SKED ALERT! "BOARDWALK EMPIRE" (EP. #10)

We've only got the one clip from 'Boardwalk Empire' this week, so I'm thinking there might be a major plot development this week. We were certainly set up for seismic events at the end of last week......

The show airs on HBO, Sunday night at 9pm.....

BCnU!

WISH-CRAFT: A GREEN LANTERN WHAT-IF?

Here's another preview, but one solely built on wish-craft. A Fillion fan over at YouTube has posted a video trailer for a version of "Green Lantern" which will never be - one in which the superhero ring-bearer would have been played by Nathan Fillion ('Firefly', 'Castle')......

I like the idea, but Fillion is just fine where he is right now - even if 'Castle' isn't in the main Tooboworld... yet.

But I've always advocated a TV presence for Green Lantern, and hopefully one day he will get a series of his own.....

BCnU!

SNEAK PEEK: "EPISODES"

Here's the preview for a new show coming to Showtime. As funny as it looks, I know this is going to cause plenty of Zonk-induced headaches for Yours Viewly.....

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: DIVINE & DAVID STEINBERG

DIVINE & DAVID STEINBERG
as
PETER PAN & CAPTAIN HOOK

AS SEEN IN:
'SCTV'

AS PLAYED BY:
Divine: John Candy
David Steinberg: Martin Short

My thanks to Facebook friend J.r. Klink for reminding me of this!

BCnU!

THE SUPERNATURAL FILES

Tonight's episode of 'Supernatural' starts out being about UFO's and crop circles, but somehow veers off to the land of Faerie, with elves and leprechauns. (That should provide plenty of material for Toobworld research and maybe a link to the coming season of 'True Blood'......)

But the opening title sequence certainly harkens back to the standard-bearer of spooky shows.....

BCnU!

DOUBLE VISION: CHASE 'N' CASEY

One of my Facebook friends, a fellow Wold Newton enthusiast named Sean*, asked me this question:

Any Toobworld-related ideas about the remarkable resemblance between alleged rapist Amelia Chase and future A.D.A. Casey Novak? Or is it just an odd coinkydink?

Here's my response:
Daddy was a rolling stone? Identical cousins? I'm going with Casey's Mom being raped by Amelia's father and never letting Casey or her husband know about it. But little Amelia knew Daddy's secret, and she turned out just like him.....

(To be truthful, there were several typos in my answer. I've corrected them.)
I just tossed that one off quickly, but I'm liking the scenario. Amelia would be a few years older than Casey and must have seen something; probably saw her father hide evidence after he got back home.

Casey grew up, never knowing that she was a child of rape.
The Chase case happened before Novak came to work for the District Attorney's office. If any of her co-workers noticed her resemblance to Amelia Chase, they were polite enough not to mention it.

Just more TV action that happens off-screen.....

BCnU!

*Sean's knowledge on the subject is deep, based on what I read earlier this year on his blog. I could see him being a worthy successor to the Wold Newton professorship someday.....

THE ZONKER STRIKES AGAIN!

The big climax to the 'Bored To Death' second season finale took place at the Brooklyn Comic-Con. There were quite a few people - nerds, geeks, my kind of folk - who were there in costume as comic book superheroes. And some of those comic book characters aren't just to be found in the four-color pages, but they actually exist as "real people" in Toobworld.

"Gojiratoho" worked as an extra for those scenes and reported back about what he saw. And he spotted a lot more comic book characters there than made the final cut. (I only spotted seven!)

Here's his list of the costumes on the set:

Joker

Fallout suit of armor (this poor guy ended up getting heat stroke from the costume/lights/hot ass set)

Julie Newmar catwoman (I wish I saw that one!)

60’s Batgirl

Comedian

Harley Quinn and Black Cat (twins sisters, kinda hot)

Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill in motorcycle outfit

Green Power Ranger

2 Green Lanterns

Captain Planet

V from V for Vendetta

Avatar the last airbender

The Spirit (comic, not movie)

Flash

Supergirl

Riddler

Storm

Spock

The Prince from Katamari

Pacman

A T’wilek (sp?)

And a Wonder Woman (though she was an actress)

I think he missed one, but he'll get his own post.....

I saw the black Green Lantern (John Stewart), who has a presence in the Tooniverse, but not in Earth Prime-Time... yet. I've long said that Green Lantern should be a TV character in the main Toobworld. (No need to send him off to the 'Smallville' dimension, is there?)

The Green Lantern known as Hal Jordan will be in the Cineverse next year. I may bring up the Wish-Craft topic about GL in Toobworld again at the 2011 Toobits Awards.

The main character from "V for Vendetta" was seen on the second floor of the convention, and he exists in the movie universe as well. Should he ever be seen on television, he'll have to be shuttled off to an alternate TV dimension because of the type of police-state dictatorship he was living in. Of course, considering how the movie (and probably the comic book) ended, he may have a similar situation as Richard Widmark's 'Madigan', as well as the characters in 'Lost' and 'Ashes To Ashes' (and the British 'Life On Mars' for that matter).

[Angry Bob was in attendance -
that's him checking the autograph on the left.]

In the background I spotted Felicia Hardy, aka the Black Cat, and wish she had a close-up. After Starfire ("So round, so firm, so fully-packed!" - Sing with me!), the Black Cat is at the top of my list for sexy comic book women. She's made many appearances in the Tooniverse, but has yet to appear in Toobworld. I hope that can be remedied!

So those are the other ones that I saw with no televersions. Now let's take a look at those I saw who do exist on Earth Prime-Time.....

THE JOKER
The Joker made the Gotham City police blotter in the 1960's, but eventually the headlines faded away - probably because the Joker had died. The guy that was clad as the Clown Prince Of Crime may have been just as influenced by the news accounts as by the fictional representations of the Joker's career (movies as well as comic books). You can just see the back of his head there to the left.....

HARLEY QUINN
The Joker's apprentice does exist in a Toobworld, just not in Earth Prime-Time. She was seen in a Gotham City that seemed to be based more on the way it looked in the 1989 movie, so it could be from a dimension that's Toobworld/"Cineverse" blend. But Harleen Quintzel - her alias in that world - may have existed in Earth Prime-Time as well. And although 'Bored To Death' isn't the format to expect something like this to happen, maybe that was the real Harley Quinn at the comic book convention. At the very least I would think she'd be active in the main Toobworld, just not seen by us. And if that's the case, I don't think she'd be too happy that the televersion of a comic book company had been publishing stories about her, or that this chick decided mock her by wearing the same outfit.

But of course, we're not going to see that happen.....

THE FLASH Barry Allen gained his super speed powers in 1990, and for the next year he was quite active in Toobworld battling crime as the Flash. But at some point he may have either lost his powers or died, as he hasn't been seen for nearly 20 years. It could be that having lost his powers, Barry Allen decided to cash in on his fleeting fame (heh heh. "fleeting"... "Flash"....) by selling the rights to his story. And with that came the ancillary deals so that he made money from the tie-in merchandise, like the T-shirts worn by Sheldon Cooper.
WONDER WOMAN
As an action heroine in Toobworld, Wonder Woman has been around since the 1940's. And comic book about her has been around for almost as long. (We know this because Mary Richards read them when she was a girl.) I have a feeling that her comics were published without her permission, but if they helped the war effort..... Wonder Woman may still be active in Toobworld, at least as she appeared to be immortal in that span between WWII and the 1970's. So when sisters Faith and Hope remarked that their father's fiancee was a lot like Wonder Woman (when she took measures to get them off a plane that was already sealed shut), it could be that they were basing that comparison on Wonder Woman still being around in the new millennium.

Just one last note about all those other costumes seen at the convention. In Toobworld, characters from the comic book/comic strip universe can cross over to the TV Universe. We've seen this happen in the TV series 'Once A Hero', and in the A-Ha music video for "Take Me On".

So even though 'Bored To Death' is the wrong format in which to see it happen, one of those costumes could have been the real deal - a comic book character come to life!

BCnU!

(This was Inner Toob post #5700!)

NUMBERS RUNNING/PRODUCT UNBECOMING

A quick couple of appearances by the Numbers from 'Lost' with commercial connnotations.....
In a blipvert for the Canon Powershot, a couple flew back to Barcelona to try again at recreating the moment when her parents first met.......

And on 'Chuck' in a product placement moment, we caught sight of the box for a Vizio Hi-Def TV, in a specific size.....
Also, the girl Travis was dating in college on 'Cougar Town' - Kristen, I mean, Kirsten! - was 23 years old....

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: CONGRESSMAN LEO RYAN

REPRESENTATIVE LEO RYAN

AS SEEN IN:
"Guyana Tragedy: The Jim Jones Story"

AS PLAYED BY:
Ned Beatty

From Wikipedia:
Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. (May 5, 1925 – November 18, 1978) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from the 11th Congressional District of California from 1973 until he was murdered in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.

After the Watts Riots of 1965, then-Assemblyman Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970, he investigated the conditions of Californian prisons by being held, under a pseudonym, as an inmate in Folsom Prison, while presiding as chairman on the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform. During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the killing of seals.

Ryan was also famous for vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and authored the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, passed in 1974. He was also an early critic of L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology movement and of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. On November 3, 1977, Ryan read into the United States Congressional Record a testimony by John Gordon Clark about the health hazards connected with destructive cults.

Ryan is the only U.S. congressman to have been killed in the line of duty. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 1983.

BCnU!

GLAU-BOTS!

This season on 'Chuck', the new Buy More store has been serving as a front for the CIA (if not for all of the intelligence agencies) with spies as employees... along with the usual Buy Morons.

Among these agent/employees is the umbrella code-name of Greta, which has been used by several agents so far. As a code name, "Greta" is gender-blind - Isaiah Mustafa of the Old Spice blipverts was Greta for one episode. The latest Greta was played by Summer Glau and her spy caught the unhealthy interests of Jeff & Lester, who couldn't understand how she could disappear into thin air. As their obsession with her could have compromised covert missions operating out of the Buy More, "Greta" threatened to call upon her assassin skills to eliminate Jeffster entirely. Casey put an end to her services there, by giving her the cover story of being a thief who was stealing stock from the company.

As with the other Greta agents (three before this one, at least), we never learn what her true identity is. And it's likely we'll never see Summer Glau in the role again.

So until such time - if any! - when this theory would be rebuked by what occurs on-screen, why can't we assume that she was Cameron, the Terminator which was sent back in Time to protect John Connor (as seen in 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles')? 'The Sarah Connor Chronicles' is dead; the show is canceled and it's unlikely to ever come back, even in reunion movie/mini-series form. (It may live on in tie-in novels and comic books, perhaps.) So after John Connor was blasted into the Future (a pozz'ble alternate timeline for Toobworld), that was the last we saw of Cameron in Toobworld's "present". (Had the show come back for another season, we may have been treated to two variations on Glau's character.)

What happened to Cameron in the present day of Toobworld? Did she continue protecting Sarah Connor? Technically she was no longer a threat to the Terminators in the Future without John by her side.

What if the Black Ops of Homeland Security finally captured her? What if they reprogrammed her to work for the U.S. government as a spy?

What if Cameron was Agent Greta in "Chuck vs. The Fear Of Death"?

They would have had to wipe her memory clean of her original mission; they may have had to install an emotion chip, a crude one developed ages before Dr. Noonian Soong came up with his more sophisticated version for Data on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'.

Just sayin', is all. It's an idea I'm throwing out there for the fanficcers to play with.......

BCnU!

INTO THE WOODS

This theory of relateeveety is from my brother Bill.....

Of the bastard children that may have been sired by the Roman Octavian, one line of descent found its way to the British Isle. There Octavian's telegenetics eventually re-manifested themselves in a young doctor named Harrison in the town of Cranford. A century later, one of Dr. Harrison's descendants also bore a remarkable resemblance to the Roman emperor - a fighter pilot stationed near Hastings named Greville Woods. Greville Woods may have been the grandfather of a young man named Rowan who was the son of the Prime Minister. But that would have been in the Toobworld timeline before the temporal reboot by either the primeval anomaly explored by Nick and Helen Cutter or the intervention of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect into the lives of the cavemen.
Rowan may still have survived into the new timeline, but his father was no longer the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

SHOWS CITED:
'Rome'
'Cranford'
'Foyle's War' - "Enemy Fire"
'Spooks' ('MI-5') - episodes 5.1 & 5.2
'Primeval'
'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy'

[All of these characters were played by Simon Woods.]

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: JIM JONES

JIM JONES

AS SEEN IN:
"Guyana Tragedy: The Story Of Jim Jones"

AS PLAYED BY:
Powers Boothe

From Wikipedia:
James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 suicide of more than 900 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.

Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in that state in the 1950s. Jones and the Temple later moved to California, and both gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the mid-1970s.

The greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001, the tragedy at Guyana also ranks among the largest mass murders/mass suicides in history. One of those who died at the nearby airstrip was Leo Ryan, who remains the only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States. Jones is currently residing in Hell.....

BCnU!

ZONKS & BONDS

"Oh my God. You have a monocle!
Is this real? Is this really happening?!
Good luck killing James Bond!"
Ted Mosby
'How I Met Your Mother'

James Bond exists in Toobworld. In fact, his first visual incarnation adapted from the Ian Fleming stories was in a television production of "Casino Royale" back in the 1950's. That first James Bond was an American who was sometimes called "Jimmy".

The code name "James Bond" was then adopted by British Intelligence to be used as an umbrella alias for their top spies. We saw one of them in action in the reunion movie for 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.', which could conceivably absorb "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" out of the Cineverse and into Toobworld.

The fact that people in Toobworld know about this super spy named James Bond and often make references to the movies about him is all part of the plan by the powers that be to mask the truth about certain people - like James Bond, the U.N.C.L.E. agents, and the Time Lord known as the Doctor - by creating fictional movies and even TV shows about their exploits. That way the general public - and more importantly, enemies! - would be confused as to what was reality and what was fiction.

In its basic form, I think this is a notion shared by the good folks of the Wold Newton Universe concept.....

BCnU!

NAME DROPPERS: ON THE ROAD IN THE LILIES OF THE FIELD

We don't always see it happen, but many TV characters have had interactions with the televersions of people from the real world. (Granted, most of them are celebrities.) Some of them can be related to each other, some have had sex with each other, and others look exactly alike. Most of the time, they just know each other, and we only learn about this in conversation without actually seeing the televersions.

Here's a scene from a recent episode of 'Weeds', in which we learned that Wilfred knew both Jack Kerouac and Sidney Poitier.....

BCnU!

A ZONK IN THE "WEEDS"

I don't watch 'Weeds'. I have nothing against the show, but it's on Showtime and I don't subscribe to that.

So I would have been happy in my ignorance of its Zonks, if it weren't for the good folks at CliqueClack TV and their collection of TV quotes this week.

“You married Uncle Phil from 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air';
that’s an obvious cry for help.”
Doug Wilson
'Weeds'

I think this should be an easy Zonk to disable, thanks to the biggest TV craze of the last decade.

'The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air' was a sitcom which launched Will Smith to fame. It told the story of a kid from the Philly mean streets whose Mom sent him out to that tony neighborhood in the LA suburbs to stay with relatives.
That's what it was for the real world - a sitcom. But I'm thinking that within the "reality" of Toobworld, it has all the ingredients to not only be a reality TV show, but one that was popular enough so that Doug knew his ex-wife Dana would understand the reference.

BCnU!

THE "BROTHERS" WILCOX

Mark Wilcox was a scientist working in the Hastings area during World War II on a top secret biological warfare experiment involving anthrax. When DCS Christopher Foyle of the Hastings police was investigating some suspicious deaths in the area, Mark wanted to do the right thing by the local inhabitants even if he was possibly exposing military secrets.

Mark had a twin brother named Tim who was flying with the RAF. Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood (Cardiff division) knew him back then during the war. He thought that even though Tim was a poor pilot, he was a very good navigator. Should he ever get shot down, he would always know where he was. Both Mark Wilcox and Tim (no last name given) were played by Peter Sandys-Clarke.

So this theory of relateeveety creates a possible link between 'Foyle's War' and 'Torchwood'.

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: SNOOKI & SENATOR McCAIN

From the New York Daily News:

by JOYCE CHEN
John McCain and Snooki are at it again. The unlikely pair, who have kept a famously robust Twitter relationship going since this past summer, are taking their Tweets to a more personal level.

"Happy birthday @Sn00ki," the Arizona senator posted Monday afternoon."Thabk you Johnny ! :) xox," the "Jersey Shore" star excitedly Tweeted in response.

The politician and the reality star have pointedly defended one another on the social networking site, brought together in their opposition to President Obama's tanning tax this past summmer.

In an episode of the MTV show this season, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi complained about Obama's tax on her favorite pastime, saying, "McCain would never put a 10 percent tax on tanning, because he's pale and he would probably want to be tan."

And in a defining moment in politics, Sen. McCain took to Twitter to respond: "u r right, I would never tax your tanning bed! Pres Obama's tax/spend policy is quite The Situation. but I do rec wearing sunscreen!"

SNOOKIE & SENATOR JOHN McCAIN

AS SEEN ON:
'Jimmy Kimmel Live!'

AS PLAYED BY:
Puppets (voices unknown)

BCnU!

[Every so often I like to send these "As Seen On TV" showcases to friends of mine. So this one is going out to a puppeteer from that great school for puppetry, UConn - Rolande Duprey.]

AS SEEN ON TV: TRUMAN CAPOTE

TRUMAN CAPOTE

AS SEEN IN:
"The Audrey Hepburn Story"
'Life On Mars' (dream sequence)

AS PLAYED BY:
Michael J. Burg

From Wikipedia:
Truman Capote (September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American author and comedian, many of whose short stories, novels, plays and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother and multiple migrations. He discovered his calling by the age of eleven, and for the rest of his childhood he honed his writing ability. Capote began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of one story, "Miriam" (1945), attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, resulting in a contract to write Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Capote earned the most fame with In Cold Blood (1965), a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home, a book Capote spent four years writing. A milestone in popular culture, it was the peak of his career, although it was not his final book. In the 1970s, he maintained his celebrity status by appearing on television talk shows.

Burg's portrayal of Capote in "The Audrey Hepburn Story" must be considered the official televersion for the author. That's because that was how Capote looked in the data files accessed by the computer on board the spaceship headed to Mars in 2035. The computer integrated that image of Capote into the dream sequence it was feeding to the mind of astronaut Sam Tyler during his hibernation portion of the trip to Mars. If it was good enough for the computer program "Windy", even though it had been damaged when the ship passed through a metor shower, then it's good enough for Toobworld Central.

Two for Tuesday!

BCnU!

"LOST" MAY BE GONE, BUT THE NUMBERS LIVE ON

The numerical sequence of 'Lost' played a role last week in a TV series that at least shares the same executive producer as the show about the mysterious Island......

Re: Last week's episode of 'Fringe':

The third season episode "6995 kHz" involves the broadcast of numbers in Spanish from several radio towers. The numbers include 8, 15, and 42. It is reported that a total of 15 people get retrograde amnesia due to the broadcasts.

Plus there were references and examples of "Numbers Stations", which gave it something of a 'Lost' feel as well.

BCnU

AND THEN THERE'S MAUDIE.....

Before I undertook this project over the weekend, I had taken Ms. Prickett for granted whenever I saw her in a TV show episode. But I've now come to appreciate what she had to offer, just as I did with Mabel Albertson (whose special project I'm still working on).

So I think it safe to say that if I were to compile a Deep Six list of favorite character actresses in Toobworld (and I was considering it for today's project, but I didn't want to commit myself), she'd definitely be on it.

In a way, this also turned out to be a Hat Squad tribute to her as well.....

And so endeth Maudie Monday. BCnU!

THE FLOTSAM AND JETSAM OF MAUDIE PRICKETT

Here's a list from the IMDb of other shows and TV movies in which Maudie Prickett was involved, but which I didn't have anything to contribute.....

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color
– The Whiz Kid and the Mystery at Riverton: Part 2 (1974) … Mrs. Hundley
– The Whiz Kid and the Mystery at Riverton: Part 1 (1974) … Mrs. Hundley
– Michael O'Hara the Fourth: Part 2 (1972) … Nosy Neighbor
– Michael O'Hara the Fourth: Part 1 (1972) … Nosy Neighbor

Love, American Style
– Love and the Artful Codger/Love and the Neglected Wife/Love and the Traveling Salesman (1971) … Gladys Norton (segment "Love and the Artful Codger")

The Further Adventures of Gallegher: The Daily Press vs. City Hall (1965) … Ellen, the Maid

The Good Guys
- Deep Are the Roots (1970) … Lotus Plimpton

Wonder Woman: Who's Afraid of Diana Prince? - Mother (uncredited)

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

My Mother the Car
- Absorba the Greek (1966) … Agnes Heckendorn

The Best of the Post
– The Marriage That Couldn't Succeed (1960)

The Millionaire
- The Terrence Costigan Story (1959) … Rose

Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre
– The Doctor Was a Lady (1958) … Mrs. Forbish

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

The 20th Century-Fox Hour
– End of a Gun (1957) … Mrs. Pennyfeather
– The Miracle on 34th Street (1955) … Miss Prossy

Cavalcade of America
– Danger at Clover Ridge (1956) … Ruth Thompson

Front Row Center
– Johnny Belinda (1955) … Maggie McDonald

The Star and the Story
- Her Crowning Glory (1955) … Saleslady

TV Reader's Digest
– I'll Pick More Daisies (1955)

Captain Midnight
– Touchdown Terror (1955)

Four Star Playhouse
– Welcome Home (1952) … Mrs. White

The Doctor
– The White Medallion (1952)

BCnU!

MAUDIE: ON LOCATION

Of the many other roles played by Maudie Prickett on TV whom I didn't have the chance to get to, not all of them were located in California.

To the best of my knowledge, here are most of those women. If possible, I've also included where the shows were located..... Get Smart (Washington, DC)
– Moonlighting Becomes You (1970) … Naomi Hickenlooper

Petticoat Junction (Hooterville)
– Hooterville a Go Go (1965) … Tillie Finney

Fury
– Trottin' Horse (1960)
– Aunt Harriet (1958) … Aunt Harriet

The Untouchables (Chicago)
- Underground Railway (1959) … Telephone Supervisor (uncredited)

Leave It to Beaver (Mayfield)
– Beaver and Poncho (1958) … Mrs. Bennett

Father Knows Best (Springfield)
– Bud's Encounter with the Law (1954) … Secretary (uncredited)

My Little Margie (NYC)
– Parrot Gold (1954)

Waterfront
– Farnum's Folly … Essie Twill

Adventures of Superman (Metropolis)
– The Haunted Lighthouse (1952)

But just because the shows take place in a certain location, that doesn't mean her particular episodes did as well. 'The Adventures Of Superman' episode is suspect.

She also made several appearances in the sketch comedy TV dimension as well.....

IN SKITLANDIA:
Red Skelton Hour
– Cauliflower Loses His Birds (1962) … Mrs. Gould
– Freddie the Singer (1959) … Woman from PTA
– Rapid Growth (1959) … Housewife

BCnU!

"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!

A NOT SO ROSIE OUTLOOK FOR MAUDIE

I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to Maudie Prickett's longest-running role, that of Rosie, the best friend of 'Hazel'. (She appeared in about thirty-four episodes of the series.)

While I do have the first season of 'Hazel' here in the Toobworld Central library, I just haven't had time to crack it open yet.

But I didn't want to let the opportunity to acknowledge the role pass on Maudie Monday.....

BCnU!

MAUDIE OF HILLDALE

Here are two shows that were already connected, but maybe Maudie Prickett can help strengthen the link.....

The Donna Reed Show
Love Thy Neighbor (1959) … Miss Loretta Sanders

Miss Sanders was the secretary to the Stones' neighbor, Mr. Wilgus. Mrs. Wilgus suspected the two of them were having an affair, while Miss Sanders thought her boss was carrying on with Donna Stone.

[As seen in 'The Donna Reed Show']

Dennis the Menace
Dennis Haunts a House (1960) … Madame Tina

Madame Tina was a fortune teller who convinced George Wilson that he would soon be contacted by a dead relative. So when Dennis and his friends started using Mr. Wilson's basement as a clubhouse, he thought the noises made by those meddling kids were coming from beyond the grave.....

Maudie Prickett played both these roles and I'm wondering if it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that both of these women were one and the same.

Both shows took place in the town of Hilldale, and Dennis Mitchell appeared in a 1960 episode of 'The Donna Reed Show'.

So what if Loretta Sanders took on the role of Madame Tina, the fortune teller? Maybe she was also the twin sister of Maxwell Smart's Aunt Bertha, whom we think had her own grifter identity in an episode of 'The Doris Day Show'. Maybe it ran in the family.....

BCnU!

MAUDIE AS SECRETARY @ INNER TOOB

Yeah, I know what the heading pun leads one to think.....

Just as it was with the nurse characters she played, Maudie Prickett also played a couple of secretaries in Toobworld. The most prominent one would be Miss Gordon who worked for Jack Benny. But as she most likely was underpaid by that old (well, 39 year old) skinflint, Miss Gordon probably sought temporary secretarial positions (perhaps through the Carter Unique Employment Agency).

Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre
Mr. Governess (1965) … Secretary

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

Father Knows Best
– Bud's Encounter with the Law (1954) … Secretary (uncredited)

That last one should probably be eliminated since it takes place in Springfield. Illinois or Massachusetts, it's a long commute for just a secretarial position.
BCnU!

MAUDIE, BORN TO RERUN

In the 'Bewitched' episode "Samantha's Olde Salem Days", Maudie Prickett and James Westerfield played the tavern keepers Mr. and Mrs. Farley in 17th Century Salem. (Although all of the credits list their name as "Farley", the Magistrate pronounced it as "Fairley".)

Earlier today I suggested that Mr. Farley and his wife Goodie Farley were the ancestors of a character Maudie Prickett played in other episodes of 'Bewitched'. But they could also have connections to two other characters seen in an episode of 'The Andy Griffith Show' - Aunt Bea's sister Nora and her husband Ollie.

But I'm thinking the connection is less genealogical than it is spiritual.

I'm saying that Ollie and Nora were the reincarnations of Mr. and Mrs. Farley!

We've seen this happen before in Toobworld, where TV characters are not only reborn, but are eventually reunited with people they knew in a past life. My favorite theory for this concerns Ross and Demelza 'Poldark', whom I believe were "born to rerun" as 'Dharma & Greg'.

Another example would combine 'Doctor Who' with 'Rosemary & Thyme' via characters played by Felicity Kendall and Christopher Benjamin.

To look at both couples, it's easy to see why reincarnation could be a pozz'bility......

As for an actual theory of relateeveety, I think it's likely Aunt Bea was more than happy to see her sister Nora leave town after their over-extended visit. Not so much because she was just as tired of their company as Andy was, but because she finally realized that Nora bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Lydia, Myrtle and Edna (all seen in episodes of 'The Andy Griffith Show' and 'Mayberry RFD'.)

Apparently Bea and Nora's mother must have cheated on her husband with the father of those triplets.... BCnU!