Thunderbirds. No, not the cars. The TV show from the 1960s which used puppets, specifically something called Supermarionation, in the stories.
As a kid I loved the show. It's a mix of science fiction and adventure clearly designed for rugrats like I was, well, in the middle 1960s. There were rockets and submarines and good guys and bad. I honestly recall drawing the spaceships back in the day, imagining myself one of the Thunderbirds, the flying wizards who were the heroes of the series.
A few weeks ago I discovered that repeats were being shown on MeTV Sunday mornings at 6. As we should never allow ourselves to outgrow good children's books or entertainment, I decided to watch.
Um, well, yes. What I said applies to the good stuff. Thunderbirds aren't the good stuff. They've clunky and cloying, indeed far too stereotypical in all sorts of manners, and the puppets simply look and move weird. I know they're puppets but these moved in a way which was downright bizarre. Eerie, even. It was disappointing.
I gave it a fair shot: I watched several shows over several weeks. But, alas, some things are probably better left to our childhood memories.
I like The Twilight Zone, and noticed a few minutes ago on the scroll of TV listings an upcoming episode. It turned out to be one I had seen recently, the one where Roddy McDowell plays an astronaut who becomes the Earth specimen in a Martian zoo. It's not bad but I had just seen it, relatively speaking.
Next I saw that King of the Hill was coming up. Yet that too was one I have seen not once, but twice in the last little while.
Similar things happened with the next several programs I stumbled upon; Alfred Hitchcock was benignly staring at me exactly as he had just this past January. How could that be?
All right, I could pull up Netflix or what have you and actually pick something new, or at least old enough that I haven't watched it recently. Yet that begs the question of how readily all those coincidences had happened.
Hey! Would you believe I haven't seen this episode of Get Smart in ages? I am saved the mathematical gymnastics.
We were sitting around, me and three of my brothers, when the subject of old TV shows came up. Me brother Phil for whatever reason asks, "Remember Kukla, Fran, and Ollie?" For those who can't remember, see here.
Anyway, I responded, "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie? I haven't heard those names in years."
Phil cleared his throat and said, "You just heard them a minute ago, Marty."
He won't understand why his paycheck will be short next week.
Old TV shows can seem quaint about things like money. What they regard as significant we might actually laugh at.
An episode I stumbled upon of Our Miss Brooks, a sitcom from the middle Fifties, was centered on the 'safeguarding' of forty cents. That's right, four whole dimes. On The Andy Griffith Show, a litterer was upset over a four dollar fine and vowed to extract revenge on Barney Fife for having issued the ticket which cost him so dearly. Vengeance was sworn over four bucks. It sounded downright absurd for a man to be mad over such a paltry amount.
Of course, I remember me Pops talking about making $100 a week in 1963 and feeling it was good money. And when I had my first $50 dollar bill at age 16 it felt like I had struck gold. I was in total awe of General Grant. I kept a guard on it as though I were Fort Knox. Still, I don't think twice about four dollars let alone 40 cents these days. And when you think about it, maybe that's a shame on me.
It's probably more sentimental than anything, and I know that. Still, watching old TV shows has become a pastime for me. Further still though, I will admit I don't understand the attraction of any and all old shows.
Take The Honeymooners, for example. It's supposed to be classic. And it does have its share of memorable of memorable catchphrases. 'Baby, you're the greatest' comes to mind. But every episode I see seems to revolve around Jackie Gleason (Ralph Kramden) screaming at everybody. Nothing more.
I don't find the character likeable, quite honestly. All. He. Does. Is. Yell. How the show became popular is beyond me.
Maybe I'm missing something. But there's a lot better old shows than The Honeymooners. Sorry, Jackie.
I had forgotten how funny The Odd Couple could be. I remember watching it on prime time TV fifty years ago, and have recently been watching it regularly on the Decades channel. Interestingly, I have yet to see the movie or stage show on which it was based. Such as that is, was, or evermore shall be, I like the show, then and now, although perhaps I didn't get all the jokes as a pre-teen.
But that's not really why I bring it up. What strikes me most is the revelation that maybe I'm living what old people lived, well, fifty years ago. I'm seeing what was once new to me but is now aged. Quite aged. Very significantly aged.
To offer a frame of reference, I became a Beatles fan after I bought Nowhere Man off the oldies rack at the downtown Detroit Kresge's in 1973 That on its own should age me. It had been released as a single in 1966. So in my 13 year old mind, seven years was old. Very old. Now, I watch something seven times that age, a show I watched when I was 13, and think, that's not so old.
So I suppose in watching Tony Randall and Jack Klugman I find myself feeling what I think my grandparents may have felt, say, in 1972 listening to music from 1925. There's only problem.
I don't feel that old.
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