MY FRIENDS IN TOOBWORLD - DOUBLE GRANDMA

‘THIS IS US’
“THE WAITING ROOM”

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.

MONDAY MEMORIAL TVXOHOF TRIBUTE - STRINGFELLOW HAWKE

From The Washington Post:
Jan-Michael Vincent, a golden boy of Hollywood action films in the 1970s who starred on the mid-1980s TV adventure series “Airwolf” and saw his career crater amid drug and alcohol addiction, died Feb. 10 in Asheville, N.C.
The death was confirmed by the Buncombe County Register of Deeds, which provided a death certificate listing the cause as cardiac arrest. He was 74, by most accounts, but the certificate listed him as 73.
With a surfer’s physique and virile charisma, Mr. Vincent entered films in the late 1960s and became a mainstay of action dramas. He was the hitman apprentice to Charles Bronson in “The Mechanic” (1972) and a handsome young stuntman in “Hooper” (1978) with Burt Reynolds as an aging one.
- Adam Bernstein
(But not THE Adam Bernstein)

Jan-Michael Vincent was a regular in several TV series – Harold Robbins’ 'The Survivors', 'The Banana Splits Adventure Hour', and ‘The Winds of War’, the mini-series based on Herman Wouk’s best-seller.  But it was his stint in the mid-1980s adventure series ‘Airwolf’ which will live on in pop culture immortality….

From Wikipedia
‘Airwolf’ is an American television series that ran from 1984 until 1987. The program centers on a high-tech military helicopter, code named Airwolf, and its crew as they undertake various exotic missions, many involving espionage, with a Cold War theme.
The show was created by Donald P. Bellisario and was produced over four seasons. The first three seasons main cast consisted of Jan-Michael Vincent, Ernest Borgnine, Alex Cord, and from the second season onwards Jean Bruce Scott was added as a regular. The show originally aired on CBS and after the original series was cancelled, a fourth season, with an entirely new cast and on a much smaller budget, was filmed in Canada for the USA Network.

Jan-Michael Vincent played Stringfellow Hawke, 34 years old, who had been a Captain in the U.S. Army but now was a freelance agent with the CIA.

From the website “Spy Guys And Gals”:
A highly skilled helicopter pilot who earned a considerable number of medals and commendations for his actions and bravery during the Vietnam War, Hawke was content to leave the excitement and the danger behind when the war ended, even though that also meant losing the ability to search for his older brother and best friend, Saint John Hawke, who was also a pilot in that conflict but was listed MIA.

As the two-book series, or rather the television series from which the novelizations were drawn, commences, Hawke is nearing his mid-30's and is content to live in his rustic cabin high in the mountains of California though near enough literally as the eagle flies to Hollywood to be a pilot for his mentor and old friend, Dominic. This perpetually upbeat owner of Dominic Air, which ferries anyone needing a helicopter but specializing in television and movie work, helped raise the two Hawke brothers after their parents died in a boating accident.       
Hawke has few interests outside his mountain retreat. He enjoys the solitude of living with just nature and his aging hound-dog. He plays the cello for relaxation and has a near-priceless Stradivarius on which to do it. And he has a fortune in rare artwork purchased by his grandfather many years before to please his grandmother. Hawke's hermitage is largely the result of a belief that those he loves will soon be taken from him, starting with his parents and then a few years later with his brother's disappearance. (The fact that his adopted father and friend, Dominic, has not died after all the years they have been together has obviously escaped him.)       
When he was in Vietnam, he and his brother were seconded to work with a division of the CIA called the F.I.R.M., headed by Michael Coldsmith-Briggs III, codename Archangel. After the war and before he went to work for Dominic, Hawke had been a test-pilot for the company working for the F.I.R.M. to create the revolutionary helicopter named Airwolf.       
The premise behind the television series, and thus the books, is that the creator of Airwolf, Doctor Moffet, had stolen the only prototype and fled with it to Libya where he was using it to grow rich blowing up targets that the dictator, Qaddaffi, wanted gone. This included an American destroyer off the North African coast. To get it back Archangel goes to the best pilot he knows for the job, Hawke. For his part, Hawke has no interest in getting back into any fray but finally agrees if Archangel will help find his lost brother.       
After considerable trouble and the death of a fellow agent at the hands of Moffet, Hawke and Dominic manage to get their hands on Airwolf. When Archangel's promised information on Saint John proves less than informative, however, Stringfellow Hawke decides to keep the incredible aircraft. He hides it away in a desert mountain cave and brings it out only when a special mission interests him or he is further coerced by Archangel or others. 

For more on Vincent’s character, click here.

Here are the three TV credits for which Stringfellow Hawke is today being inducted into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame:  

Airwolf (the movie)
1984

From the IMDb:
A scientist who has created a super helicopter has defected to Libya and taken the machine with him. A secretive government agency hires an ex-Vietnam War pilot to go to Libya, steal the chopper and bring it back.  

Airwolf (the series)
55 episodes
1984-1986  

From the IMDb:
As part of a deal with an intelligence agency to look for his missing brother, a renegade pilot goes on missions with an advanced battle helicopter. 

Airwolf II

- Blackjack (1987)

From the IMDb:
When Stringfellow Hawke is critically injured and Dominic is killed, Dominic's niece Jo, major Mike Rivers and Jason Locke from the Company use Airwolf to rescue St. John. After St. John visits Stringfellow in the hospital, Jason Locke comes later and finds the hospital room empty. It is never revealed whether Stringfellow has recovered from his injuries, or what became of him. 

The suggestion could also have been that he died right then, but I don’t accept that.  I’d like to think that Hawke was able to escape from the hospital and went into hiding.  His injuries were so severe however that the toll taken on Jan-Michael Vincent from his addiction-riddled life in the Real World – including the raspy voice and amputated leg - could all be attributed to Hawke’s injuries in Toobworld.

I think Toobworld Central should follow its own general rule and consider the character to have died around the same time as the actor who played the role.  Jan-Michael Vincent apparently died on February 10th, but it wasn’t reported until a few weeks ago, on March 8th.  I’ll give Stringfellow Hawke a pass and say that he died on the day the news about Vincent was announced.  So he got to live a few weeks longer than his portrayer.

However, he was not as old as Jan-Michael Vincent.  In the fifth episode of the series, in 1984, it was revealed that Hawke was 34 years old, which would mean he was born in 1950.  But Vincent was born in 1944, making the actor six years older than the character.

With the pilot movie, the 55 episodes of his own series, and a guest appearance in one episode of the sequel, Vincent has fulfilled the requirements to gain entrance into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  But we have one last “appearance” by Stringfellow Hawke to be considered for his tally.

The Persuaders!

- The Gold Napoleon (1971)
... Helicopter pilot (uncredited)

From the IMDb:
An attempt to assassinate an art student at the Côte d'Azur airport lead Brett and Danny to a syndicate smuggling gold in the form of counterfeit coins. 

This would be a prequel to all of the ‘Airwolf’ projects… if that really is him, that is.  Stringfellow Hawke, I mean.  I have my doubts it’s Jan-Michael Vincent.

The IMDb has been a great resource for televisiologists like Yours Viewly.  (It was even better when you could search the database by the name of a character.)  But since it can be edited by anybody who’s a member, there are some people who like to play jokes with the system (although I think for the most part, any misinformation I’ve seen has been due to mistakes.) 

There was that time right after the first season of ‘Lost’ when an actress and a new character were suddenly in the cast credits.  There was much speculation about her but as it turned out, it was all for naught.  She never showed up in the series, not the actress, not the character.

The helicopter pilot in that episode of ‘The Persuaders!’ was too far away to be satisfactorily identified as being Jan-Michael Vincent.  And what was he doing over there in Europe at that time.  He was working on episodes of shows like ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Men At Law’ during the same period.

But because the chopper pilot can’t be verified as being Jan-Michael Vincent, that doesn’t mean it’s not Stringfellow Hawke.  If this is a recastaway, we don’t even have any splainin to do. Who’s to say it’s not Jan-Michael Vincent?

The bigger question would be why was Stringfellow Hawke there?  Was it where he was shipped with his unit for training during the Cold War?  Maybe when he got his three-day passes, he might have used his skills to take free-lance jobs like this one.

But you know what?  We’ve got his three official, separate, appearances in Earth Prime-Time.  If you don’t want to accept this fourth possibility as being Hawke, then ignore it.  Me, I’m going to accept it, whether he’s played by Vincent or not.  After all, Toobworld is my sandbox.  You can do what you like with yours.

Welcome to the Hall, Stringfellow.  I’m sorry it was under these conditions….

VIDEO WEEKEND - THE GUEST STARS OF "GET SMART"

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - JOAN LUNDEN

Continuing with our March Friday Hall of Famers celebrating members of the League of Themselves, we’re adding a touch of feminine pulchritude….

From Wikipedia:
Joan Lunden (born Joan Elise Blunden on September 19, 1950) is an American journalist, an author, and a television host. Lunden was the co-host of ABC's ‘Good Morning America’ from 1980 to 1997, and has authored eight books. She has appeared on the ‘Biography’ program and Biography Channel.

As of 2014, Lunden is a special correspondent for NBC's ‘Today’.

For more about the newswoman, click here.

Here are the  credits which qualify her for membership as a League of Themselves representative:

LateLine
- Al Anonymous (1998)

O’Bservation:
A roman a clef novel titled “Tanged Banners” was published anonymously (a la “Primary Colors” in the Trueniverse) and people began to believe that it had been written by ‘Lateline’ reporter Al Freundlich.  But a little girl who was the “reporter” for the kids’ version of ‘LateLine’ figured out it was actually written by Joan Lunden, based on similar phrases in the book and used by Lunden in a cooking show.

Murphy Brown
- Murphy Redux (1997)

From the IMDb:
Murphy decides not to work for the White House and goes back to her old job at FYI. All is well again until she finds out thanks to the news piece that was assigned to her that she may have breast cancer.

- Sox and the Single Girl (1993)

From the IMDb:
Murphy gets invited to the White House by the Clintons. Once she gets back to the office, she finds out she has a furry stowaway.

O'Bservation:
Apparently she accidentally ended up with the Clintons' pet cat.
 

- A Chance of Showers (1992)

From the IMDb:
Murphy is feeling even crankier at the end of her pregnancy and isn't happy that Corky is throwing her a baby shower. But she changes her mind when she realizes she will be getting terrific gifts from her peers [who] work in national news.

The episode "A Chance of Showers" (episode 4.25) featured cameos by actual newscasters Katie Couric, 'Faith Daniels', Joan Lunden, Mary Alice Williams and Paula Zahn.
 
Joan Lunden is a multi-dimensional.  Along with the appearances in ‘Murphy Brown’ and ‘LateLine’, she also appeared in the alternate Toobworld of sitcom Presidents….

Graves
- Evil Good and Good Evil (2016)

From the IMDb:
Former President Graves is giving a speech at a VA facility. Rudy Giuliani and Bill Richardson, are with him. On the drive back to Graves' residence they have the driver pull over, and Graves leaves there, out in the desert.  At home, Graves meets his new assistant, Isaiah. He sneaks out without his Secret Service detail, goes to his Presidential library, takes a few things, then to a restaurant, and end up outside the waitress' trailer, smoking pot. Isaiah goes into the trailer for some munchies and when he returns, Graves and the waitress are gone. Both Graves and Isaiah eventually return to the residence. Graves' wife, Margaret and his daughter Olivia are also introduced.  

O'Bservation:
Joan Lunden introduced former President Graves at the VA ceremony.

- Lions in Winter

O’Bservation:
Ms. Lunden may have only been name-checked in this episode.

From the ‘Graves’ wiki:
After learning his longtime friend and political ally ex-U.K. Prime Minister Trevor Lloyd is dying of cancer, Graves takes off to see him in Baltimore for one last adventure. Isaiah and Sammy join him, and Isaiah gets a peek behind the curtain when she takes him to visit her family. Olivia enlists Jeremy’s help when she realizes she’s in over her head with Arturo and Margaret finds herself falling into familiar patterns as she and Dalton strategize on her campaign.

Not that it adds to her tally for membership in the Hall, but Joan Lunden has also appeared in several movies which reside in the Cineverse:

• “Thank You For Smoking”
• “Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home”
• “Conspiracy Theory”
• “What About Bob?”

However, none of those can legitimately be absorbed into the TV Universe.

She appeared on ‘The New Hollywood Squares’ back in November of 1987 and ‘Hollywood Squares’ will one day be a part of the TVXOHOF itself one day.  She also appeared in a lot of wrestling shows – now, I’m not as keen about their legitimacy for my view of the TV Universe, but there’s no denying their fictional aura and even a few fictional characters who have appeared in those shows.  Joan Lunden doesn’t need those shows to qualify for Hall membership but they add “flavor” to her tally.


Welcome to the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, Ms. Lunden!

THURSDAY THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - THE MAYHEM LINE

‘AMERICAN GODS’
“THE BEGUILING MAN”

From the IMDb:
Promising vengeance for the death of a beloved old god, Mr. Wednesday begins preparation for a great battle; Laura and Mad Sweeney chase Shadow's diminishing light after he disappear 

Dean Winters who plays Mr. Town, is best known as "Mayhem" in the Allstate commercials.

From the ‘American Gods’ wiki:
Mr. Town is one of the Spooks who works for Mr. World

Mr. Town has been tasked by Mr. World to find out what Shadow knows about Mr. Wednesday’s plan. His brutal efficiency and technique just may get him the answers to his curious questions.

Mr. Town wants to know why he goes with the flow and Shadow replies it is because of curiosity.

Mr. Town discusses how the New Gods have brought medicine and technology while the Old Gods are relics.

I haven’t read the novel by Neil Gaiman, so I know anything else about Mr. Town than this.  The IMDb only lists this one episode for Dean Winters, so it could be this was all we were going to learn about him.  And I don’t understand the significance of the names for Mr. World’s acolytes – Mr. Town, Mr. Road, Mr. Stone, Mr. Wood….  I understand the deal with Mr. World – he’s one of the new gods, AKA Globalization.

Mister Town must be a demi-god, serving World as his inquisitor.  As such, he is far younger than the Old Gods, but still with a longer lifespan of the humans, perhaps they’re even immortal.

So I have a theory of relateeveety….

Dean Winters’ character in the All-State commercials is the Spirit of Mayhem.  He’s another demi-god, the living embodiment of a concept in much the same way as Dom DeLuise was Guilt and Loni Anderson was Love in an episode of ‘Amazing Stories’.  And while we’ve mostly seen him in action during our current era – taking the form of snow, mobile phones, even a ring-bearer at a wedding – we’ve seen in another blipvert that Mayhem has been around since early times in human history.  Definitely another immortal.

So I’m thinking (always a dangerous thing) that Mr. Town is the son of Mayhem, taking the skills and demigod abilities of his parentage and honing them in a new direction. 

I’m not going to champion this extension of the theory, merely suggest it, but it could be that Mayhem, like many of the Greek gods, copulated with human females long in the past and his genealogical traits have been passed down over the eons.  By this point, without any other “influx” of genetic material from non-human sources (as was the case with Miquelito Quixote Loveless), Mayhem’s human descendants share nothing except his physical likeness.  It could be all of his descendants down through the ages looked exactly like him (sorry, ladies), but there has been a plethora of them in the last twenty years or so:

• Brian Cassidy (‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’)
• Tony Silvercreek (‘Divorce’)
• Detective Pembroke aka “The Vulture” (‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’)
• Russ Agnew (‘Battle Creek’)
• Dennis Duffy (’30 Rock’)
• Johnny Gavin (‘Rescue Me’)
• Ryan O’Reilly (‘Oz’)

And that’s just a sampling of the human descendants of Mayhem.

As for Mister Town, he would be of a more relatively recent vintage of Mayhem’s Spawn, and more than likely his mother was a demi-goddess herself which would guarantee his longevity.

Everything about this theory could come crashing to the ground should Mr. Town return to ‘American Gods’ and more is revealed about his past.  But the focus of the series is on Shadow Moon and Mr. Wednesday, so a minor character like Mr. Town?  I doubt his family tree would ever come up.

Watch – somebody involved with the show sees this and does a rewrite to screw it up!
Maybe even Mayhem might have a hand in it....

BCnU!

WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - SPRINGTIME FOR SPRINGTIME

From Calendarpedia:
Spring 2019 starts on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 and ends on Friday, June 21st 2019.

Spring, also often called "springtime", is one of the four seasons that make up the year. It is the intervening period between the coldest time of the year (winter) and the warmest time of the year (summer) and gets its name from the growth of new plants during this time: plants "spring forth".  

From Wikipedia:
Ēostre or Ostara is a Germanic goddess who, by way of the Germanic month bearing her name is the namesake of the festival of Easter in some languages. Ēostre is attested solely by Bede in his 8th-century work “The Reckoning of Time”, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Ēostre's honour, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal month, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

Theories connecting Ēostre with records of Germanic Easter customs, including hares and eggs, have been proposed. Debate has occurred among some scholars about whether or not the goddess was an invention of Bede.

Ēostre and Ostara are sometimes referenced in modern popular culture and are venerated in some forms of Germanic neopaganism.

From ”The Goddess And The Green Man”:
Ostara takes its name after the Germanic goddess, Eostre/Ostara, who was traditionally honoured in the month of April with festivals to celebrate fertility, renewal and re-birth. It was from Eostre that the Christian celebration of Easter evolved. The Goddess Ostara has the shoulders and head of a hare.  (In “American Gods”, Easter is described as curvaceous with platinum blonde hair and crimson-painted lips. She looks to be somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.)

From the “American Gods” wiki:
Easter is the Germanic goddess of the earth, spring, fertility, and the harvest.  

Environmental Manipulation:
Easter is able to directly change the seasons and control the weathers. In "Come to Jesus," Easter brings an immediate end to spring by setting winter upon the land.

Resurrection:
It is revealed in "Come to Jesus" that Easter has the power to "relife" people after death, however, she cannot return life to people who have been killed by gods (i.e. Laura Moon).

Animal Communication:
Easter is able to communicate with her rabbits.

Ostara has a mansion in Kentucky and that’s where Wednesday finds her celebrating Easter with all the incarnations of the Christ.  Wednesday was hoping to recruit her for his war with the New Gods.

Wednesday argues that millions might observe some of the rituals of Easter but not many actually speak her name in worship. Ostara does all the work of bringing spring, yet Jesus gets all the prayers.  Wednesday suggests to Ostara that she should take away the spring to make the people pray to her.

Whether they fight or not makes no difference to Wednesday’s enemy Mr.. World because the Old Gods will die out either way. Wednesday responds by dedicating deaths to Ostara just as lightning strikes.

Wednesday commands Ostara to show the New Gods who she really is. Easter steps forward and lifts her arms to the air, bringing a change in the wind and clearing the thunderclouds. She takes away the spring, causing life to retreat underground throughout the country as it returns to its winter state.

O'Bservation:
In the TV series “Mulberry”, Ostara reappeared but in a new form (as gods can change their appearance) and going by the her occupational title of “Springtime”.  (Above to the right)  She is the mother of Mulberry, thanks to her relationship with Death.

Happy Spring!

SUPER SIX LIST - SAYINGS OF McGOOHAN

Today marks the anniversary of Patrick McGoohan's birth.  He would have been 91 years old.

It's also the birth date for Number Six, McGoohan's character in 'The Prisoner' - in my humble opinion, one of the greatest TV characters ever.  (I've also read that it's the birth date for John Drake as well.  McGoohan played Drake in 'Danger Man'/'Secret Agent'.*)

To pay tribute to him this year, I'm offering up one of my Super Six Lists.  For this one, I'm choosing my favorite quotes by his characters in both TV shows and in the movies. 

1)  "Be seeing you."
Number Six and others
'The Prisoner' (entire series)
&
Nelson Brenner
'Columbo' - "Identity Crisis"

On paper, it doesn't look like much.  But it's the way he says it, and the many interpretations there could be.

It's such a powerful yet simple "greeting" that McGoohan brought it back about a decade later....

2)  "You have the wrong room."
Nelson Brenner
'Columbo' - "Identity Crisis"

I could easily fill this list with quotes from just this double agent alone!  This was repeated several times upon first meeting the Lieutenant, in a curt, dismissive tone.

3)  Number Two:
What in fact has been created? An international community. A perfect blueprint for world order. When the sides facing each other suddenly realize that they're looking into a mirror, they'll see that this is the pattern for the future.

Number 6: 
The whole world as the Village?
Number Two: 
That is my dream. What's yours?
Number 6: 
To be the first man on the moon.
'The Prisoner' - "The Chimes of Big Ben"

Our first inclusion of dialogue on this list.  Won't be the last.  For over forty years, 'The Prisoner' had been my favorite TV show.  (It's been usurped by 'Doctor Who', but it will always be "the new Number Two".)  And this dialogue exchange sums up the dynamic of the relationship between McGoohan and Leo McKern as the best of the Number Twos.

4)  "The Silver Streak has its drawbacks, but try the marmalade. They provide an excellent cuisine."
Roger Devereaux
"The Silver Streak"

McGoohan only played black or white characters, he once said.  His bad guys were meant to be extremely bad.  And they were, boy were they ever!  And it's not a redeeming feature, but at least he did exude some charm as Devereaux.

O'Bservation - I'll have to see this movie again, not that I ever need an excuse.  But I found this version at a movie transcript page and it doesn't sound right.  I use the line a lot and this doesn't have the right feel even though it conveys the basic intent.  But it's burned into my memory banks as "Do try the marmalade. The Silver Streak may have its faults, but they have an excellent cuisine." 

So I may be wrong on this.  But I have to say, my version sounds more like something McGoohan would say.

5)  "Every family has a skeleton in the closet.  It's just a matter of finding the proper key."
John Drake
'Secret Agent'

I don't remember which episode this was from.  But I've saved it for years and it's very special for me.  It's part of the chapter heading for the second "episode" of my first Toobworld novel, still a work in progress.

For the last item in this Super Six List, we're back at the movies and we have another dialogue exchange.  But we will need a visual aid....

I'm going to try to observe McGoohan's birthday every year, that's how great I thought he was.  So this was the first one.  I hope you enjoyed it.

BCnU!