting is so damn uneven and downright poor. I never did quite get the whole idea of her institute or who it served, unlike Torchwood. They tried to do it in expose’, which is a bad idea: especially when you wait more than a few episodes and then attempt to explain… again… poorly.

One can’t leave this venue without mentioning Supernatural. What sells this is not the, by now, far beyond trite premise, or that there’s no longer an institute, just two brothers who somehow manage to never get caught pretending to be FBI, CIA, Shriners, Loyal Order of the Perverted Moose… whatever the demon/devil/monster gig calls for. They don’t even bother to join some police-type force. They just pretend. It’s their dark-ish love/hate relationship that sells the show that, in my opinion, is something all brothers should identify with. These guys may save each others ghastly, Hell-ish bound, bacon a lot, but sometimes you know they wonder, “Why do I do it? He’s so damn annoying!”

They’ve also gotten to the, “Oh, golly gee, I’m bored with this, let’s add in stuff like they have been made to forget who they are, but still kind of work together” stage. That these writers seem to script quite well, considering that their using a premise so worn by now even Jack the Ripper wouldn’t bother. (“Jack” is actually one of the few semi/sort of interesting characters in Sanctuary) The religious overtones in Supernatural can get so heavy sometimes I wish I could wipe the brimstone and the far less than angelic angel puked up food off me. These “angels” are so dark I often wonder if they work for the other side like the Vietnamese used to sneak away and do.

So that’s the premise.

Now excuse me. I’m looking for a silver bullet or a stake. No, not the actors. I’m hunting writers and TV execs.