Project Rewatch: Season 2 Disc 3 Episodes 48-50
(OMG, it just started raining. Yay!)
We're now at a five-episode stretch that I remember as the really good part. These were all done during the part of the second season when the guys had felt their oats - they'd stared down Kirshner, done Headquarters all by their lonesomes, and drawn screaming crowds everywhere they'd gone - but before they'd started the process of making the movie and lost all interest in filming the show. Let's see if these hold up to my memories, shall we?
Season 2 Disc 3 Episode 48: Fairy Tale
Synopsis: Once upon a time, the Monkees had no sets and no budget, so they did a show that looks like a piece of community theater. In the tiny town of Avon-on-Calling, Mike the Cobbler, Davy the Tailor, and Micky the Innkeeper try to buoy the spirits of the peasant Peter of Tork, who is so hung up on the local Princess, Gwen (played by Nesmith in a blonde wig), he can't hold down a job. The Princess's carriage gets stuck in the mud; in an attempt to impress her, Peter offers to carry her across; she refuses, but allows as how if he lies down, she'll walk across him to get out. He does, she does, and she proceeds to bark orders at her men to get her carriage out of the mud. The knight errant Harold and his liegeman Richard go to the inn for provisions and end up with fruit, cheese, a whole suckling pig, multiple loaves of bread, most of the furniture, and a couple of light stands on the table. Peter overhears them plotting to kidnap Princess Gwen and goes to warn her, but ends up playing bridge again before he can explain the plot. She gives him a tin locket as a trinket and rides on, but back at the inn, he discovers that the locket is inhabited by a fairy, who empowers Mike to make a pair of shoes that can scale walls, Davy to sew a suit of chainmail that can withstand anything, and Micky to forge a kitchen knife into a sword that can cut iron, all for Peter to besiege the castle and rescue the Princess. She disappears, and the Monkees go to work, in a sequence that in any other episode would be a romp but here just has incidental music. On the way to the castle, Peter meets Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, and Hansel and Gretel. Peter draws Micky's magic sword to fight the Dragon of the Moat, but the dragon puts a riddle to him instead of resorting to violence; Peter doesn't know the answer, but the dragon lowers the drawbridge for him anyway. Richard attacks Peter, but can't get through Davy's enchanted armor with flail, mace, sword, or shield-bash. Peter scales the tower using Mike's sorcerous shoes and frees Princess Gwen from her chains, but she refuses to climb down with him, and when she finds out he got there using the magic locket, she takes it back, rendering his armor and shoes normal and causing the magic sword to get stuck in its scabbard. Harold and Richard arrive and re-chain them. Back at the inn, the other three find from the town crier that Peter is scheduled for execution; they arm themselves with a spear, a pitchfork, and a crossbow, and head into the forest to save him. After Micky has a run-in with Red Riding Hood and Davy one with Goldilocks, they meet up at the castle, where the Dragon poses them a variation on the riddle, which Micky answers correctly, just in time for them to fight Harold and Richard. Davy does most of the fighting while Micky fires arrows over his head machine-gun style and Mike gives color commentary; Peter still can't use his sword, so he and Harold arm-wrestle instead. Seeing that her rescuers are losing, Gwen tosses the locket back to Peter, who immediately overpowers Harold. The Queen's men arrive and arrest Harold and Richard; Gwen offers Peter a boon, so he asks her to marry him. Gwen refuses; when Peter asks why, Mike breaks character and removes the wig, pointing out that he's married. The four (five?) Monkees break into their theme song and sing themselves off. [Unrelated video for "Daily Nightly follows] [Very short interview segment about Mike as "mother figure" in the episode proper]
This was never one of my favorites on first viewing, probably because I always thought fairy tales were fucked up enough without doing the whole "fractured fairy tale" thing to them and because UGH AUGH COMEDIC DRAG. My opinion has mellowed slightly; I'm still not 100% sure why the fandom is so gung-ho on this episode (although I have a couple of opinions below), but this is a very strong episode, and the comedic drag is rendered slightly less offensive by having most of it be fairytale archetypes rather than actual characters or, you know, the guys in drag. This one also has commentary from both Nesmith and Tork, and they both mention that having Mike play the Princess was actually Mike's idea (it's the first time we've seen Mike in drag in the show, possibly because of the sideburns), and that Davy, at least, didn't mind being Red Riding Hood/Gretel either. (Micky's turn as Goldilocks goes without comment!) There's fairly strong acting going on here, even if the sets are cheaper than a Doctor Who episode's from the same era, and it's a fun, punchy script.
I am vaguely tempted to make the default innkeeper of the next "generic fantasy" RPG I run be Micky as he appears here.
The town crier is played by the same actor as the doctor from the last episode. The horses and drivers for the carriage (who later appear running around in the battle scene) are two of the stand-ins (Davy's and Micky's, I think).
Davy apparently makes the armor on a spinning wheel, which makes no sense at all if you know what it's for, but there's also no reason for a tailor to have a spinning wheel in the first place and he's using the wrong end of it (the wheel rather than the spindle end). Maybe they just grabbed the prop knowing at something to do with making clothes? There's a decent chance no one involved in the production ever saw anyone spinning.
Davy's Red Riding Hood and Gretel are harmless goofy bits, as is Micky doing his "little boy" schtick for Hansel, but Goldilocks is - the first joke (where she meets Peter) implies at least the potential for violence, and the second joke (where she meets Davy) is a Getting Crap Past the Censors moment. Mike is clearly having fun playing Princess Gwen as conceited and overbearing; some of Tork's chuckles in the commentary (he went quiet and just watched a chunk of it) imply a certain amount of irony.
There is no hesitation between the Dragon (whose costume is a large Chinese New Year dragon head worn by someone in a scaly green body-stocking; very disappointing) asking the riddle the second time and Micky answering it - framing him as 'the smart one' again. As mentioned, Davy does most of the hand-to-hand fighting at the castle, framing him as 'the brave one' again.
Nesmith spends a large chunk of time in his commentary talking about how kids and teenyboppers keep re-discovering the show, and how that's changed his own reaction to it over time. On the one hand, it's sort of touching, and it's obvious that it's rekindled a fondness for the show in him that he'd largely lost back in the '70s. On the other hand, there's also an air of the Amen Break about it - that they'd managed to dash off, in nearly impossible circumstances, something that was still so powerful it endured and inspired for decades afterwards. At least the Monkees get royalties from the music.
The interview segment is - you know, I'd lay good money that Micky is baked off his gourd there. Davy makes a fairly clever joke (the producer asks Mike what he thinks Christian's reaction to the episode will be when he sees it later, and Davy quips, "Same as a Jew's, I'd suppose") and Micky (a) completely fails to get it, and (b) topples off of the chest they're sitting on in his bafflement so Davy has to haul him upright again. In Micky's defense, Peter has just stolen his usual line and is saying "Goo gi ga," which might have made Davy's answer harder to parse. (In case anyone doesn't know, Christian is Nesmith's first son.) Davy repeats the joke, slower, and Micky gets it, but doesn't have a rejoinder. Meanwhile, Mike claims to be in denial about all the drag.
My best guess is that the ficcers like this episode so much because (a) a lot of them are Nez fans, and they get double Mike for the money in this one, and (b) while there doesn't seem to be an overwhelming fandom OTP in this one, the largest single ship does appear to be Mike/Peter, and this episode is full of Peter professing his love to Mike, albeit both "in character" even by the regular standards of the show. That every time the commoners are looking at the Princess, Mike goes on and on about what a "good-looking chick" she is until Micky shuts him up, could be taken either as a commentary on Nesmith's own personality at the time (some of Tork's chuckles during the commentary seem to be heading that way) or as character!Mike approving of character!Peter's crush on character!Mike-as-character!Gwen.
The "Daily Nightly" video is filmed in black and white, and slightly grainy. Micky is sitting on the floor with the Moog in front of him; Peter is sitting behind him wearing some of the extra cables like love beads; Davy is sitting on either the Moog cabinet itself or a rectangular case, slightly above Micky; Mike is leaning against something with his shades on and looks like he's asleep. Everyone's still wearing the all-white outfits from the "Star Collector" video. There's one camera angle that catches all of them side-on, in which Micky is miming playing the keyboard and singing, Peter is miming the sounds the Moog is making in the air with his hands, and Davy is playing the invisible maracas he didn't have in "Star Collector." The other camera angle is from in front of Micky and slightly above him, so he's having to look up, and singing (or more likely lip-synching) directly to the camera. He's pretty much staring directly into the viewer's soul; it's rather hot. At the very end of the song, Peter has stuck one of the cable ends into his mouth like a hookah, which is an interesting image (and a focus pull). This is artsier than they've normally gone for, and in combination with a fairly powerful song (Mike wrote it) and Micky's slowly building delivery, it's damn sexy.
Season 2 Disc 3 Episode 49: The Monkees Watch Their Feet
Synopsis: Mike introduces the Secretary for the Department of UFO Information, who gives a droning speech about aliens among us. As illustration, he uses the story of three conventional teenagers with their own TV show. Davy, Micky, and Peter are getting ready for a gig when Micky's clothes start disappearing, much to this reviewer's delight, along with one of the toms. Two aliens from Zlotnik have left a trail of his clothes (and one stocking that got in there by mistake) leading back to the drum, which is the bait for a teleport trap. On the ship, they lock him in a multicolored cage and create a replica; the first is that gorilla again, but after adjusting the brain size downwards they get a robot duplicate, whom they send back to spy on the others while they interrogate Micky. David and Peter find the robot on the beach and take him back to the Pad, where the robot reports on their activities, claiming that Peter's out-of-tune guitar is a harmonic destructor, mistaking the phone for a cat, and hitting on the refrigerator. In order to cover its tracks, the Micky-bot hands them each dynamite, but they subdue him before he can use the detonator. They tie him up and discover that the robot's feet are on backwards. They rush to report a UFO to the authorities, but the Captain is no use. Back at the Pad, Davy and Peter manage to short out the robot, Captain Kirk-style, by giving it two contradictory requests, and then Peter zaps it with seltzer, freezing it. Looking into its eyes, Davy sees vacuum tubes and realizes it's a robot; they open it up and try to rewire it, which they can't do; they ask the robot for help, but it's not much better. They finally find the "truth tube," and the robot spills the beans about Micky's location. They shut it back up and demand that it take him to the spaceship, which it does; they find Micky wearing a brain-reading device. The Zlotniks whip out space pistols; in defense, the boys start a romp to "Star Collector" and eventually defeat the aliens by riding scooters around the control panel until they fall down. The Micky-bot warns them that once the Zlotniks wake back up, he is programmed to help them, so the boys had better go; he will take the ship back to their home planet. Micky invites him to but the ship on autopilot and stay, but the robot declines, as he has a date back home - a blender. The Secretary sums up the dangers of backwards-footed alien invasion and appeals to Americans to stop fighting on Earth - fight outer space instead!
This is probably the most topical Monkees episode; the Secretary's droning narration masks some rather biting social commentary, centered around the wordplay of "alienation" vs. "alien nation." There's several jabs at the Vietnam war and some funny stuff about youth culture, but underneath it there's a running theme about diversity and tolerance, culminating in Peter and Davy being willing to take the robot home, even though it tried to blow them up (I'm of two minds about whether they needed to worry about that - on the one hand, Micky is the only Monkee who has ever successfully blown anything up on the show; on the other hand, that's not really Micky).
This is an older episode - we're back to shaggy!Micky instead of 'fro!Micky. Tork informed us in the commentary for last episode that the Itali-fro is what Dolenz's hair did naturally when he stopped straightening it; if that's correct, then the shaggy stage is the phase when it was recovering from being flat-ironed to within an inch of its life. That means this has to have been filmed in the first half of season 2 - so why is it airing so late? This is also a nearly-Mikeless episode; he appears only in the teaser and (very briefly) the closer.
There's one male alien and one female one. The male is designated "The Captain" and the female is designated "The Assistant," but in point of fact, they appear to be equal in rank - they both give and take orders in roughly the same proportion.
When the Micky-bot mentions its date, Peter sings "Got a date with a blender!" to the tune of "Got A Date With An Angel." David informs him that's not one of their songs, and he stops.
This is Micky's second doppelganger episode; counting Princess Gwen as Mike's, I think everyone else only got one. We saw Micky do the autograph-robot back in Episode 32, but that was a bit of goofing off rather than a character. His physical comedy bits as the robot work reasonably well, and Davy and Peter each get off a few sight gags.
Once again, it feels as if there's something missing here - we are never told what the brain-reader Micky is wearing does, and I suspect there was supposed to be an interrogation scene. If so, I feel cheated.
The physical quality of this episode isn't very good; there are lots of streaks and film spots. It's possible that some of that is deliberate - the Secretary is supposed to be showing the Monkees' parts of the episode on a screen - but the Secretary's parts look just as bad.
Season 2 Disc 3 Episode 50: The Monstrous Monkee Mash
Synopsis: Davy is on a date with Lorelei when she kisses him and throws her magic necklace over him, putting him in a helpless daze. She and her uncle, Dracula, plot to make him a vampire and spirit him away. Back at the Pad, Peter is worried about Davy, who should have been home by now; Mike calls the number Davy left and gets nothing but villainous laughter, so they set out to rescue him. Dracula gives Davy a vampire's cape and has him practice flying; instead, he crashes into the walls. The other three are greeted by Dracula and Lorelei, who invite them into the library, where they find a book on vampires with the Count as the plate illustration. They have a brief conference (during which Mike and Micky whisper back and forth through Peter's head), and leave Peter in the library while Micky and Mike search the castle. The wolfman comes to check in on Davy, who tells him he needs a better agent and a larger percentage; when Lorelei comes in, he confronts her, and she agrees. Lorelei returns to the library and pulls the kiss-and-necklace trick on Peter; she and the Count spirit him off to donate his brain to their monster. Mike and Micky encounter the mummy; Micky freaks out and they return to the library to find Peter gone. Micky suggests that they become a duet, then muses that if Mike disappears, he'll be a solo act. They go back out to the corridor to continue their search; the wolfman sneaks up behind them just as Mike finds a secret door. Micky tells him not to go, then notices the wolfman and runs back to the library, barricading the wrong side of the door. Lorelei again uses the kiss-and-necklace trick to capture Micky, then gives him to the wolfman. Down in the basement, Mike realizes he's lost Micky and encounters the Mummy again; he runs back to the library and eavesdrops on Dracula and Lorelei's plans for Peter. Back in the basement, Davy and Micky are in chains; they become a vampire and a werewolf in a fantasy sequence, which Dracula interrupts - even appearing in the director's chair to show them he's in charge now! - and they can't get out of their makeup. Mike hides in the mummy's sarcophagus Dracula and Lorelei prepare to operate on Peter; he emerges in the mummy's outfit to assist with the surgery, confuses Dracula with the surgical equipment, and makes off with one of the two stretchers. Mike flees to the dungeon, where he frees Davy and Micky, but the Count uses his mind control on them and they attack Mike. Dracula realizes that he still has Peter, and Mike has the monster; he flips the switch to activate him, but Peter has come out from Lorelei's spell and a romp to "Goin' Down" breaks out as he escapes. The Monkees escape and shut all the monsters in the dungeon; they return to the library, where Mike discovers in the book that they can't return for a millennium. The book suddenly levitates, and Peter freaks out, thinking it's the Invisible Man, but the others calm him down, saying it's only special effects; they snip the wires holding it up, and the book falls on Peter's foot.
Davy makes a pretty, pretty vampire, I must say. The wolfman makeup, in contrast, is sadly lacking, especially since they did a better one in Episode 31 for a one-off gag. It makes Micky's dialog hard to hear, and makes the repeat of the gag where he bites Mike's hand (we first saw that back in Episode 8) look silly, as he can't actually open the mouth of the wolfman mask. There's also a moment where vamp!Davy's fangs should be showing (when he goes for Mike's jugular) and they never make an appearance; perhaps they were still running low on the budget.
While we see the various monsters outsmarted or outrun during the romp, we never see how they un-vamped Davy or un-wered Micky. Episode tag potential, there. Also, it's nice to have Mike back and fully active in the episode as himself; he's more or less the hero here.
Micky does some lovely freaking out in this episode (part of why I love it, although the parts where Davy and Micky are chained to the wall don't hurt a bit, no they don't [I swear to the gods, this show is designed to give an impressionable adolescent girl bondage fantasies for the rest of her life {I suppose I should send someone a thank-you letter}]). Mike only has one good freak-out moment, but it's a doozy, too. And of course, Peter delivers the "I'd rather stay here where it's safe, with you, Mike" line in this episode, followed by him trying to cuddle up on Mike; whether you read that as slashy or a parent/child sort of moment is up to the viewer, but it's a cute bonding moment either way.
That the Count adopts and then subverts a fourth-wall break is interesting; I think that's the first time a Monkee antagonist has actually used that against them (although they've observed that the break occurred before). There's also a short outtake where Micky demonstrates the difference between his "medium scare" and his "little scare" for the director just inserted into a scene.
Several times, a character ducks behind a large picture frame in the library to eavesdrop on someone else - Dracula does it twice solo and once with Lorelei, and then Mike does it in a later scene.
The falling-down-the-stairs gag we've seen a couple of times before (most recently in Episode 42) occurs here, executed by Mike alone right before he encounters the mummy for the third time. (According to Jones, Micky once did that on an escalator at an airport in Real Life as a gag.)
Mike delivers a line that I can't lipread at the start of the romp, after the audio has segued into the song. Anyone else want to take a crack at it? He's also the only one that Lorelei never catches, possibly a fourth-wall-bendy reference to Nesmith being married in RL again.
Valerie Kairys has a walk-on part here (as a girl summoned when Micky lets off a wolfman howl) and then wanders back through the romp. One of the stand-ins (Micky's again, I think) plays the wolfman.
As they lose members, Micky jokes about becoming a trio, then a duet, then a single artist, at which point he sings an off-key rendition of the theme song as Mike tries to interrupt him, ending with "Hey, hey, I'm a Monkee." The order's wrong, but that's exactly what happened: Peter quit, making them a trio, then Mike left, then Davy. Moreover, there have been three different "3kees" incarnations of the band - Mike, Davy, and Micky after Peter left; Peter, Davy, and Micky during the '80s revival and then for the 2011 tour; and Mike, Peter, and Micky now. The Monkees have even briefly been a duet twice; it was Davy and Micky for one album after Mike left, and Peter and Micky for two songs before Davy came back in '86. (I doubt this will actually happen, but should Peter be the next one to go, it would be possible for Mike and Micky to perform as the Monkees duet suggested in this scene.) There has never been an incarnation of the Monkees that did not include Micky, and he never formally quit the band. He's also the only one who's never sounded bitter about the band as a project, and he's the singer on the largest number of the songs. I think I could put together a pretty good argument that Micky is, indeed, the Monkee. (Then again, I'm biased.)
I had thought the "Love is the ultimate trip/Save the Texas prairie chicken" exchange actually occurred in this episode. I seem to have been wrong, alas. (It was certainly filmed for this episode; Mike is wearing the button on his mummy headgear, and Micky is wearing the wolfman gloves.)
I actually like this episode slightly less than I remember; I would previously have named it as one of my favorites, but I seem to have made the plot more coherent in memory than it actually is. It's still a strong episode, but not quite as good as nostalgia made it out to be. Well, I knew that would happen with some of them; better it be one I find out is only pretty good, rather than one that turns out to be trash.
So, one pleasant surprise, one that could use a better restoration job but is still very strong, and one mild disappointment. Up next, IIRC, we have a strong episode, the best episode of the series, and one that throws us back to the worst cheese of Season 1. (If Zero disappoints me, I'm going to be pissed.)
We're now at a five-episode stretch that I remember as the really good part. These were all done during the part of the second season when the guys had felt their oats - they'd stared down Kirshner, done Headquarters all by their lonesomes, and drawn screaming crowds everywhere they'd gone - but before they'd started the process of making the movie and lost all interest in filming the show. Let's see if these hold up to my memories, shall we?
Season 2 Disc 3 Episode 48: Fairy Tale
Synopsis: Once upon a time, the Monkees had no sets and no budget, so they did a show that looks like a piece of community theater. In the tiny town of Avon-on-Calling, Mike the Cobbler, Davy the Tailor, and Micky the Innkeeper try to buoy the spirits of the peasant Peter of Tork, who is so hung up on the local Princess, Gwen (played by Nesmith in a blonde wig), he can't hold down a job. The Princess's carriage gets stuck in the mud; in an attempt to impress her, Peter offers to carry her across; she refuses, but allows as how if he lies down, she'll walk across him to get out. He does, she does, and she proceeds to bark orders at her men to get her carriage out of the mud. The knight errant Harold and his liegeman Richard go to the inn for provisions and end up with fruit, cheese, a whole suckling pig, multiple loaves of bread, most of the furniture, and a couple of light stands on the table. Peter overhears them plotting to kidnap Princess Gwen and goes to warn her, but ends up playing bridge again before he can explain the plot. She gives him a tin locket as a trinket and rides on, but back at the inn, he discovers that the locket is inhabited by a fairy, who empowers Mike to make a pair of shoes that can scale walls, Davy to sew a suit of chainmail that can withstand anything, and Micky to forge a kitchen knife into a sword that can cut iron, all for Peter to besiege the castle and rescue the Princess. She disappears, and the Monkees go to work, in a sequence that in any other episode would be a romp but here just has incidental music. On the way to the castle, Peter meets Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, and Hansel and Gretel. Peter draws Micky's magic sword to fight the Dragon of the Moat, but the dragon puts a riddle to him instead of resorting to violence; Peter doesn't know the answer, but the dragon lowers the drawbridge for him anyway. Richard attacks Peter, but can't get through Davy's enchanted armor with flail, mace, sword, or shield-bash. Peter scales the tower using Mike's sorcerous shoes and frees Princess Gwen from her chains, but she refuses to climb down with him, and when she finds out he got there using the magic locket, she takes it back, rendering his armor and shoes normal and causing the magic sword to get stuck in its scabbard. Harold and Richard arrive and re-chain them. Back at the inn, the other three find from the town crier that Peter is scheduled for execution; they arm themselves with a spear, a pitchfork, and a crossbow, and head into the forest to save him. After Micky has a run-in with Red Riding Hood and Davy one with Goldilocks, they meet up at the castle, where the Dragon poses them a variation on the riddle, which Micky answers correctly, just in time for them to fight Harold and Richard. Davy does most of the fighting while Micky fires arrows over his head machine-gun style and Mike gives color commentary; Peter still can't use his sword, so he and Harold arm-wrestle instead. Seeing that her rescuers are losing, Gwen tosses the locket back to Peter, who immediately overpowers Harold. The Queen's men arrive and arrest Harold and Richard; Gwen offers Peter a boon, so he asks her to marry him. Gwen refuses; when Peter asks why, Mike breaks character and removes the wig, pointing out that he's married. The four (five?) Monkees break into their theme song and sing themselves off. [Unrelated video for "Daily Nightly follows] [Very short interview segment about Mike as "mother figure" in the episode proper]
This was never one of my favorites on first viewing, probably because I always thought fairy tales were fucked up enough without doing the whole "fractured fairy tale" thing to them and because UGH AUGH COMEDIC DRAG. My opinion has mellowed slightly; I'm still not 100% sure why the fandom is so gung-ho on this episode (although I have a couple of opinions below), but this is a very strong episode, and the comedic drag is rendered slightly less offensive by having most of it be fairytale archetypes rather than actual characters or, you know, the guys in drag. This one also has commentary from both Nesmith and Tork, and they both mention that having Mike play the Princess was actually Mike's idea (it's the first time we've seen Mike in drag in the show, possibly because of the sideburns), and that Davy, at least, didn't mind being Red Riding Hood/Gretel either. (Micky's turn as Goldilocks goes without comment!) There's fairly strong acting going on here, even if the sets are cheaper than a Doctor Who episode's from the same era, and it's a fun, punchy script.
I am vaguely tempted to make the default innkeeper of the next "generic fantasy" RPG I run be Micky as he appears here.
The town crier is played by the same actor as the doctor from the last episode. The horses and drivers for the carriage (who later appear running around in the battle scene) are two of the stand-ins (Davy's and Micky's, I think).
Davy apparently makes the armor on a spinning wheel, which makes no sense at all if you know what it's for, but there's also no reason for a tailor to have a spinning wheel in the first place and he's using the wrong end of it (the wheel rather than the spindle end). Maybe they just grabbed the prop knowing at something to do with making clothes? There's a decent chance no one involved in the production ever saw anyone spinning.
Davy's Red Riding Hood and Gretel are harmless goofy bits, as is Micky doing his "little boy" schtick for Hansel, but Goldilocks is - the first joke (where she meets Peter) implies at least the potential for violence, and the second joke (where she meets Davy) is a Getting Crap Past the Censors moment. Mike is clearly having fun playing Princess Gwen as conceited and overbearing; some of Tork's chuckles in the commentary (he went quiet and just watched a chunk of it) imply a certain amount of irony.
There is no hesitation between the Dragon (whose costume is a large Chinese New Year dragon head worn by someone in a scaly green body-stocking; very disappointing) asking the riddle the second time and Micky answering it - framing him as 'the smart one' again. As mentioned, Davy does most of the hand-to-hand fighting at the castle, framing him as 'the brave one' again.
Nesmith spends a large chunk of time in his commentary talking about how kids and teenyboppers keep re-discovering the show, and how that's changed his own reaction to it over time. On the one hand, it's sort of touching, and it's obvious that it's rekindled a fondness for the show in him that he'd largely lost back in the '70s. On the other hand, there's also an air of the Amen Break about it - that they'd managed to dash off, in nearly impossible circumstances, something that was still so powerful it endured and inspired for decades afterwards. At least the Monkees get royalties from the music.
The interview segment is - you know, I'd lay good money that Micky is baked off his gourd there. Davy makes a fairly clever joke (the producer asks Mike what he thinks Christian's reaction to the episode will be when he sees it later, and Davy quips, "Same as a Jew's, I'd suppose") and Micky (a) completely fails to get it, and (b) topples off of the chest they're sitting on in his bafflement so Davy has to haul him upright again. In Micky's defense, Peter has just stolen his usual line and is saying "Goo gi ga," which might have made Davy's answer harder to parse. (In case anyone doesn't know, Christian is Nesmith's first son.) Davy repeats the joke, slower, and Micky gets it, but doesn't have a rejoinder. Meanwhile, Mike claims to be in denial about all the drag.
My best guess is that the ficcers like this episode so much because (a) a lot of them are Nez fans, and they get double Mike for the money in this one, and (b) while there doesn't seem to be an overwhelming fandom OTP in this one, the largest single ship does appear to be Mike/Peter, and this episode is full of Peter professing his love to Mike, albeit both "in character" even by the regular standards of the show. That every time the commoners are looking at the Princess, Mike goes on and on about what a "good-looking chick" she is until Micky shuts him up, could be taken either as a commentary on Nesmith's own personality at the time (some of Tork's chuckles during the commentary seem to be heading that way) or as character!Mike approving of character!Peter's crush on character!Mike-as-character!Gwen.
The "Daily Nightly" video is filmed in black and white, and slightly grainy. Micky is sitting on the floor with the Moog in front of him; Peter is sitting behind him wearing some of the extra cables like love beads; Davy is sitting on either the Moog cabinet itself or a rectangular case, slightly above Micky; Mike is leaning against something with his shades on and looks like he's asleep. Everyone's still wearing the all-white outfits from the "Star Collector" video. There's one camera angle that catches all of them side-on, in which Micky is miming playing the keyboard and singing, Peter is miming the sounds the Moog is making in the air with his hands, and Davy is playing the invisible maracas he didn't have in "Star Collector." The other camera angle is from in front of Micky and slightly above him, so he's having to look up, and singing (or more likely lip-synching) directly to the camera. He's pretty much staring directly into the viewer's soul; it's rather hot. At the very end of the song, Peter has stuck one of the cable ends into his mouth like a hookah, which is an interesting image (and a focus pull). This is artsier than they've normally gone for, and in combination with a fairly powerful song (Mike wrote it) and Micky's slowly building delivery, it's damn sexy.
Season 2 Disc 3 Episode 49: The Monkees Watch Their Feet
Synopsis: Mike introduces the Secretary for the Department of UFO Information, who gives a droning speech about aliens among us. As illustration, he uses the story of three conventional teenagers with their own TV show. Davy, Micky, and Peter are getting ready for a gig when Micky's clothes start disappearing, much to this reviewer's delight, along with one of the toms. Two aliens from Zlotnik have left a trail of his clothes (and one stocking that got in there by mistake) leading back to the drum, which is the bait for a teleport trap. On the ship, they lock him in a multicolored cage and create a replica; the first is that gorilla again, but after adjusting the brain size downwards they get a robot duplicate, whom they send back to spy on the others while they interrogate Micky. David and Peter find the robot on the beach and take him back to the Pad, where the robot reports on their activities, claiming that Peter's out-of-tune guitar is a harmonic destructor, mistaking the phone for a cat, and hitting on the refrigerator. In order to cover its tracks, the Micky-bot hands them each dynamite, but they subdue him before he can use the detonator. They tie him up and discover that the robot's feet are on backwards. They rush to report a UFO to the authorities, but the Captain is no use. Back at the Pad, Davy and Peter manage to short out the robot, Captain Kirk-style, by giving it two contradictory requests, and then Peter zaps it with seltzer, freezing it. Looking into its eyes, Davy sees vacuum tubes and realizes it's a robot; they open it up and try to rewire it, which they can't do; they ask the robot for help, but it's not much better. They finally find the "truth tube," and the robot spills the beans about Micky's location. They shut it back up and demand that it take him to the spaceship, which it does; they find Micky wearing a brain-reading device. The Zlotniks whip out space pistols; in defense, the boys start a romp to "Star Collector" and eventually defeat the aliens by riding scooters around the control panel until they fall down. The Micky-bot warns them that once the Zlotniks wake back up, he is programmed to help them, so the boys had better go; he will take the ship back to their home planet. Micky invites him to but the ship on autopilot and stay, but the robot declines, as he has a date back home - a blender. The Secretary sums up the dangers of backwards-footed alien invasion and appeals to Americans to stop fighting on Earth - fight outer space instead!
This is probably the most topical Monkees episode; the Secretary's droning narration masks some rather biting social commentary, centered around the wordplay of "alienation" vs. "alien nation." There's several jabs at the Vietnam war and some funny stuff about youth culture, but underneath it there's a running theme about diversity and tolerance, culminating in Peter and Davy being willing to take the robot home, even though it tried to blow them up (I'm of two minds about whether they needed to worry about that - on the one hand, Micky is the only Monkee who has ever successfully blown anything up on the show; on the other hand, that's not really Micky).
This is an older episode - we're back to shaggy!Micky instead of 'fro!Micky. Tork informed us in the commentary for last episode that the Itali-fro is what Dolenz's hair did naturally when he stopped straightening it; if that's correct, then the shaggy stage is the phase when it was recovering from being flat-ironed to within an inch of its life. That means this has to have been filmed in the first half of season 2 - so why is it airing so late? This is also a nearly-Mikeless episode; he appears only in the teaser and (very briefly) the closer.
There's one male alien and one female one. The male is designated "The Captain" and the female is designated "The Assistant," but in point of fact, they appear to be equal in rank - they both give and take orders in roughly the same proportion.
When the Micky-bot mentions its date, Peter sings "Got a date with a blender!" to the tune of "Got A Date With An Angel." David informs him that's not one of their songs, and he stops.
This is Micky's second doppelganger episode; counting Princess Gwen as Mike's, I think everyone else only got one. We saw Micky do the autograph-robot back in Episode 32, but that was a bit of goofing off rather than a character. His physical comedy bits as the robot work reasonably well, and Davy and Peter each get off a few sight gags.
Once again, it feels as if there's something missing here - we are never told what the brain-reader Micky is wearing does, and I suspect there was supposed to be an interrogation scene. If so, I feel cheated.
The physical quality of this episode isn't very good; there are lots of streaks and film spots. It's possible that some of that is deliberate - the Secretary is supposed to be showing the Monkees' parts of the episode on a screen - but the Secretary's parts look just as bad.
Season 2 Disc 3 Episode 50: The Monstrous Monkee Mash
Synopsis: Davy is on a date with Lorelei when she kisses him and throws her magic necklace over him, putting him in a helpless daze. She and her uncle, Dracula, plot to make him a vampire and spirit him away. Back at the Pad, Peter is worried about Davy, who should have been home by now; Mike calls the number Davy left and gets nothing but villainous laughter, so they set out to rescue him. Dracula gives Davy a vampire's cape and has him practice flying; instead, he crashes into the walls. The other three are greeted by Dracula and Lorelei, who invite them into the library, where they find a book on vampires with the Count as the plate illustration. They have a brief conference (during which Mike and Micky whisper back and forth through Peter's head), and leave Peter in the library while Micky and Mike search the castle. The wolfman comes to check in on Davy, who tells him he needs a better agent and a larger percentage; when Lorelei comes in, he confronts her, and she agrees. Lorelei returns to the library and pulls the kiss-and-necklace trick on Peter; she and the Count spirit him off to donate his brain to their monster. Mike and Micky encounter the mummy; Micky freaks out and they return to the library to find Peter gone. Micky suggests that they become a duet, then muses that if Mike disappears, he'll be a solo act. They go back out to the corridor to continue their search; the wolfman sneaks up behind them just as Mike finds a secret door. Micky tells him not to go, then notices the wolfman and runs back to the library, barricading the wrong side of the door. Lorelei again uses the kiss-and-necklace trick to capture Micky, then gives him to the wolfman. Down in the basement, Mike realizes he's lost Micky and encounters the Mummy again; he runs back to the library and eavesdrops on Dracula and Lorelei's plans for Peter. Back in the basement, Davy and Micky are in chains; they become a vampire and a werewolf in a fantasy sequence, which Dracula interrupts - even appearing in the director's chair to show them he's in charge now! - and they can't get out of their makeup. Mike hides in the mummy's sarcophagus Dracula and Lorelei prepare to operate on Peter; he emerges in the mummy's outfit to assist with the surgery, confuses Dracula with the surgical equipment, and makes off with one of the two stretchers. Mike flees to the dungeon, where he frees Davy and Micky, but the Count uses his mind control on them and they attack Mike. Dracula realizes that he still has Peter, and Mike has the monster; he flips the switch to activate him, but Peter has come out from Lorelei's spell and a romp to "Goin' Down" breaks out as he escapes. The Monkees escape and shut all the monsters in the dungeon; they return to the library, where Mike discovers in the book that they can't return for a millennium. The book suddenly levitates, and Peter freaks out, thinking it's the Invisible Man, but the others calm him down, saying it's only special effects; they snip the wires holding it up, and the book falls on Peter's foot.
Davy makes a pretty, pretty vampire, I must say. The wolfman makeup, in contrast, is sadly lacking, especially since they did a better one in Episode 31 for a one-off gag. It makes Micky's dialog hard to hear, and makes the repeat of the gag where he bites Mike's hand (we first saw that back in Episode 8) look silly, as he can't actually open the mouth of the wolfman mask. There's also a moment where vamp!Davy's fangs should be showing (when he goes for Mike's jugular) and they never make an appearance; perhaps they were still running low on the budget.
While we see the various monsters outsmarted or outrun during the romp, we never see how they un-vamped Davy or un-wered Micky. Episode tag potential, there. Also, it's nice to have Mike back and fully active in the episode as himself; he's more or less the hero here.
Micky does some lovely freaking out in this episode (part of why I love it, although the parts where Davy and Micky are chained to the wall don't hurt a bit, no they don't [I swear to the gods, this show is designed to give an impressionable adolescent girl bondage fantasies for the rest of her life {I suppose I should send someone a thank-you letter}]). Mike only has one good freak-out moment, but it's a doozy, too. And of course, Peter delivers the "I'd rather stay here where it's safe, with you, Mike" line in this episode, followed by him trying to cuddle up on Mike; whether you read that as slashy or a parent/child sort of moment is up to the viewer, but it's a cute bonding moment either way.
That the Count adopts and then subverts a fourth-wall break is interesting; I think that's the first time a Monkee antagonist has actually used that against them (although they've observed that the break occurred before). There's also a short outtake where Micky demonstrates the difference between his "medium scare" and his "little scare" for the director just inserted into a scene.
Several times, a character ducks behind a large picture frame in the library to eavesdrop on someone else - Dracula does it twice solo and once with Lorelei, and then Mike does it in a later scene.
The falling-down-the-stairs gag we've seen a couple of times before (most recently in Episode 42) occurs here, executed by Mike alone right before he encounters the mummy for the third time. (According to Jones, Micky once did that on an escalator at an airport in Real Life as a gag.)
Mike delivers a line that I can't lipread at the start of the romp, after the audio has segued into the song. Anyone else want to take a crack at it? He's also the only one that Lorelei never catches, possibly a fourth-wall-bendy reference to Nesmith being married in RL again.
Valerie Kairys has a walk-on part here (as a girl summoned when Micky lets off a wolfman howl) and then wanders back through the romp. One of the stand-ins (Micky's again, I think) plays the wolfman.
As they lose members, Micky jokes about becoming a trio, then a duet, then a single artist, at which point he sings an off-key rendition of the theme song as Mike tries to interrupt him, ending with "Hey, hey, I'm a Monkee." The order's wrong, but that's exactly what happened: Peter quit, making them a trio, then Mike left, then Davy. Moreover, there have been three different "3kees" incarnations of the band - Mike, Davy, and Micky after Peter left; Peter, Davy, and Micky during the '80s revival and then for the 2011 tour; and Mike, Peter, and Micky now. The Monkees have even briefly been a duet twice; it was Davy and Micky for one album after Mike left, and Peter and Micky for two songs before Davy came back in '86. (I doubt this will actually happen, but should Peter be the next one to go, it would be possible for Mike and Micky to perform as the Monkees duet suggested in this scene.) There has never been an incarnation of the Monkees that did not include Micky, and he never formally quit the band. He's also the only one who's never sounded bitter about the band as a project, and he's the singer on the largest number of the songs. I think I could put together a pretty good argument that Micky is, indeed, the Monkee. (Then again, I'm biased.)
I had thought the "Love is the ultimate trip/Save the Texas prairie chicken" exchange actually occurred in this episode. I seem to have been wrong, alas. (It was certainly filmed for this episode; Mike is wearing the button on his mummy headgear, and Micky is wearing the wolfman gloves.)
I actually like this episode slightly less than I remember; I would previously have named it as one of my favorites, but I seem to have made the plot more coherent in memory than it actually is. It's still a strong episode, but not quite as good as nostalgia made it out to be. Well, I knew that would happen with some of them; better it be one I find out is only pretty good, rather than one that turns out to be trash.
So, one pleasant surprise, one that could use a better restoration job but is still very strong, and one mild disappointment. Up next, IIRC, we have a strong episode, the best episode of the series, and one that throws us back to the worst cheese of Season 1. (If Zero disappoints me, I'm going to be pissed.)