TVXOHOF HONORARY MEMORIAL - THE QUEEN OF SOUL

"Hey, Nineteen!
That's 'Retha Franklin.
She don't remember the Queen of Soul."
STEELY DAN

But Toobworld does.

This is for you, Queen Aretha.....

From Wikipedia:
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer and songwriter. Franklin began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where her father, C. L. Franklin, was minister. In 1960, at the age of 18, she embarked on a secular career, recording for Columbia Records but only achieving modest success. Following her signing to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with songs such as "Respect", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Spanish Harlem" and "Think". By the end of the 1960s she had gained the title "The Queen of Soul".

To read more about Ms. Franklin, click here.

Aretha Franklin only made one appearance in Toobworld as her fictional televersion.  And it was the most appropriate series to showcase her.....

'Murphy Brown'
- "The Queen of Soul" 

From the IMDb:
Murphy lands an interview with her idol, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. When Aretha's train is delayed and she can't get to the studio on time for the live broadcast, the FYI gang is left stretching their way out of the one hour long program to fill in the dead air time.

'Popular'
"The Phantom Menace" 

From the IMDb:
It's the first day of a new school year. Brooke has self-image issues. Josh tries out for a musical. 

Mr. Wayne Vincent:
"Performing allows you to call up feelings and fears you can't express in your life. Use what you're afraid to show. Let it out. Again."

Girl in the drama class begins to sing "Amazing Grace."

Mr. Vincent:
"Okay. I'm stopping you here. And I have one word to say to you and that word is: 'Aretha'." 

'Popular'
"Coup"

From the IMDb:
Nicole sets out to prove that her power is not based on her "twin set" - her plan involves April, Brooke and taking down everyone who gets in her way. 

April Tuna:
"Are you familiar with the lyrics to the classic 1985 Aretha Franklin/Annie Lennox duet?"

She was referring to "Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves":

So that's an acknowledgement of the music her televersion provided in both Earth Prime and Earth Prime-Time.

'White Collar'
"Upper West Side Story"

From the IMDb:
When scholarship funds from a prestigious prep school mysteriously disappear, Neal poses as a substitute teacher to help Peter and the FBI figure out where the money is really going.

Assistant Vice Principal:
"If I had a song for every substitute I had to track down in these halls, I'd be Aretha Franklin."

'Inspector George Gently'
"Gently Northern Soul" 

From the IMDb:
After a young black girl is murdered, Gently uncovers a disturbing and malevolent racist undercurrent lurking both within the local community and his own police force.

Carole Morford:
 "We had this mad dream about going to America. To the clubs in Philadelphia and Detroit. She thought she'd meet some big record producer. She could sing, you see. She could sing like Aretha."

'The Finder'
"The Boy with the Bucket"

From the IMDb:
[Walter's] beloved brother Langston Sherman arrives, asking priority, granted only after insistence from the whole gang, for their father Franklin's dying wish, finding and bringing their mother, who left when the boys were still babies. 

Walter Sherman:
"My name is Walter Sherman, and I am not an alcoholic. No. Uh, but! I'm honored to be here in Memphis, Tennessee, the home of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Aretha Franklin." 

'Partners'
"The Key"

From the IMDb:
Ali, tired of Louis just popping in at the apartment decides to change the locks. Louis tells Joe that he should stand up for him but Joe sides with Ali.

Louis McManus:
"Oh, my God! I can't believe you're using vaseline as a lotion! Who are you, Aretha Franklin?"

Aretha made plenty of appearances on television over her career - in music videos, talk shows, award presentations, variety programs, documentaries.  It's not something anybody could do, but even so, it doesn't contribute to her overall tally for entry into the Hall.  It was actually appearing as her fictional self with Murphy Brown and having those six other fictional characters mention her which was the harder feat to pull off.

But once residency in the Hall is established, I don't mind mentioning some of those other appearances, especially when those shows are themselves represented in the greater Toobworld Dynamic.

Here she is, in a duet with Frankie Valli, on 'The Mike Douglas Show':

And here are some of those other shows in which she was featured:

• 'Today'
• 'The Kennedy Center Honors'
• 'The Late Show with David Letterman'
• 'Tonight with Jack Paar/Johnny Carson/Jay Leno/Seth Meyers'
• 'The Oprah Winfrey Show'
• 'Entertainment Tonight'
• 'Christmas In Rockefeller Center'
• 'Deal Or No Deal'
• 'The Grammy Awards'
• 'Saturday Night Live'
• 'American Bandstand'
• 'Midnight Special'

And we have to acknowledge her presence with all of those times in which her voice was heard in so many TV shows, from 'Boston Legal' to 'The Wonder Years', from old series like 'Miami Vice' and 'Moonlighting' to 'Ray Donovan' and 'GLOW'.  And even going across the Atlantic to be heard in 'EastEnders'.

Granted, most of those times they would only be heard by the audience viewing at home in the Trueniverse and not by the citizens of Toobworld, but still.  Aretha Franklin has always been a powerhouse in every world.

Thank you, Aretha Franklin.  And welcome to the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.....

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMER - MR. GARRITY OF THE ZONE

Our choice for this Friday Hall of Famer is fitting even though he only appeared once on our screens for the August TV Western showcase, even from Toobworld.  Everything else about him which I think qualifies him has to be considered theoretical.  But that's what the Friday Hall of Fame entries are for!

Let's meet our newest member.....

"Introducing Mr. Jared Garrity, a gentleman of commerce, who in the latter half of the nineteenth century plied his trade in the wild and woolly hinterlands of the American West. And Mr. Garrity, if one can believe him, is a "resurrecter of the dead" - which, on the face of it, certainly sounds like the bull is off the nickel. But to the scoffers amongst you, and you ladies and gentlemen from Missouri, don't laugh this one off entirely, at least until you've seen a sample of Mr. Garrity's wares, and an example of his services. The place is Happiness, Arizona, the time around 1890. And you and I have just entered a saloon where the bar whiskey is brewed, bottled and delivered from the Twilight Zone."  

From the IMDb:
Mr. Garrity comes into town offering to resurrect the dead and reunite the townsfolk with their departed loved ones out of the goodness of his heart. Do the town-folks want these miracles to occur?

In the early 1890s Mr. Garrity arrives in Happiness, Arizona apparently knowing a great deal about some of the people who live there. He knows that Jensen the bartender's brother died and that Gooberman the town drunk lost his wife. Garrity also reveals that he has a very peculiar gift - he can bring back the dead. When a dog is run down by a wagon in the street he resurrects it without any difficulty. When he offers to do the same for the town's loved ones, they realize they would rather he not bring back the dearly departed, something they are quite happy to pay him for. Garrity, a charlatan if ever there was one, is glad to accept their money - though he does seem to leave something behind.

"Exit Mr. Garrity, a would-be charlatan, a make-believe con man and a sad misjudger of his own talents. Respectfully submitted from an empty cemetery on a dark hillside that is one of the slopes leading to the Twilight Zone."

It's apparent that Mr. Garrity and his two accomplices (Ace and the dog) had pulled this supposed con game in the past in other towns of the old West, perhaps in such frontier towns of Toobworld like North Fork, New Mexico, ('The Rifleman'), Nichols, Arizona, ('Nichols'), and Mercy, Nevada, ('Doctor Who').  And as any experienced confidence man would do, Garrity got out of town as soon as he made his money.  So in such towns as those, he never knew that he really could resurrect the dead.  

A lot of the potential revenants in these towns are of course a matter of "wish-craft".  For instance, I'd like to think that if Garrity did arrive in Mercy, Nevada, after the Doctor helped resolve the conflict between two aliens from the planet Kahler, his powers were able to bring Isaac, the town's marshal, back to life.  Even though the Gunslinger (Kahler-Tek) was made the marshal of Mercy once the Doctor resigned and left, if Garrity brought Isaac back to life, then the Gunslinger would probably have stepped aside and let Isaac resume his duties until he died a natural death.  After that the Gunslinger would have resumed the charge given him by the Doctor.

Otherwise, Jared Garrity serves as the perfect splainin for all of those TV Western bad guys who seemed to keep showing up in various TV shows; sometimes even popping up over and over again in the same series!

But I'm not married to that idea and since the TV Universe is fluid as we've seen TV shows get overhauled with revisions, then I think either idea works.  And if all of those Milford characters were the same guy reanimated by Jared Garrity, then he might have followed Garrity around the West after the "con man" moved on from North Fork.  

One such example would be all of the bad guys played by John Milford in episodes of 'The Rifleman'.  In all, he appeared in eleven episodes of the series and pretty much he was gunned down by Lucas McCain in all of them.  And yet there he was again a short time later, to try again using a different name. 

(I wrote about Milford's gallery of rogues in the past, making the claim that the gaseous beings known as the Gelth - as seen in the 'Doctor Who' episode "The Unquiet Dead" - kept reanimating his corpse there in North Fork, each time taking on a new alias.

Eventually, I think Garrity did discover he had this power and so he changed his modus operandi.  He would set up shop in a town (especially Dodge City) and hire himself out to outlaws who knew they would be committing crimes in town.  So he offered them his services should their best-laid plans "gang aft agley".

Most of those characters played by Milford could be the same guy.  All of the bad guys played by Morgan Woodward, Jack Elam, and Lee Van Cleef in episodes of multiple TV Westerns could also be clients of Garrity.

(We've seen that six Milford characters showed up in seven episodes of 'Gunsmoke'; and 'The Virginian' had six of his characters.  However one was a Sheriff and the other was a deputy.  It's possible they have no relation to the corpse brought back to life by Garrity.)

I've written about this topic in the past, suggesting that Jared Garrity was eligible for membership in the TVXOHOF.  And now we're bringing it to fruition.

So if Jared Garrity could bring himself back from the dead, it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that at least two other characters could be Garrity leading a new life.  And that's all he needs to get his three TV show appearances under his belt.

O'Bservation: The day may come when I need a new Friday Hall of Famer for the TV Western showcase.  If I get stuck, I'll cobble together a "Game of the Name" theory that Garrity's accomplice Ace would be known by other names in other TV show episodes in which Robert Mitchum's baby brother John appeared.

But that's for another day.

For now, we tip our Stetson to perhaps the most famous Western character ever played by Mister John Dehner....

Welcome to the Hall, Jared Garrity!

THURSDAY'S THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - THE ANKRUM LINEAGE

'PERRY MASON'

Morris Ankrum is probably best known as being one in the main coterie of Los Angeles judges who witnessed the jousts between defense lawyer Perry Mason and District Attorney Hamilton Burger.  He appeared in twenty-two episodes in all.  That show was his penultimate role.

For the most part, the name of his judge was not revealed during the episode.  But there were a handful of times when we learned his name during the trial (usually thanks to those name plates found on the bench.)  

Unfortunately, out of those five episodes in which he did have a name, only twice was it a name that had previously been used.

Here are the five episodes in which he was named:

• The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1959) ... Judge Bates
• The Case of the Borrowed Brunette (1959) ... Judge Bates
• The Case of the Lucky Loser (1958) ... Judge Cadwell
• The Case of the Rolling Bones (1958) ... Judge Morrisey
• The Case of the Nervous Accomplice (1957) ... Judge Hoyt

His last two appearances on the show had the same name - Bates.  It's not much but I'm going to consider that name to be his true name just because it was used more often, even if it was just twice.

As for the others?

I don't have it in me to go for some wild theory that could only happen as seen on TV.  All of the judges he played in those 22 episodes were Judge Bates, even in those in which no name was given, but especially those in which he sported a different name.

So why was he also known as Judge Cadwell, Judge Morrisey, and Judge Hoyt?

It's because Judge Bates was a practical joker.

There were several times during his career on the bench, and we saw three such examples, when Judge Bates would swipe the name plates of other judges and preside over the court proceedings under their names rather than his own.  He never declared himself as Hoyt, Cadwell, or Morrissey, and if found out, he would shrug it off as an "honest mistake"; that he grabbed the wrong name plate in error.

Being a practical joker wasn't so bad. He could have been a convicted forger and even a possible murderer like his great-grandfather.

'MAVERICK'
'THE MARQUESA"
(Sound familiar?  Yeah, we covered this episode on Tuesday.)

Justice Bates' grandfather was a convicted forger who served time in prison with Bart Maverick's ne'er-do-well "friend" Nobby Ned Wingate.  HIs name was originally Ortiz but he was in Santa Leora, passing himself off as Judge Jason Paynter.  He was in on the plan to scam the town out of some prime real estate, working with his brother Manuel Ortiz.

When found out, Paynter tried to shoot his way out of the situation, but he was killed by a knife thrown by lunatic Pepe which was meant for Bart Maverick.

Ortiz had been born and raised in the Los Angeles area while it was still under the control of the Spanish and he once saw Zorro in action as a young man.

But he abandoned his wife and daughter to seek his fortune once he discovered he had a skill in forgery.  There were times when his bilking of banks with his forged certificates almost got him captured by Secret Service agents James T. West and Artemus Gordon.

He hid out in Santa Leora under the alias of Justice Jason Paynter, for which he forged the necessary papers.  While there, he passed the time by reading the dime novels of Ernest Pratt which featured the pure, heroic adventurer Nicodemus Legend.  And in one of those stories, Paynter learned about Pratt's fictionalized account of a plot to steal land in Nevada with a falsified Spanish land grant.

This gave the avaricious Ortiz aka Paynter the idea to pull the same stunt right there in Santa Leora.

(You can find the video for "The Marquesa" at DailyMotion.)

The news eventually made it back to the City of Angels and devastated Ortiz's daughter.  As a young woman she had a striking beauty which brought many suitors calling from not only the Spanish community but from eligible Anglos in the area.  But she lost her heart to a young sheriff's deputy named Bates from Pierceville, Kansas, who had been sent to Los Angeles by Sheriff Dan Bassett to escort a captured murderer back with him to hang in Pierceville.  (It may have been her revulsion at her father's life of crime which drew her to the deputy.)

The feeling was mutual and so, abandoning all common sense, Senorita Ortiz agreed to go with Deputy Bates back to Pierceville, Kansas.  Before their trip together with the caged murderer, Deputy Bates warned her that life in Pierceville would not be as exciting as she had in Los Angeles.  But the shame of her father's crimes had soured her to a world where temptation and sin beckoned and she looked forward to that life in a moral absolute like Pierceville.  

As they made the journey, Deputy Bates regaled her with tales of his life as a lawmanonly had one story about his family which he thought was of any interest - that he was a second-generation American; that he had cousins still back in England in the Yorkshire area.

The only thing he held back from her was that he showed a weakness in character.  Bates caved to group pressure and nearly hanged an innocent man at a lynching.  Luckily that man - one Festus Haggen - had friends in the Marshal of Dodge City and a fellow deputy (who happens to be distantly related to my televersion.)  They arrived in the nick of time to provide backup for Sheriff Bassett against the mob.

In 1897 (by which time Sheriff Bassett had resigned his position and Bates had become the sheriff), she gave birth to their son.  When he got older, he wanted to pursue justice like his father, but he had a more modern outlook on the world.  He decided to pursue a career in the Law and become a lawyer.  So he went back to his ancestral roots in Los Angeles and enrolled in the law school of California University.

After he spent time as a public defender, then as an assistant district attorney, Bates got a job with a very influential law firm, Dundee, Culhane, Culhane, and Brewster.  Eventually he sought a judgeship in Los Angeles, and that's when we as the Trueniverse audience finally met him, in the sunset years of his career.

He was still on the bench when he passed away.  He died in 1964 at a toney party celebrating a new law firm, MacKenzie, Brackman & Cheney.  It wasn't a dignified exit from this mortal plane and he pitched forward into the bowl of tomacco dip.

And there you have it, the Toobworld mythography for Justice Bates, beginning with 'Maverick', running through 'Gunsmoke', and ending up in 'Perry Mason'.

Happy trails!

TV SHOWS CITED:

• 'MAVERICK'
• 'PERRY MASON'
• 'GUNSMOKE'
• 'LEGEND'
• 'BONANZA'
• 'DOWNTON ABBEY'
• 'THE WILD, WILD WEST'
• 'SUGARFOOT'
• 'BLACK SADDLE'
• 'DUNDEE AND THE CULHANE'
• 'SAVED BY THE BELL: THE COLLEGE YEARS'
• 'BEVERLY HILLS 90210'
• 'L.A. LAW'
• 'THE SIMPSONS'

DATELINE TOOBWORLD - BEN FRANKLIN'S MOM

'TIMELESS'
"THE SALEM WITCH HUNT"

From the IMDb:
While Wyatt sneaks away from the bunker to face an unbelievable truth, Lucy, Rufus and their former enemy-turned-teammate, Garcia Flynn, chase the Mothership to the Salem Witch Trials.

It was the plan of Lucy's mother that the mother of Benjamin Franklin, Abiah Folger Franklin, would also be swept up as an accused witch to be hung that day in 1692 along with the other women.  And this would happen while she was pregnant with her son Peter which would prevent the births of Ben and six of his siblings.

Abiah Folger Franklin was born on August 15, 1667, on Madaket Road, Nantucket Island, to farmer and surveyor Peter Folger. In 1687, she became the second wife of Josiah Franklin of Boston, and had 8 children, the youngest of whom was the famous Benjamin Franklin. (O'Bservation - apparently the two daughters born after Ben did not survive.)

Josiah's first wife (the mother of his first 10 children) died, so Abiah raised all 18 Franklin children.

Abiah bore Josiah 10 children: John (1690), Peter (1692), Mary (1694), James (1697), Sarah (1699), Ebenezer (1701), Thomas (1703), Benjamin (1706), Lydia (1708), and Jane (1712). 

Within just a few years after the marriage, a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts sweeping many of the early settlers up in the ensuing confusion.

Abiah’s sister, Bethshua Folger Pope, was an active and theatric participant in the events in Salem Village proper.  She suffered “hysterical blindness” and convulsions, and in the middle of one trial she threw a shoe at the accused’s head. Her accusations contributed to the death-sentence of at least one convicted witch, Martha Corey.

The involvement of Abiah's sister was woven into the plot of the episode, and she admitted freely that she used the accusations to get rid of her enemies.  But she never wanted her sister to get caught up in the hysteria.

Abiah's life in Toobworld differed from her life in the Real World.  There was no way she would be in Salem Village in 1692 - not only was she caring for her step-children as well as her first-born John, but she was seven months pregnant with Peter.  It's just a deviation we have to accept.  And since the timeline they were in was probably based on previous timeline alterations, they were many dimensions away from the main Toobworld by this point.

I'm posting this today because it is the 351st anniversary of Abiah Franklin's birth.

BCnU!

 

TWO FOR TUESDAY - WILD WEST "ANASTASIA" 2X!

From Wikipedia:
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia June 18, 1901 – July 17, 1918) was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

Anastasia was the younger sister of Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, and was the elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. She was murdered with her family by members of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, at Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.

Persistent rumors of her possible escape circulated after her death, fuelled by the fact that the location of her burial was unknown during the decades of Communist rule. The mass grave near Yekaterinburg which held the remains of the Tsar, his wife, and three of their daughters was revealed in 1991, and the bodies of Alexei Nikolaevich and the remaining daughter—either Anastasia or her older sister Maria—were discovered in 2007. Her possible survival has been conclusively disproved. Scientific analysis including DNA testing confirmed that the remains are those of the imperial family, showing that all four grand duchesses were killed in 1918.

Several women falsely claimed to have been Anastasia; the best known impostor is Anna Anderson. Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984, but DNA testing in 1994 on available pieces of Anderson's tissue and hair showed no relation to the Romanov family.

A 1956 movie starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes fictionalized an attempt to pass off a suicidal young woman as Anastasia to get the frozen assets of the Romanovs out of the Bank of England.

Four years later, that story was the inspiration for two Western tales in Toobworld...

'MAVERICK'

"THE MARQUESA"

From the IMDb:
Having won a saloon, Bart arrives in town to find it closed because of a competing claim of ownership by the Marquessa, the alleged heir to the land grant on which the saloon and the town sits. Bart suspects that the Marquessa is a fraud, but is she?

From tv.com:
Bart Maverick wins big, when he wins the "Lucky Lady" saloon in a card game. When Bart goes to Santa Leora to stake his claim, a beautiful Marquesa refuses to relinquish the property to him. Maverick encounters hurling knives, flurry of bullets and pounding fists when he tries to hold onto his newly acquired saloon.

Again from the IMDb:
"The Marquesa" has a familiar theme. Bart wins a cantina called the Lucky Lady when his four treys beat a full house. He travels to the New Mexico territory only to learn the cantina has been closed due to a dispute over ownership. Nevertheless, he reopens it with drinks on the house. This was the last of Adele Mara's three appearances in 'Maverick', and she plays the Marquesa. She believes she is an impostor, a saloon girl, until it turns out that she really is the Marquesa and heir to the land. 

'BONANZA'
"THE SPANISH GRANT"

The Cartwrights try to disprove the validity of a Spanish land grant to stop the De La Cuesta family from seizing part of the Ponderosa and all of the Carson Valley settlers' homestead lands.

Film fans will no doubt recognize the plot of the classic "Anastasia" in this episode of 'Bonanza'. Playing the heiress is the beautiful Patricia Medina who is of unknown origins and who adventurer Sebastian Cabot is trying to pass off as the heir to an old Spanish land grant. If successful they're going to rip off a whole big hunk of the territory of Nevada. The land grant that Cabot is claiming would also include most of the Ponderosa, something that Lorne Greene and his sons aren't about to tolerate.

As in the movie "Anastasia" the climax comes with the meeting of the grande dame of the DeLa Cuesta family played by Celia Lovsky with her alleged great niece Medina. Abbreviated though it is for television the scene is still well played.

A classic film adapted to the small screen setting of Bonanza, nicely done.

Both of these 1960 episodes were written by different men here in the Real World.  James Gunn came up with the 'Maverick' story but it was Leonard Praskins who wrote the teleplay.  The 'Bonanza' tale was a story by Morris Lee Green which was then adapted by Lawrence Heath, working under the pseudonym Leonard Heideman.

The movie was mentioned in an episode of 'Northern Exposure' which would mean that it was based on the "true" story as seen in a 1986 TV movie.  (That same "true" story played out in the German Toobworld as seen in 1966.)

But none of it could have any effect on those two land-grab attempts within the Toobworld West.  They both occurred nearly half a century before the Russian Revolution. 

('Maverick' episodes are generally accepted as having occurred in the 1870s.  As for 'Bonanza', the rule of thumb was that the episodes took place 100 years before the episode aired.  So that places "The Spanish Grant" in the year 1860.)

We can't claim that the same plotters were involved - besides the difference in names, there's no way to confuse Sebastian Cabot for Carlos Romero.  And it's not like he would have gotten younger in the passing years.  But for my own part I would have found that a tough sell for a recastaway.  (The difference in names doesn't worry me - "Don Antonio Luga" was probably an alias and "Manuel Ortiz" was either his real name or just another alias.  I just can't buy the "Benjamin Button" theory.)

As for the young women involved, Luisa and Isabella, they would definitely be two different senoritas.

Manuel Ortiz was working with his brother who was hiding in plain sight at Judge Paynter in Santa Leora.  He uncovered by Nobby Ned Wingate as a forger and he had forged that land grant.  He apparently discovered the attempt by "Don Antonio" to wrest ownership of the Ponderosa  from the Cartwrights.  Inspired, he decided he would make such an attempt himself for the Santa Leora property detailed in the grant.

And the girl hired to play the role of the Marquesa actually turned out to be the Marquesa!  Unfortunately it was a title without wealth to support it.
And Rosalita Morales, who was being presented as Madam de la Questa, could have been the actual grand-niece of the last surviving member of the family.  But she took the high road and returned to who she was and diminished into the West.  Well, to San Francisco anyway.

And so there you have it for this Two for Tuesday - two stories, practically identical, and both can co-exist in the same TV dimension.

Happy trails!

O'Bservation:This is another post meant to celebrate the centennial of Sebastian Cabot's birth which we officially celebrated last month with the induction of Giles French into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.

MY FAVORITE TV WESTERN EPISODES FROM TV SHOWS THAT AREN'T TV WESTERNS #2

This week we're looking at another TV Western episode from another TV show that wasn't a TV Western....

'PSYCH'
"HIGH NOON-ISH"

From the IMDb:
When Lassie's favorite childhood hangout is going to close, he secretly hires Shawn to investigate the reason - and he and Gus uncover a dead body in the process.

From the "Psych" Wiki:
In 1989 Shawn comes in to tell his dad not to be mad. He was playing cowboys because cowboys and Indians is offensive. He tells him that Gus forced him to dig his own grave. He says Gus later got hanged by the sheriff. Henry then tells him to go fill the hole back up.

Lassiter needs Shawn and Gus' help. Unexplained things have been happening in a small town outside his jurisdiction. Sheriff Hank is an old friend of his and since Shawn and Gus have a talent for finding something out of nothing, Lassiter enlists their services to uncover the truth about the strange occurrences. Hank explains to them that wooden fence posts around the town have been stolen, someone has poisoned the water and there's a stench in the air that Gus attributes to cat urine. But as Hank shows them around, they realize that Old Sonora is not a real town. It is an Old West tourist attraction. Some of the buildings are just facades and the townspeople are all in character. To illustrate this, Hank proceeds to 'kill' Stinky Pete Dillingham, the town outlaw, like he does every afternoon. Shawn quickly notices grey dust on Pete's shoes as the 'body' is dragged away and wonders what they are doing there. Lassiter explains that Old Sonora was originally a historic mining town and that he spent most of his weekends there as a child. He will not let vandals shut the place down.

This YouTube video turns that opening scene of "High Noon-ish" into a radio play.

Here's an actual scene from "High Noon-ish"....

Behind the scenes, Timothy Omundson compares this episode of 'Psych' to his work in 'Deadwood'....

And to wrap it all up....

Happy trails!

VIDEO SUNDAY - TOMBSTONE TERRITORY

From Wikipedia:
'Tombstone Territory' is an American Western series starring Pat Conway and Richard Eastham. The series' first two seasons aired on ABC from 1957 to 1959. The first season was sponsored by Bristol-Myers (consumer products) and the second season by Lipton (tea/soup) and Philip Morris (Marlboro cigarettes). The third and final season aired in syndication from 1959 until 1960. The program was produced by Ziv Television.

BCnU!