The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book page on Facebook shared this artwork by Alex Ross which had been submitted by page member Jim Alexander. It’s from a 1994 edition of “Marvels” and this was Ross’ rendition of the big event from the mid-1960s which was written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack “King” Kirby – the wedding of Dr. Reed Richards and Sue Storm, both of the Fantastic Four. (They were known in their superhero guises as Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl.)
A lot of the guests in this picture are obvious – those Marvel superheroes who came in their uniforms. Captain America, Iron Man, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, and especially Sue’s brother Johnny (The Human Torch) and the other member of the Fantastic Four, Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing. Other Marvel characters in attendance are J. Jonah Jameson, Norman Osborne, mailman Willy Lumpkin, and Alicia Masters as Sue’s maid of honor. There is a theory that one of the photographers, that young fellow in the front row might be Peter Parker, the Spiderman.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because there are two TV characters among the witnesses to the wedding.
There were plenty of people in the audience who were not really part of the Marvel Universe, some who were from the real world and a few from Marvel’s chief competitor, DC Comics.
Among the real people – George Herbert Walker Bush, perhaps there in his capacity as an operative for the CIA, and all four Beatles, scattered through the attendees. And I think that’s Jerry Lewis in the back on the left. I’ve heard rumors that JFK and Jackie are sitting there next to the Kents. But how could that be if this was taking place in 1965?
Two other real-life figures there – on a technicality – are Stan Lee and Jack Kirby their own selves. See Nick Fury and Gabriel Jones confabbing there in the back next to the slightly ajar door? According to the original story, they’re talking about two guys outside whom they chalked up to be wedding crashers as they don’t have invitations. We learn in the original comics dialogue that they are indeed Lee and Kirby.
As for DC characters, could that be Jimmy Olson behind Peter, also working the wedding but as a photog for the Daily Planet? Clark Kent is near the back next to George Harrison. (Probably ready to run to the nearest broom closet should trouble arise.) On the other side of the room, that could be Jonathan and Martha Kent behind Paul McCartney.
And now, what you’ve been waiting for… the TV characters!
Sitting in front of Osborn, Jameson and Lumpkin, but behind Thor and Iron Man are the Petries, Rob and Laura from ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’!
We have to remember, this is taking place in the Comic Books universe, not the many Comic Books TV dimensions. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen….
As to why the Petries were there? That original comic book came out in October of 1965, and ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ would end the following year. During the course of the series, Rob Petrie related flashback tales of his past life and those he eventually wrote down and collected into a book. It was published in 1966 and Alan Brady bought the rights to it in order to adapt it into a TV sitcom for him to star in.
Rob’s writing talents were already well-known of course, as the head writer for Brady’s variety show. And as such, he came to the attention of the secretive shadow ops organization known as UNReel.
In case you’ve never heard me mention UNReel before, it’s a creation of mine for when I’ve got some splainin to do when dealing with TV characters treating other TV characters as being fictional when they should be sharing the same world. (Look out! Runaway sentence!)
UNReel is loosely connected to U.N.C.L.E. and UNIT, but for the most part they work independently of those other organizations. Their mission is to establish fictional manifestations of actual people in Toobworld in order to gull the general public into believing people and organizations and certain events are fictional so that those people can go about their business unobstructed by interference by outsiders. If the citizens of Toobworld come to believe certain heroes and even villains are fictional, then they might shrug off anything they see as being a scene from a movie being filmed perhaps and thus shrug off the inclination to intercede. Among those who have been fictionalized by UNReel include U.N.C.L.E. agents, James Bond, Superman and other superheroes and even super-villains, and a certain Time Lord from Gallifrey.
William Shakespeare may have been the prototype of an UNReel agent. All of his plays are historicals, with Prospero and Titania being as real as Richard III and Portia Catonis. But in general, such characters as Puck, Caliban, Hamlet’s Father, and the Three Weird Sisters are looked upon as being fictional so that the populace of Toobworld would not be stirred into mass panic if they found out fairies, monsters, ghosts, and witches actually existed in their world.
Dr. John Watson may have been the inspiration for the work of UNReel. He stated in his writings about the cases of his friend Sherlock Holmes that names were sometimes changed to protect the identities of the people involved. The best example would be the King of Bohemia, which I’m sure most readers understood to be actually the Prince of Wales AKA “Bertie”, the future Edward VII.
Or it could be that UNReel was already in existence by then – if so, then the stories written by Watson were handled by his literary agent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ll make the claim that in Toobworld, he was an operative for UNReel.
But all of that is in my video sandbox of Toobworld and in this case we’re seeing Rob and Laura Petrie in the Comic Book Universe. However, we have Superman existing in the TVU (actually, in several Toobworld dimensions) and the Petries are now in the CBU, along with Sgt. Bilko, the Mavericks, the crew of the Enterprise, and Perry Mason. So why couldn’t an organization like UNReel exist in the CBU as well?
What if Rob Petrie has been recruited by UNReel over there with the intention of finding a way to mask the activities of the Fantastic Four as being fictional rather than CBU reality. And the way decided upon was a cartoon TV series.
This wedding took place in 1965. By 1967, there was a ‘Fantastic Four’ cartoon on TV in the Real World. (That Real World cartoon is in itself a reality in its own dimension, the Tooniverse.)
The Fantastic Four doesn’t exist yet in the Main Toobworld; I’m not sure if they’ve ever been mentioned in the various Toobworld Comix dimensions. So for now, this is just a theory for the Comic Book Universe. It’s not my usual bailiwick, and that’s why I won’t vigorously defend this theory:
The Rob Petrie of the CBU was recruited by UNReel to help disguise the Fantastic Four activities as a TV series (rather than a cartoon series as in the Real World.) During his time working on this project, he came to know Reed Richards and the others in the team, even becoming friends with them. And that’s why he and his wife Laura were invited to the wedding.
As I said, the Fantastic Four don’t exist in the Real World, but perhaps they did back in the 1960s and we just didn’t get to see it through the dimensional vortex back then.
So maybe it could have happened. But if not, we could at least consider the notion that Rob Petrie worked for UNReel and was able to “fictionalize” the lives of others in Toobworld. By 1966, that could have meant he worked on the cases involving April Dancer of U.N.C.L.E., and more likely – considering his comedy background - the exploits of CONTROL.
From TicketCity: 2019 MLB Opening Day will take place on March 28, 2019. Which is the earliest opening day in the history of Major League Baseball (beating out 2018 Opening Day by a day). The World Series champion Boston Red Sox will play on the road for Opening Day 2019, they are at the Seattle Mariners on March 28th.
To mark the beginning of the 2019 baseball season yesterday, we’re going to induct an historical baseball figure who – as a member of the League of Themselves – proved to be quite the TV character….
LEO DUROCHER
From Wikipedia: Leo Ernest Durocher (July 27, 1905 – October 7, 1991), nicknamed Leo the Lip and Lippy, was an American professional baseball player, manager and coach. He played in Major League Baseball as an infielder. Upon his retirement, he ranked fifth all-time among managers with 2,009 career victories, second only to John McGraw in National League history. Durocher still ranks tenth in career wins by a manager. A controversial and outspoken character, Durocher had a stormy career dogged by clashes with authority, the baseball commissioner, umpires (his 95 career ejections as a manager trailed only McGraw when he retired, and still rank fourth on the all-time list), and the press.
Durocher was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994.
Durocher appeared on several game shows (for example, 'What's My Line?', and 'I've Got A Secret'), a few variety programs ('The Judy Garland Show' and 'The Red Skelton Hour' among others), plus a slew of talk shows hosted by the likes of Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and Mike Douglas – a few of the heavy hitters in that category.
But we have enough credits for his fictional televersion and many of those could only have happened in Toobworld!
Here are the TV shows that make him eligible for the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.
The Jack Benny Program - The Giant Mutiny (1954)
From the IMDb: Spoofs The Caine Mutiny (1954)
From Wikipedia: Jack stages a baseball version of The Caine Mutiny: Benny is Alvin Dark, captain of the New York Giants. During the fourth game of the World Series, Dark stands up to tyrannical Durocher and is court-martialled. Durocher (as the Queeg character) rubs two baseballs together.
The Beverly Hillbillies - The Clampetts and the Dodgers (1963)
From the IMDb: Jed and Jethro go golfing with Leo Durocher, coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who wants to recruit Jethro as a pitcher when he sees how well he can throw.
Buzzie Bavasi: He can't throw anything that isn't smeared with possum fat. Leo Durocher: Look Buzzy, maybe we can get the commissioner to legalize the Possum ball.
Daisy “Granny” Moses: Elly May can out-throw anybody. Jethro Bodine: Oh yes sir, she's got plenty of stuff. Leo Durocher: Yeah, we could never hide it under a Dodger uniform.
Mister Ed - Leo Durocher Meets Mister Ed (1963)
From the IMDb: Through Wilbur, Mister Ed offers useful batting tips to Los Angeles Dodgers team manager, Leo Durocher.
Leo Durocher is shown as the manager of the Dodgers. At the time, the Dodgers manager was Walt Alston, Durocher was a coach.
O'Bservation: But that was in the Trueniverse. In Toobworld, what happens on screen is reality.
The Donna Reed Show - Play Ball (1964)
From the IMDb: Alex helps to organize a charity baseball game to benefit the hospital. When Willie Mays, Don Drysdale, and Leo Durocher show up it's no longer a game involving amateurs.
O’Bservations – Mays and Drysdale are hired on a temporary basis by the hospital to be ringers for their team. Durocher ended up as the umpire and really enjoyed being on the other side of his usual arguments for once. Later, when he found out that a photographer was selling copies of pictures of him as an umpire, Durocher paid 100 dollars for them and then ripped them up. Only then did he find out he was too late to hide these pictures of himself in an umpire uniform – a set of them had been already sold to the local newspaper.
Mr. Novak - Boy Under Glass (1964)
From The Home Theater Forum: "Boy Under Glass" (Nov. 24, 1964) puts Mr. Novak into a pressure-packed ethical dilemma when he flunks a star athlete pitcher, disqualifying him in an upcoming championship game and putting his major league ambitions in jeopardy, as his father, media and alumni intervene...starring Frank Silvera, Arch Johnson and real life Baseball legend Leo Durocher of the L.A. Dodgers himself... Hall of Fame player Leo Durocher, who was third base coach on the 1963 Dodgers World Series Winning team, former Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and World Series Champ as Manager of the 1954 NY Giants, was making a number of TV appearances as himself these last few years...the Beverly Hillbillies "Clampetts and the Dodgers" (Apr. 10, 1963), Mister Ed "Leo Durocher Meets Mister Ed" (Sept. 29, 1963), and The Donna Reed Show "Play Ball" (Oct. 1, 1964, with Don Drysdale and Willie Mays)...his appearance on Mr. Novak was perhaps his only TV drama appearance...
The Joey Bishop Show - Double Play from Foster to Durocher to Joey (1964)
From the IMDb: Opening Credits:Guest Stars Phil Foster and Phil's Best Enemy Leo Durocher
The Dodgers need a Master of Ceremonies for a banquet and Joey immediately thinks of their number one NY fan, Phil Foster. A problem arises since Phil has not forgiven the team for moving to Los Angeles. Dodger's coach Leo Durocher is asked to win him over but instead tempers flare.
When Durocher pushes the chair back, he very ostentatiously does so with his middle finger. Although this somehow managed to slip by the NBC censors when originally broadcast, his hand is now blurred in the syndicated rerun.
The Munsters - Herman the Rookie (1965)
From the IMDb: Herman's powerful arm could take him to the Baseball Big Leagues.
Leo Durocher: I don't know whether to sign him with the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam!
Here are a few clips from those shows. I’ve grouped them altogether for that eventuality when they’re all taken down from YouTube…..
And here’s one from Skitlandia, just for gits and shiggles:
Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Durocher! I’m sure you’ll find a better class of members here than in that Hall out in Cooperstown! All they’ve got there are humans; we’ve got aliens, monsters, and Muppets! But you’ll find Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays the Warlock are already here….
From the IMDb: When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.
One half of a murder-mystery writing team kills his more talented partner after the latter announces his intentions to go solo which would ultimately leave the former in financial ruin. Later a grocery store owner, who has important information pertaining to the case and has romantic desires for the killer, sees this incident as an opportunity to blackmail him into having a relationship with her. Feeling cornered, he kills her and tries to make it look like she'd fallen off a boat and drowned in a drunken stupor.
From the 'Columbo' wiki: Ken Franklin was one half of a mystery-writing duo with Jim Ferris until 1971, when Ferris, who had done all of the actual writing, wanting to break it off to go solo. Franklin, who by this time had become accustomed to an expensive lifestyle, realized that this would leave him high-and-dry so he decided to murder Ferris. He was later forced to murder general store owner Lily La Sanka when she tried to blackmail him with her own witness testimony. In the end, however, Franklin was caught out and arrested by Lieutenant Columbo.
In the 1971 season 1 episode Murder by the Book, Ken Franklin was portrayed by American actor Jack Cassidy, who later play the villain in two other Columbo episodes; Publish or Perish and Now You See Him.
Ken Franklin was born in 1924 and died in prison during the Bicentennial Year while serving consecutive life terms. He left no immediate family, but he did have a cousin only several years older than he was….
‘INTERNATIONAL DETECTIVE’ [The Entire Series]
From Wikipedia: The global adventures of Ken Franklin, ace operative of the William J. Burns Detective Agency.
From the IMDb: Stories from the files of the William J. Burns Detective Agency, New York.
From Crazy About TV:: The International Detective TV show was a 30 minute detective, drama series that aired on ITV in the United Kingdom and also aired in the U.S. on ABC. It followed Agent Ken Franklin on his cases as a private detective in New York City.
At the beginning of each International Detective episode, William J. Burns, head of the Burns Detective Agency would hand Agent Ken Franklin his assignment. Only the top of Burns' head and his hand were shown. His face was never shown throughout the series.
A few of the International Detective episodes were featured in movie theaters by combining two episodes into what was known as a "short". That was simply a term for a film that was shorter than the typical movie.
From CTVA: Each story began with Ken Franklin being given his latest assignment by William J. Burns. Apart from the top of his head and his hand 'Burns' himself was never actually seen. Produced in documentary style, the series was one of the best of its genre.
This Ken Franklin was born in 1924 and passed away in 1995. He retired from the Burns agency in 1985 and spent a decade in blissful seclusion.
The fact that he and his cousin the mystery novelist shared the same full name is not an isolated occurrence in Toobworld. In fact, in another episode of ‘Columbo’ (“Suitable For Framing”), a painter by the name of Sam Franklin (whose artwork was on display in Community General Hospital in the episode “An Exercise In Fatality”) shared his name with a Los Angeles purveyor of meats (Okay, a butcher).
And as was the case with the two Sam Franklins, these cousins sharing the name Ken Franklin were descended from another Kenneth Franklin. That Kenneth Franklin had to be someone in the Television Universe who was of great renown in the past. Perhaps a politician or a Civil War soldier who showed heroic prowess during the War Between The States. So much so that both Franklin families insisted that one of their sons were fitted with the same given name.
Just a few other O’Bservations:
Ken Franklin of the Burns Detective Agency was descended on his mother’s side from a San Francisco attorney in the 1850s named Jeremy Pitt.
As for Ken Franklin of the Ferris and Franklin writing team, he had an “Identical Cousin” – an actor named Oscar North who starred in the TV series ‘Jetman’. And by that term “identical cousin”, I’m not referring to the type of situation Patty and Cathy Lane found themselves in, where their fathers were identical twins which heightened the chances that their daughters would be identical… at least in Toobworld.
As a matter of fact, Ken Franklin’s father had an illicit affair with a woman whose married name was North. She became pregnant from the relationship but was able to pass off her Oscar Child as her husband’s own.
Oscar Child – when it comes to bad puns, I have no shame.
From the IMDb: When a super typhoon threatens a small Pacific island, Elizabeth and her team must find a way to relocate the entire population before landfall.
CHIEF OF STAFF RUSSELL JACKSON: Latest tracking from NOAA has [Hurricane] Blessing making a hard swerve away from the Marshalls, so Uncle Sam will get a soaking - but nothing worse. STEVIE McCORD: So no landfall? JACKSON: Looks like it's headed for the Republic of Nauru. It's your mother's problem now.
From Country Holidays Inns & Suites: Nauru is a tiny island country in Micronesia, northeast of Australia. It features a coral reef and white-sand beaches fringed with palms, including Anibare Bay on the east coast. Inland, tropical vegetation surrounds Buada Lagoon. The rocky outcrop of Command Ridge, the island's highest point, has a rusty Japanese outpost from WWII. The underground freshwater lake of Moqua Well lies amid the limestone Moqua Caves.
From Wikipedia: Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru (Nauruan: Repubrikin Naoero) and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country in Micronesia, a sub-region of Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the east. It further lies northwest of Tuvalu, north of the Solomon Islands, east-northeast of Papua New Guinea, southeast of the Federated States of Micronesia and south of the Marshall Islands. With only a 21-square-kilometre (8.1 sq mi) area, Nauru is the third-smallest state on the list of countries and dependencies by area behind Vatican City and Monaco, making it the smallest state in the South Pacific Ocean, the smallest island state, and the smallest republic. Its population is 11,347, making it the third smallest on the list of countries and dependencies by population, after the Vatican and Tuvalu.
Settled by people from Micronesia and Polynesiac. 1000 BC, Nauru was annexed and claimed as a colony by the German Empire in the late 19th century. After World War I, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japanese troops, who were bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. After the war ended, the country entered into United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence in 1968, and became a member of the Pacific Community (SPC) in 1969.
Nauru is a phosphate-rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allowed easy strip mining operations. It has some remaining phosphate resources which, as of 2011, are not economically viable for extraction. When the phosphate reserves were exhausted, and the island's environment had been seriously harmed by mining, the trust that had been established to manage the island's wealth diminished in value.
To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre. From 2001 to 2008, and again from 2012, it accepted aid from the Australian Government in exchange for hosting the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, an offshore Australian immigration detention facility. As a result of heavy dependence on Australia, many sources have identified Nauru as a client state of Australia.
This alternate Toobworld, colloquially designated as Toobworld-Dalton (because it has a different President of the United States than the main Toobworld, which always has the same POTUS as the Real World), has always been different from Earth Prime and Earth Prime-Time, beginning with the President being Conrad Dalton and not Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Plus the star of the series, Tea Leoni, is the Secretary of State and the show will probably end with her being the next POTUS.
But they took the differences a step farther with this episode.
In the past, many TV series created fictional countries for their characters to deal with – like ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ But in this case, they mostly use actual nations and change their histories and current situations, just as is standard procedure with fictionalized America.
Here comes the big spoiler….
By the end of this episode, the Republic of Nauru was wiped off the map by a powerful storm.
This is the overhead view of where Nauru used to be.
I’m wondering how the people of Nauru felt about the episode? As far as I can assume, this only happened to the Republic of Nauru on Toobworld-Dalton. (I would not be surprised to find out that it also happened to the Nauru of Disaster Toobworld.) As for the main Toobworld, Nauru still exists as it does in the Real World.
From the IMDb: Tensions run high as the Pearsons await news about Kate's pregnancy.
While the Pearson family are thrashing through family issues in the waiting room as they anxiously await news, a woman enters, talking on her cell phone.
“DOUBLE GRANDMA”: Yeah, you know what they say about the second. Yep, it just slid right out. Yeah, she pushed for, like, ten minutes. Yeah. No, they're stitching her back up now. I know. I'm a double grandma. I know. Oh yeah, okay. Bye-bye. Mm. REBECCA PEARSON: Congratulations. DOUBLE GRANDMA: Oh, thanks. I was hoping for a boy, but all girls in my family.
At this point, “Double Grandma” rips open a vending machine bag of Rold Gold pretzels and begins chomping on them.
RANDALL PEARSON: This aggravating moment brought to you by Rold Gold. Wait, I got a better one. Rold Gold Pretzels, diffusing tense family moments since 1923. This woman's about to get drop-kicked. BETH PEARSON: You're not gonna drop-kick a grandma. RANDALL: Watch me. From Good Housekeeping: After Kate's water broke and she was admitted to the hospital, Miguel was, arguably, the most chill person in the waiting room — well, besides Madison and that incredibly aggravating Rold Gold pretzel lady.
Aggravating?
Okay, so I don’t watch ‘This Is Us’. I just didn’t see how it could provide much in the way of Toobworld connections and I really can’t “afford” to become invested in another show which has a continuous storyline.
But I watched this episode because “Double Grandma”* was played by one of my dearest friends, Shirley Jordan.
Two days later, I’m scrolling through the interwebz to see if anybody had anything to say about Shirley’s performance. I thought she was great and I really felt bad for Double Grandma having to sit through the loud arguments between the Pearsons. (She finally left them to thrash it all out and probably sought peace back in her daughter’s room.)
So I was surprised by that description by Good Housekeeping of Double Grandma so I looked around for other opinions of her character.
These are a few I found on Twitter:
I’m in a hospital waiting room and needed to get something from my backpack. I also h ave a bag of skinny pop in the same compartment so now I’m the Rold Gold lady from last night.
Randall giving the evil eye to the lady with the Rold Gold pretzel bag Funnay........
The pretzel lady opens another Rold Gold and Beth drop kicks her right there! And then from sites which review the show on a regular basis
From EW, a Q&A with the showrunner:
Q: Rold Gold pretzels. Are they just a writers’ room fave, or was that integrated advertising? A: [Laughs] Bekah Brunstetter, who wrote the episode, is a playwright. And we kind of turned this one over to her and let her do her thing. She actually went to a real maternity ward waiting room, here in L.A., and just observed with her laptop and actually wrote the episode in the waiting room. So I think the pretzels and the vending machine and the loud, crinkly bag were all based on those days that she spent in a real-life hospital.
From DC Urban Moms & Dads: Randall's Rold Gold moment was hysterical though. Best part of the episode.
From Vulture: The mere fact that the entire clan thinks they have ownership of this HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM for, like, two days is so Pearson, isn’t it? When that Grandma gets up and leaves while the family fights, I imagine she yells “I have no time for these sad people!” as she hops into the elevator to freedom, dumping her second bag of Rold Gold pretzels into her mouth. A true blaze of glory.
I’m glad somebody saw it from her point of view. And it made me realize it’s all a matter of perspective. There are thousands who are invested in this show and are fierce Pearson loyalists. So they stand by the main characters of ‘This Is Us’ and probably see anybody intruding on “their” space as being invaders.
As for me, I didn’t know who these people were, and for the most part just based on this viewing, I don’t want to know them. Both Randall and Kevin came off as self-centered jerks. So when Shirley entered as “Double Grandma”, for me it was a breath of fresh air while for the viewers interested in the Big Three, she was taking attention away from the characters they wanted to watch.
If I even thought I might take up this series, this scene dissuaded me from that notion. I think I can separate the actors from the characters, so their treatment of Double Grandma – forget about her being Shirley! – was very rude, even if she wasn’t aware of it.
Randall and Kevin weren’t the only ones to be focused on themselves; about the only ones who seemed halfway decent were the characters played by Jon Huertas and Mandy Moore, the older generation. But as for the others, none of them even considered what it was like for Double Grandma. Granted, her daughter (or daughter-in-law) had an easy time of it with her labor, the baby (her second) just slipping right out, but even so, they acted as though the waiting room was their domain only. As Rebecca pointed out, there were seventeen chairs in the waiting room; it was meant for more than just them.
And so what if she was eating the pretzels? She might have gone for some time without food just like Rebecca had. She had every right to eat what she wanted in there. It’s not like the hospital didn’t allow it – they’re the ones who supplied the vending machine!
Like I said, it’s all in the perspective. But as a televersion myself, and like Shirley a member of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame (but for playing myself, whereas she played a nurse in all of her roles that qualified her), I was more invested in Double Grandma and so they were the “bad guys”.
Just sayin’ is all….
BCnU!
O’Bservation:* “Double Grandma” is my term – in the IMDb, she is listed as “Happy Grandma” but that’s hardly memorable.
As the Trickster once said, "Reality is boring, that's why I change it whenever I can."
I'm just "The Man Who Viewed Too Much", and "Inner Toob" is a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place.
Most of my theories about the TV Universe come from thinking inside the box and thus can't be proven. But I've never been one to shy away from a tall tale.....
Remember: "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"
