HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

BCnU!

"CHIEFLY O'HARAS" - SWEET BABY JAMES... AND FRANK

"CHIEFLY O'HARAS"

[EPISODE TWELVE]

"DOUBLE TROUBLE"

The folks in Nebraska still talk about that night when three pairs of twins were born at the Little Innocence Hospital back in 1931. Three pairs of prospective parents descended on the hospital just as the latest storm of the Dust Bowl barreled down on the facility, choking it off from the outside world.

First to arrive was police detective Miles O'Hara and his wife. As he was so familiar with the area, O'Hara was able to get there safely despite the hellish conditions with low visibility. They were soon joined by the other two sets of expectant parents. Luckily for O'Hara, he left his 1928 Porter touring car in a secluded area of the parking lot - otherwise it would have been struck by both of the other cars as they blindly arrived at the hospital.

Mr. and Mrs. Orwell arrived in a second-hand Stutz Bearcat that had seen better days, while John Hooker and the Missus had an old flivver that probably needed more medical attention than Hooker's wife.

The Orwells and the Hookers had been traveling together across an America deep in the grip of the Great Depression. They were part of a jalopy caravan hoping to find a better life in California.

The maternity ward quickly became a madhouse for young doctor Marc Welby, who was caught unprepared for this chaos. But he was a true professional and handled each emergency with aplomb and a gentle bedside manner. (What kept him going was his dream to one day leave his land-locked state and head to California himself. There he planned to get a boat and sail the ocean. But even with that dream on a continuous loop in his mind, still he focused on each of the three new mothers and helped them bring their new lives into the world.

It was bad enough to be shepherding three women through childbrith during a dust storm; quite another when it turned out that each of the three women were expecting twins. Still, Dr. Welby kept the chaos under control and soon welcomed six new babies into Toobworld.

But no situation is perfect. The trouble lay in the nursery where a frazzled Nurse Tacky was trying to catalogue each baby for the records. It proved to be a daunting task for Tacky and she soong got confused, eventually accidentally switching the babies unknowingly. It proved to be a tragedy of epic proportions, but one which was never discovered by the trio of couples even as they held their babies.

Had the hospital's personnel department bothered to check, it should have been obvious that Nurse Tacky would make such a mistake. The eccentric looniness displayed by Tacky was par for the course in her family - her sister was Grandmama Addams from New York state, as a matter of fact.....

A few days later, each of the families departed the hospital - the O'Haras back to their nearby home while the Orwells and Hookers continued on their journey to California - with no fixed plan on where they would end up.

Not that anybody at Little Innocence Hospital knew, but as it turned out, the Orwell family settled near San Diego while the Hookers moved to an area known colloquially as "L.C."

Many years later, Helen O'Hara arrived in L.C. under the alias of Sarah Mitchell and almost gave herself away when she saw a young policeman who looked just like her brother Frank. She soon found out that he was one of the Hooker twins from that night when her brothers were born in Nebraska. Striking up a conversation with the cop (whose name was Thomas Jefferson Hooker, although he preferred to be known by his initials), Sarah (aka Helen) learned that he had a twin brother who looked nothing like him. 

 Although she never did get the chance to meet TJ's brother, she was convinced that he would prove to be the natural-born son of her parents.  And maybe even resemble her in some way....

But it was not something which she had the time or the inclination to pursue. Her mother may have passed away, but it was something her father didn't need to know, now too late to make any difference in any of their lives.

Helen figured that in this baby mix-up back in 1931, this was how it played out in the distribution of those infants at Little Innocence:

ORWELLS - An Orwell and an O'Hara baby

HOOKERS - A Hooker and an O'Hara baby

O'HARAS - A Hooker and an Orwell baby.

As you can see, the O'Haras didn't even get one of their own children in the mistaken delivery. But they raised those two babies with the same love they would have shown their own children.

They named the Orwell baby "James" and the Hooker baby "Francis" after her father and his mother respectively. But as they grew up, the boys preferred to be known as "Jim" and "Frank".

SHOWS CITED:

• 'The Addams Family'
• 'Adventures Of Superman'
• 'Batman'
• 'Bearcats!'
• 'Centennial'
• 'Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal'
• 'Harry O'
• 'The Lone Wolf'
• 'Marcus Welby, M.D.'
• 'My Mother The Car'
• 'Rachel Gunn, R.N.'
• 'T.J. Hooker'

Coming up next: "Frank's Place"

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: WILLIAM MURDOCH

WILLIAM MURDOCH

CREATED BY:

Maureen Jennings

PORTRAYED BY:

Yannick Bisson

AS SEEN IN:

'The Murdoch Mysteries'

TV STATUS:

Recastaway

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:

Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian drama television series that airs on Citytv, featuring Yannick Bisson as William Murdoch, a police detective working in Toronto, Ontario in the 1890s. The television series is based on the Detective Murdoch series of novels by Maureen Jennings.

The series takes place in Toronto in the 1890s, following eccentric Detective William Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) of the Toronto Constabulary who solves many of his cases using methods of detection that were unusual at that time. These methods including fingerprinting, human-blood testing, surveillance, and trace evidence.

WILLIAM MURDOCH

(Peter Outerbridge)

Yannick Bisson is the official version of Detective Murdoch for the main Toobworld, but he was not the first actor to play the role. That honor goes to Peter Outerbridge in three very well made TV movies that preceded the series.

You know how it feels when you switch for the first time to skim milk, or to Diet Coke, or in my case from Clear Choice Red Raspberry to Clear Choice Red Raspberry with the Stress Relief Formula? You're hesitant at first, but then you can't ever picture going back.

In a way that's how it is for me with Detective Murdoch. I thought Outerbridge was brilliant in the role and really enjoyed the other actors in his version of the stories. However, I think it was always doomed to be a limited run (just from the fact that Colm Meaney played Inspector Breckenreid). It tells a complete story in a way, setting up Murdoch and his forensic pathologist lady love in a relationship that had "Happily Ever After" written all over it.

Because I liked Outerbridge so much in the role, I was hesitant to try the new series with Bisson in the role.  But the 'Mudoch Mystery' series expands on the lives of everyone in the storyline and so deserves to be the representative for Toobworld.

BCnU!

"CHIEFLY O'HARAS" - SUPERMAN

"CHIEFLY O'HARAS"

[EPISODE ELEVEN]

"ONCE A HERO"

As the train carrying Helen O'Hara heads around the bend, we're going to shift our focus from her for awhile - in fact, we won't be returning to her story again until we reach the late 1960's in the Toobworld timeline.

We'll instead be turning our attention to her younger brothers, the twins Jim and Frank.

But first I thought I should talk a bit about Superman, since he's part of the O'Hara family now. (At least in my televersion of life during prime time.)

For Earth Prime-Time, Superman (aka Clark Kent) is only that portrayal by George Reeves as seen in 'Adventures Of Superman'. Other shared universes, like my esteemed comrades at the Wold Newton Universe and the TVCU, see all of these characters more as archetypal concepts so that they could be portrayed by several different actors yet still represent the same man (or woman.) But the Toobworld Dynamic remains true to the visual nature of the medium, and so any recasting of a role has to be accounted for. If there are no splainins that can keep a particular version of a character in the dimension of Earth Prime-Time, then - thanks to 'Sliders' (primarily, although other shows have used this gimmick) - we have plenty of other TV dimensions where those versions can hold sway.

George Reeves is not Dean Cain, nor is he Tom Welling. Their versions of Superman and the adventures they experienced don't add to the overall essence of the character. They are instead separated from each other in three different dimensions. (I've never considered where Cain's Superman from 'Lois & Clark' is located, but Welling's embodiment of the Man of Steel is to be found in the same dimension as 'The West Wing'.)

The Toobworld Dynamic is more than life during prime time; it's what happens after a show goes off the air as well. So if George Reeves was Superman even after the series ended, why didn't we see him or at least hear of his exploits during some of the catastrophic events that struck Toobworld over the last fifty years since the show was on the air - the collapse of Sunnyvale into the Hellmouth, the explosion at Moonbase Alpha, the disappearance of Oceanic Flight 815, invasions by the Canamids, the Cybermen, the Daleks, the visiting Invaders and the invading Visitors. Perhaps there were tragic accidents involving the Amsterdam Queen and the Super-Train after their shows went off the air. Even the real-life horror of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers would have to be considered since TV shows like 'Touch', 'Rubicon', 'Rescue Me', and 'CSI: NY' have deeply incorporated it into their plotlines.

In fact, it was that national tragedy that got me thinking about "Whatever Happened To Superman?", which I published in the old Tubeworld Dynamic website a few months after the fall of the towers. I got a bit of flack for that at the time, but soon enough the TV Universe was weaving it into the tele-mosaic - see the list of other shows which used the attack on the World Trade Center in their stories, compiled by my fellow Iddiot, Nora Lee Mandel.

If the World Trade Center collapse was part of Toobworld as was Superman, than in the realm of the TV Universe, why couldn't he have flown to New York City from Metropolis and prevented it from happening in Toobworld?

The only conclusion I could think of was that Superman himself must have already died.

Superman would have been about 76 years old by then. (He was an infant when he crash-landed on Earth back in 1926. This makes the character younger than the actor who played him. If Superman's age had been based on that of Reeves, then he would have been about 87 years old by September 11, 2001.)

So he could have died of old age. My own father never saw that age, and he was my Superman, so why should Clark Kent? Living under a yellow sun made him invulnerable, but he was not immortal.

I wanted to find a TV-based splainin for his demise, one that could also create a link to some other show. I thought that might be tricky - not much call for Kryptonite in other TV series.

But I did find the circumstances that were perfect

I don't know if this is how it played out on screen when the first season finale of 'Crime Story' was first broadcast, or if it has since been edited to be even more trippy for this video, but here are the basics:

Ray Luca and his dimwitted henchman Pauli made good their escape after a shoot-out on the streets of Las Vegas. Since Luca was wounded, Pauli had to make the decision where they were going to hide out - and he chose a house located in the middle of the A-bomb testing site. They were still out there when an atomic bomb was detonated... and yet they survived to return for the second season.

There's only one way that could have happened - Superman must have come to their rescue.

For whatever reason he was in the area ('Adventures of Superman' had scenes set outside of Metropolis that were basically desert-like in location, so maybe it's not too far away from Sin City?), Superman reached Luca and Pauli in time to shield them from the immediate effects of the blast. (They probably later died from radiation poisoning after 'Crime Story' concluded.) But Superman might not have been so lucky himself.

Atomic radiation might not have been harmful to him, but those desert sands may have had Kryptonite dust mixed in as well. That Kryptonite may have penetrated his clothes and permeated his skin, leaving him poisoned and slowly dying from the exposure.

Realizing that there was no cure, Superman probably put his affairs in order and finally revealed his secret to Jimmy Olsen so that the cub reporter could tell his story to the world. 

 And as was the case with the Gallifreyan Time Lord known as the Doctor, Superman must have realized that even one cell of his corpse would be worth anything to his enemies. Since fire wouldn't be able to destroy his remains, Superman either took off into outer space to die among the stars (or even in the heart of a red sun), or he used his fading powers to go back in Time and die in an undisclosed location in Earth's past where his corpse could naturally decay before anyone back in the Future could capitalize on what was left.

Maybe Superman died back in the "Wild, Wild West"?

After he was gone, Jimmy Olsen (Superman's so-called pal) made a fortune with a tell-all book that made him a multi-millionaire. This book is still in publication in Toobworld, and is the source of all the information other TV characters have of Superman's personal life - including his secret identity on Earth of Clark Kent, his Kryptonian name of Kal-El, and that of his father, Jor-El (which Jerry Seinfeld uses as his ATM password.)

With part of the proceeds from his royalties, Olsen established the Kent Foundation, which came under investigation in the early part of this century in New York City. He also bought the Daily Planet, which is why we saw him standing outside of it when the Superman of the Tooniverse crossed over to hang out with Seinfeld in Metropolis.

One last point I want to make about Superman in Earth Prime-Time. When a TV character is adapted from another source, we have to take the TV version to be the official version, not the original source material. For example, in the novel of "Rich Man, Poor Man", the Jordache family had another child besides Tom and Rudy - a daughter. But she didn't make it into the mini-series and so she doesn't exist as far as Toobworld is concerned.

But sometimes an omission from the TV adaptation just means that we never got the chance to see that character or event on screen. Such is the case with the Superman mythos - all we ever saw of his enemies were the petty crooks and mad scientists, but never the colorful villains that were to be found in the pages of the DC comic books. It's the contention of Toobworld Central that those villains did exist in Earth Prime-Time, but Superman fought them in the unseen stories between the televised episodes, and perhaps even during the commercial breaks.

This is why Lex Luthor, Brainiac, and Mr. Mxyzptlyk - my choices for Superman's top trio in his rogues' gallery - were all mentioned in the previous episode of "Chiefly O'Haras", but not actually "seen". We know each of them exist in other TV dimensions - we've seen them in 'Smallville', 'Lois & Clark', 'The Adventures Of Superboy' and the many cartoon incarnations like 'Super-Friends' - so they're probably in Earth Prime-Time as well.

And keeping the time period in which Superman operated in mind, I have three actors in mind who could have played these roles:

"LEX LUTHOR" - R.G. Armstrong

Alexander "Lex" Joseph Luthor is a fictional character supervillain who appears in comic books published by DC Comics. He is the archenemy of Superman, a major adversary of Batman and all superheroes in the DC Universe. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, he first appeared in Action Comics #23 (April 1940). Luthor is described as "a power-mad, evil scientist" of high intelligence and incredible technological prowess. His goals typically center on killing Superman, usually as a stepping stone to world domination. Though he periodically wears a powered exoskeleton, Luthor has traditionally lacked superpowers or a dual identity.

"BRAINIAC" - Michael Ansara

Brainiac is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in Action Comics #242 (July 1958), and was created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino.

An extraterrestrial android (in most incarnations), Brainiac is a principal foe of Superman, and is responsible for shrinking and stealing Kandor, the capital city of Superman's home planet Krypton. Due to complex storylines involving time travel, cloning, and revisions of DC's continuity, several variations of Brainiac have appeared. Most incarnations of Brainiac depict him as a green-skinned being in humanoid form. He is bald, except for a set of diodes protruding from his skull.

Brainiac wasn't created until after the series went off the air, but that wouldn't affect what happens off-screen anyway.

"MR. MXYZPTLK" - Billy Barty

Mr. Mxyzptlk, sometimes called Mxy, is a fictional impish supervillain who appears in DC Comics' Superman comic books.

He was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and first appeared in Superman #30 (September 1944). He is usually presented as a trickster, in the classical mythological sense, in that he enjoys tormenting Superman. In most of his appearances in DC Comics, he can be stopped only by tricking him into saying or spelling his own name backwards (Kltpzyxm - "kel-tip-zix-um"), which will return him to his home in the 5th dimension and keep him there for a minimum of 90 days. However, this specific limitation of the character has been eliminated since the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot, upon which the character leaves only when he willingly agrees to do so after meeting some conditions he sets, such as having Superman succeed in painting Mxy's face blue.

Originally I had Billy Curtis in mind for the role, but I think Barty would have brought the true impish quality of the character to life.

Superman may be dead in the TV Universe, but the Toobworld Dynamic posits that his legacy lives on with the child he had by Helen O'Hara. And like I said, we'll be getting to that story soon enough.....

SHOWS CITED:

• 'The Adventures Of Superboy'
• 'Adventures Of Superman'
• American Express commercials
• 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'
• 'Crime Story'
• 'CSI: NY'
• 'Doctor Who'
• 'The Invaders'
• 'Lois & Clark'
• 'Lost'
• 'O'Hara, U.S. Treasury'
• 'Psych'
• 'The Queen And I'
• 'Rescue Me'
• "Rich Man, Poor Man"
• 'Rubicon'
• 'Seinfeld'
• 'Sliders'
• 'Smallville'
• 'Space: 1999'
• 'Super-Friends'
• 'Super-Train'
• 'Touch'
• 'The Twilight Zone'
• 'V'
• 'The West Wing'

Coming up next: "Double Trouble"

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: HIP HIP FORAY!

Published: Monday, June 18, 2012

By Ray Kelly, The Republican

[masslive.com]
Voice legend June L. Foray took home an Emmy for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program at the Creative Arts portion of the Daytime Emmys at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles on Sunday night [June 17].

The Springfield native was honored for voicing the role of Mrs. Cauldron on “The Garfield Show” on Cartoon Network.

It is hardly her best known work. Foray is responsible for the voices for Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale on “The Bullwinkle Show,” Nell Fenwick on “The Dudley Do-Right Show,” Cindy Lou Who in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Granny on “The Bugs Bunny Show,” Grandmother Fa in “Mulan,” Grammi on “Gummi Bears,” Jokey Smurf on “The Smurfs” and Talky Tina in “The Twilight Zone.”

Inner Toob salutes June Foray today with three characters to whom she gave voice in the 1975 TV special "Rikki Tikki Tavi":

NAGAINA

Nagaina is the wife of Nag. She is extremely smart & cunning. She has given 25 eggs & they are about to hatch. She wants to kill rikki-tikki as he posses a great threat to her and her family.

Nagaina corners the family at the breakfast table on the garden verandah ("they sat stone-still, and their faces were white") and threatens to kill Teddy with her venomous bite. Rikki races to the veranda with the last egg in his mouth. His appearance distracts Nagaina long enough for the man to pull the boy to safety. Rikki Tikki provokes Nagaina into a final fight with neither opponent gaining the upper hand until Nagaina snatches the egg and flees to her hole, with Rikki in pursuit. The underground fight is not described, but after an agonizingly long time, Rikki comes out of the hole in triumph, having killed Nagaina.

Nagaina was coiled up on the matting by Teddy's chair, within easy striking distance of Teddy's bare leg, and she was swaying to and fro, singing a song of triumph.

"Son of the big man that killed Nag," she hissed, "stay still. I am not ready yet. Wait a little. Keep very still, all you three! If you move I strike, and if you do not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my Nag!" 

Then Rikki-tikki came up and cried, "Turn round, Nagaina. Turn and fight!" 

"All in good time," said she, without moving her eyes. "I will settle my account with you presently. Look at your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are still and white. They are afraid. They dare not move, and if you come a step nearer I strike."

TEDDY'S MOTHER ALICE

A 19th-century English family — who have moved to a bungalow in the jungles of Sugauli cantonment in Bihar State, India — discover a young mongoose half drowned from a flood. They revive it and decide to keep it as a pet.

Teddy's mother picked him up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy from death, and Teddy's father said that he was a providence, and Teddy looked on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand. Teddy's mother might just as well have petted Teddy for playing in the dust.

DARZEE'S WIFE

Rikki, well aware of the threat, tries to enlist the tailor bird Darzee, a "feather-brained little fellow", to distract Nagina while he searches for her eggs, but is instead aided by Darzee's sensible wife.

His wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra's eggs meant young cobras later on. So she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of Nag. Darzee was very like a man in some ways. She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish heap and cried out, "Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the house threw a stone at me and broke it." Then she fluttered more desperately than ever.

"What is the use of running away? I am sure to catch you. Little fool, look at me!" Darzee's wife knew better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a snake's eyes gets so frightened that she cannot move. Darzee's wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and never leaving the ground, and Nagaina quickened her pace.

Congratulations from all of me at Toobworld Central! One of the prized possessions here in the library of Toobworld Central is an autographed copy of Ms. Foray's autobiography.

Click to read the original story by Rudyard Kipling.

BCnU!

ABED - INSIDE, LOOKING OUT

Abed Nadir of 'Community' may be the most tele-cognizant character in all of the TV Universe. He knows he's a character in a TV show, and he is familiar with all of the other TV shows that make up the dimension in which he lives.

He knows you're watching him.

And he likes it.....

As such, he tries to live his life accordingly.....

It would appear that Professor Ian Duncan is a tele-cognizant as well, but I think there's a splainin to keep him rooted in his own reality with no knowledge of the great secret of the Universe.  

Abed said 'M*A*S*H' in response to Jeff's "Cheers" because he does know that "Cheers" is also the name of a TV show.  (It could be a reality-based series about the bar back in Boston.)

But  'M*A*S*H' is a TV show as well, perhaps presented as a documentary series about the legendary 4077 mobile medical unit from the Korean Conflict.  And Duncan, having seen both series, responds accordingly - as if he recognized Abed was speaking in some kind of non sequitur code.

At least in this mention, 'The Wire' could have been a TV show about something else - perhaps a science fiction show based on the creature that nearly took over the world during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II sixty years ago.

(The Wire was not actually human in appearance.  While trapped in that electro-video form, she took the likeness of a well-known British TV personality of the Time as her own.)

When British guests where I work say to me "Cheers" in thanks, I respond with "Frasier".  It seems like the appropriate follow-up.....  But at least I know I live in the real world.

Dammit.

BCnU!

"DOCTOR WHO" - BY A FAN

But speaking of the Doctor, here's a fan-made film......

BCnU!

PATRICK TROUGHTON IN "KNIGHTS OF GOD"

Just because Patrick Troughton is in this, that doesn't mean it serves as this weekend's 'Doctor Who' content.

But Troughton is my favorite of the actors to play the Doctor, so I'm always happy to find something new in which he acted.

I'd much rather that it was newly-discovered, long-lost footage from 'Doctor Who', but there you are......

BCnU!

BREAKING BART

I'm sending this out to my friend, Amy Lee. She likes the show.

Me? I can't wait to celebrate the death of Walt White.....

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: RIKKI TIKKI TAVI

RIKKI TIKKI TAVI

CREATED BY:

Rudyard Kipling

VOICED BY:

Shepard Menken

AS SEEN IN:

"Rikki Tikki Tavi"

TV DIMENSION:

The Tooniverse

From Wikipedia:

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a short story in The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling about the adventures of a valiant young mongoose.

The story is notable for its frightening and serious tone. It has often been anthologised and has also been published more than once as a short book in its own right. The story was also adapted into an animated TV special by American animator Chuck Jones in 1975. That same year the story was adapted as a Russian animated short film.

A 19th-century English family — who have moved to a bungalow in the jungles of Sugauli cantonment in Bihar State, India — discover a young mongoose half drowned from a flood. They revive it and decide to keep it as a pet. The young mongoose, named Rikki Tikki Tavi, finds himself confronted by two dangerous king cobras, Nag and his even more dangerous wife Nagaina, who had the run of the garden while the house was unoccupied. After the encounter with the cobras, Rikki's first true battle is with Karait, a dust brown snakeling who touches the young boy Teddy. Although the snake, because of its deadly venom and small size, is an even more dangerous foe than a cobra, the mongoose kills it. The grateful family pet and praise "our mongoose".

BCnU!