"MAUDIEPLICITY": SEND IN THE CLONES

Toobworld Central holds Dr. Miguelito Loveless to be one of the central characters of Earth Prime-Time. If he can't be found physically in a show, we could probably argue his connection behind the scenes.

So when the idea of Maudie Monday came to me over the weekend, I wondered if I could take on the challenge of creating a connection between this great character played by Michael Dunn and any one of the many roles assayed by Maudie Prickett.

As it turns out, I think I did a pretty good job at finding the missing link to most of her TV roles. at least those who were situated in California.....

Although 'The Wild, Wild West' reunion TV movie tried to convince us otherwise, the diminutive doctor lived well into the late 20th Century - if he's not still alive now in Toobworld. (He was last physically seen in 1973, thanks to an episode of 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' which was broadcast in the mid 1960's.)

So he could have been the mastermind behind a cloning experiment just before the outbreak of World War I. And among the test samples which successfully yielded a slew of clones to be raised throughout the state of California (Dr. Loveless' general base of operations, his ancestral "empire") would be all of the Maudie Prickett characters she played in the "contemporary" shows of the 1950's through the 1970's.

McMillan & Wife
– Buried Alive (1974) … Mrs. Chandler

Marcus Welby, M.D.
– The Faith of Childish Things (1974) … Miss James

Room 222
– Pi in the Sky (1973) … Miss Pliny

Call Her Mom
Mrs. Gibbons

What's a Nice Girl Like You...?
Elderly woman

Dragnet 1967
– Narco: Pill Maker (1970) … Mrs. Thelma Benstead
– Burglary Auto: Courtroom (1969) … Mrs. Gloria Chambers

The Mod Squad
– To Linc - With Love (1969) … Clerk

Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
– The Short Voyage Home (1969) … Miss Paisley
– To Watch a Thief (1967) … Bank Teller
– Gomer and the Phone Company (1966) … Woman

Adam-12
– Log 112: You Blew It (1969) … Mrs. Wilson

The Tammy Grimes Show
– Officer's Mess (1966) … Mrs. Ratchett

My Three Sons
– The Glass Sneaker (1965) … Elsie Stepp
– A Holiday for Tramp (1962) … Brownie

The Jack Benny Program … Miss Gordon, Secretary
(Ten episodes)

Mister Ed
– Unemployment Show (1963) … Miss Pringle

Room for One More
– Out at Home (1962) … Miss Aiken

Ben Casey
– To the Pure (1961)

Checkmate
– The Thrill Seeker (1961)
– The Princess in the Tower (1960) … Mrs. Kaufman
[I've got the two boxed sets for this series, but they feature on the "best of" each season, and apparently neither of these two episodes qualified.]

Angel
– The Dentist (1961) … The dentist's secretary

Bachelor Father
– It Happens in November (1960) … Mrs. Crawford

Schlitz Playhouse
– Way of the West (1958) … Miss Piper
[This may have been a Western and so wouldn't qualify.]

Date with the Angels … Mrs. Cassie Murphy
(Six episodes)

G.E. True Theater
– With Malice Toward One (1957) … Mrs. Simms

The Bob Cummings Show
– Eleven Angry Women (1957)

It's a Great Life
– Denny Buys a Steer (1954) … Alice MacAvity
– The Surprise Party (1954) … Mrs. Grace Johnson Meet Corliss Archer
– The Male Ego (1954) … Mrs. Gale

[I could be wrong about some of these being set in California.....] I'm sure the temptation would be there to create an army of lovely young women, perhaps even cloned from his muse, Miss Antoinette. But the woman he chose to supply his test sample was of solid frontier stock, someone who would prove to be a hard worker. (The genetic source material for these Maudie Prickett clones would have been from one of her TV Western characters. Although the experiment probably took decades of research before implementation, I'd still go with one of her later Western roles, probably from her three different characters from 'Gunsmoke'. Dr. Loveless might have observed how strong her genetic stock was if there were three women in the Dodge City area who all looked alike.)

The U.S. government may have found out about the project and decided to intervene - probably not out of any desire to stop him, but to seize the experiment for themselves. With war on the horizon, seemingly inevitable that the United States would have to intervene, it could be that the shadow power behind the Presidency (maybe even under alien control - decades before the arrival of the Hive as seen in 'Dark Skies') decided that America could use a never-ending source of cannon fodder.

But circa 1914, there were at least two TV characters who would have the gumption and the smarts to put an end to such an experiment before Dr. Loveless could continue and before the government grabbed it for themselves - Quentin Everett Deverill, a scientific genius himself ('Q.E.D.'), and a young lad wise beyond his years who was known by the nickname of Indy ('The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles'). Maybe they teamed up to put an end to this California cloning case.

I'm not saying this is what actually happened. It's just a "pozz'bility", but one which I'm throwing out there for the fanficcers.

And it was all inspired by Maudie Prickett.

BCnU!