Wonderfully Lurid, Pulpy 1950s TV Actioner. M Squad Forever Packs a Punch

 

Seeing as how The Naked Gun reboot just came out (to predictably tepid, meager applause), I thought I'd scrounge up my copy of Timeless Media's collection, M Squad: The Complete Series, the noirish, nightmarish NBC police suspenser that aired from 1957 to 1960, and that was the direct inspiration for David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker's 6 episode ABC cult classic, Police Squad...which led, of course, to The Naked Gun series (got that?)  Headed up by Marvin in his first TV series (this made him a star, not movies like The Wild One and The Big Heat), M Squad is blissfully uncomplicated as it wallows in its own filth.

It doesn’t bother with messy things like a fully-dimensional lead or complicated character motivations or intricate crime plots. It goes for the gut, letting sensation and violence rule for a queasy half-hour as Lee Marvin’s Lieutenant Ballinger drills every punk in sight who dares to disrupt the order of Chicagoland. Beautifully sparse and minimalist, M Squad doesn’t care if you want explanations for why craven crybaby killers and scheming industrialists and sex-hardened molls do the evil they do. It just wants to show you what they do, in graphic (for late 1950s TV) fashion…and how they get bashed, ventilated, and fried for doing it. M Squad is a necessity, pure and simple.

By 1957, no one could blame NBC for looking around for another hard-hitting police series to add their schedule. Their venerable cop show Dragnet had been a consistent ratings’ powerhouse for years (reaching 4th, 2nd, and 3rd in the year-end Nielsen’s for the years 1952 through 1955), and while still a winner with the public, Dragnet, as is inevitable with any successful show, eventually began to trend downward, dropping to 11th for the year prior to the premiere of M Squad (before it was knocked out of the Top Thirty altogether against sitcom The Real McCoys in 1957, and westerns Cheyenne and Sugarfoot in 1958).

As well, 1957 marked a significant rise in overall crime in the United States (particularly in violent crime), a trend that would last until, well...today. That, coupled with the public’s growing fascination (and some might say horror) with the continued break-down of established pre-WWII social norms (garishly reflected, albeit within the censorship rules, in the nation’s pop culture), created an opportunity for American TV viewers to wrestle safely with complex social problems through their favorite TV shows and stars (one might argue that, interestingly enough, American TV viewers overwhelming “looked back” to the nostalgic Western genre to filter through these new tensions, resulting in the popular adult, psychological Western series such as Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel).

M Squad, at least in design and execution, was as bare-bones as one could possibly get in a 1957 police procedural series. Set in Chicago (an unusual choice, considering L.A. and New York’s usual lock-grip on private eye, detective and police shows up to that time), M Squad starred Lee Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, who was attached to “M Squad,” a special free-floating division of the Chicago Police Department whose members could be assigned to any other division within the force—from homicide to bunko—as needed (the “M” in the title is never referred to anywhere in the series as representing “Murder” or the “Mob” or “Mafia”). Loosely supervised by his superior, Captain Grey (Paul Newlan), Ballinger is called in after a particularly violent or tricky crime has been committed, where he then proceeds, through dogged, flat-foot police work, to break the case, usually preventing additional crimes by the perpetrator by either beating him senseless or drilling him with his snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special.

And…that’s it for M Squad. Week after week, with metronome precision, the same basic set-up was recreated, with only the manner of the crime altered within the series’ framework. Locked down thematically and visually to the equivalent of those violent comic books of the late 50s that attracted returning vets who only wanted action and plenty of it, M Squad stripped away almost all of the reassuring, grounding elements that went with presenting a weekly series—a fully developed lead character, an established personal life for the lead, reoccurring sidekicks or friends—to present a harsh, angry depiction of relentless crime and punishment, American-style. Precious little time was wasted on the niceties of character development or complex plots within its tight half-hour format.

M Squad‘s star, Lee Marvin, while certainly a familiar face by 1957 to moviegoers and TV viewers (he had recently scored a substantial co-starring role in MGM’s high-profile flop, Raintree County), wasn’t exactly a household name yet, either. His handsome/ugly face and his cooly detached yet obviously simmeringly violent persona, further presented a rather anonymous, vaguely threatening allure to the audience—an attraction that wasn’t the norm back in “we need to be reassured” 1957 America.

Of course today, M Squad may well be better known for its influence on the creators of the failed TV spoof, Police Squad, and the enormously successful spin-off The Naked Gun film series. However, it’s importance in the American TV police series timeline is far more important than the fact that it was lifted wholecloth for a subsequent parody.

While M Squad certainly owes more than a little bit of its structure to the previous Dragnet (the terse, unemotional voice-over narration, the concentration on “just the facts, ma’am” exposition), M Squad does have a twist on its noir elements—filtered through a be-bop, jazzy, brutal hipster sensibility—that’s quite unlike Jack Webb’s almost kabuki-like formalism of Dragnet. Ballinger, an agent for justice in “his” town Chicago (which is featured quite prominently in each episode, courtesy of some marvelously evocative location pick-up shots, most featuring Marvin himself in Chi-Town), is just that and only that: an agent of the law with precious little else to distinguish him from the equally nameless criminals he plugs every week.

For the lead character who appears in almost every scene of 117 episodes of a three-year series, Frank Ballinger is remarkably anonymous. We never see where he lives. We never see him with a girl, out on a date. We never see him engage in any kind of off-duty activity. We never even hear him discuss an off-duty life (although once or twice, someone makes a comment about Frank knowing a lot of women). He exists only within the claustrophobic set-up of the show which focuses relentlessly on his police-related duties. The only person he seems to engage on a regular basis is his boss—and we never get to “know” him, either. Frank Ballinger is, as his narration often suggests, simply a physical manifestation of the city of Chicago’s police department. And that’s all.

And any personal touches that creep into the character come strictly via his police duties. We learn that at times, Frank is disenchanted with his job, in the frequently noirish voice-overs that make M Squad play often like some forgotten little B-programmer gem (“Sometimes nobody wins. And you’re just a cop who’s done his job. And you go home, wondering why you don’t have a feeling of satisfaction when you nail some people,” from The Shakedown). Yet this sense of weary professional (and moral) defeat is later largely dropped, to be replaced with the more Chandler-esque “gallant knight among lowlifes” sensibility (“The town looked clean and honest and innocent. I hoped that all the people felt as good as I did, that the law, in protecting its own, had protected the city at the same time,” from Neighborhood Killer).

If Frank has tender feelings about women or children, it’s only expressed through the performance of his duties (such as the remarkably funny moment in Death by Adoption, where Marvin has some obvious fun, gruffly/sweetly feeding a laughing baby), never in a moment outside his life as a cop. As for personal friendships, he always seems to know old cons and sharpies, or friends from the force, but they’re held at a distance, merely plot devices to keep the stories moving. The most meaningful interaction Frank has with another person throughout M Squad is with his boss, Captain Grey, and even that is limited mostly to shop talk (and it’s quite believable shop talk, too, with Ballinger and Grey having a kidding/grumbling relationship that seems about right for two pros who spend a lot of time together). The chain-smoking, hard-nosed, professional cop Frank Ballinger, is a mystery to the audience in all areas other than his thoughts on a particular case at the present time. Everything else is superfluous.

The noir aspects of M Squad are frequently pronounced. The world created here is the beautifully grim, chiaroscuro lighted Chi-town, with quite a few scenes taking place in a night-time world of sharpies, molls, psychotic killers, low-life bums and scheming femme fatales rubbing elbows with the swells from Chicago’s Gold Coast. It’s also a thriving underworld where the relentless implementation of violence and even torture are used to settle the most base, venal criminal arrangements.

If we don’t get to personally know Ballinger, much like Sergeant Joe Friday’s private life is largely unseen, M Squad delivers up a hipster looseness, an almost goofy, giddy reveling in the thrill-kicks of violence and jazz and the basic squalidness of human beings, that is nowhere to be found in Dragnet. With Frank rendered almost a cardboard cut-out of an avenging cop, he’s free to indulge in the pulpy pleasures of a character not bound by complex motivations. M Squad often plays like those lurid True Crime and men’s adventure magazines that were reaching their zenith in the late 50s, where the sizzle was more important than the steak, so to speak.

“Sensation” is everything in M Squad, where character motivation is all but eliminated in favor of setting up a rather ghastly crime, and then letting angry Frank loose on the underworld to try and solve it—usually with his fists and his gun (there’s an insanely right, correct shot in The Widows that sums up the series quite nicely: Frank, his cover blown during a set-up, calmly starts firing at some punk, while keeping his cigarette calmly in his mouth, never losing a drag). These are excessively violent cartoons, really, jazzed up with funny hep-cat dialogue (“Mickey Kilgrew. 37-26-36. IQ? 13,” from Mamma’s Boy) and the blindingly cool music cues of legend Benny Carter (who eventually scores most of the third season episodes).

These episodes are jazz riffs on violence and crime and justice, more than they’re meaningful “stories.” The wonderfully obsessive Dragnet, with its almost pathological devotion to correct police procedures holding back the looming chaos of illegality, is nowhere to be found in the jangly M Squad. The expositional framework is just an excuse for crude shock effects and sensation. Always sensation, daddy, along with some jive-ass talk (“When it comes to scoring, I’m the original kid from Scores-ville!” “Yeah, I bet you are.” “When I dig a score, I like to spread it around. I gave him a chance to fly high, but he just wasn’t cool.” “But you are?” “Yeah!” “Well, we got a little chair down in States-ville that will warm you up plenty,” from More Deadly).

Even though each M Squad episode ends with an obviously tacked-on “moral” where Frank intones that drug dealing, murder, blackmail, fraud, juvenile delinquency, and terrorism have been miraculously scrubbed away in Chicago, violent crime in the service of baser desires is never more than another week’s episode away in M Squad (right in line with the show’s jaundiced sensibilities, just as the series was ending, the infamous “Summerdale scandals”—where Chicago cops were discovered to be actually boosting stores in conjunction with a known cat burglar, while higher-ups knowingly covered it up—broke in the news). With the (unintended) aid of the fairly poor transfers available for M Squad (I’ve read the original elements are gone, but who knows), the show takes on a cheap, Grade-Z programmer look that only further cements the series’ True Crime mock-ups.

Violence is frequent, and largely unsentimental—both from the criminals’ and the police’s perspectives. Criminals in M Squad kill often, and they like it. And Ballinger beats them with his fists, or ventilates them with his S&W, before happily sending them off to the gas chamber or electric chair (if you go by M Squad‘s successful capital punishment ratio, Illinois must have had not just an electric chair, but electric bleachers). Those dopey messages of “Hope and Change,” Chicago-style (sure I’m giving him a dig…) at the end of each episode, are patently phony: even Marvin sounds humorously noncommittal during his delivery of them. The thrills of M Squad come not from justice upheld…but from vengeance served.

Right from the beginning, M Squad serves up the sensationalistic, sick thrills that must have really jolted the kids staying up late on Friday nights. Pulpy stories include a psycho killer bumping off people to appease his OCD (Face of Evil); a mamma’s boy serial killer who has a thing for blondes, with his murderous rage set off by a song (Blue Indigo; where Frank hilariously intones, “Everyone is capable of being mentally disturbed.”); a serial sniper (Shot in the Dark); Frank’s battle with a bunch of psycho motorcyclists (watch Marvin get a chance to imitate some moto-punk—a la The Wild One—in The Phantom Raiders); a crime school of death, where punk-in-training Tom Laughlin giggles while he pushes the principal out the window to his death (Burt Reynolds, with real hair, shows up as well in the gloriously dreadful The Teacher); more crybaby psycho killers in High School Bride and The Second Best Killer; a guy beaten to death with a saxophone—crazy, baby!—in Murder in C-Sharp (like, yeah, dad); a killer circus clown who bullwhips Frank (!) in The Tiger’s Cage; a grenade attack on some poor schlub sleeping in his hammock in the appropriately titled, A Grenade for a Summer’s Evening; and my personal favorite, Pitched Battle at Bluebell Acres (say that 3 times fast and see what comes out…). A bunch of remorseless bank robbers steal a bazooka to blow safes and knock out pursuing police cars; they buy the farm when Frank hunts them down with a Thompson submachine gun, eventually blasting the head psycho to smithereens with a casually-tossed grenade (take that, Miranda rights!).

By the time M Squad really swings into gear during its second season (when Count Basie’s hypnotically driving theme is utilized; Marvin gets a mean, nasty-looking crewcut, emphasizing the primitive ugliness/beauty of his long, rangy face; a new, iconic opening that has Frank blasting some unseen foe with his Colt Cobra snub nose), viewers that were tired of Westerns that had more Freudian talk than a year on the couch with a head shrink, could tune into M Squad for resolutely impolite thrills.

All-Time Time-Wastin' Champ: I've Finished NBC's Soap, The Doctors!

After years and years of false starts, I've finally achieved another worthless TV-watching milestone:  I've made it through The Doctors, the NBC daytime serial that ran for 20 years, and won the first Emmy for Best Show Daytime (1972).

 

 

I mean the entire series.  From start (sorta) to finish (sorta). All 4,865 episodes of The Doctors that remain, saved for some unknown reason by its owner, Colgate-Palmolive, minus 290 episodes that somehow or other, didn't survive (supposedly the last year and a half were available...before they magically disappeared during the scamdemic.  I'm calling bullshit).  

 

 

Soap operas, like so many other American daytime TV programming from the 1980s and before, were largely considered one-offs with no historical, and more importantly financial, value, and were thus considered disposable (so if they were even preserved on video tape in the first place, a huge percentage of them were later "wiped" to reuse the-then expensive magnetic tape).  The Doctors, happily, escaped that fate, and remains remarkably intact.

 

So...the main question you may have (aside from how I've managed to avoid a 72-hour psych hold for so long) is WHY?  Why would I want to waste literally years of my life watching decades-long programming that many people would call ancient, irrelevant--and highly disposable--junk?

 

It's a valid question (if rude).  Except for watching episodes of Dark Shadows when I came home from morning kindergarten (Spaghetti-Os with franks, chilled strawberry Kook-Aid--no ice; I didn't want it watered down), a show I consider "horror" programming first, and "soap opera" second, I had zero childhood experience watching soap operas.  Soaps were for dopey housewives, icky high school girls, and senile old grannies wrapped up in their ridiculously fake "stories."  Back then, no self-respecting all-American straight boy would have been caught dead watching a soap.

 

If you were home during a weekday, you usually didn't watch TV, anyway...because there was nothing on (okay, maybe game shows, but cartoons and syndicated fare didn't start until late afternoon).  The only time I had to watch soaps was when I was forced to by my crazy Geritol-swiggin' granny, whenever she was babysitting, or we were visiting.  She was loyal to a fault to her NBC "stories," so I have no doubt I had to endure episodes of The Doctors...but I have no conscious memory of it.  I hated having to watch them with her.

 

Somehow, though...early exposure to stuff you didn't initially like--at least for television--can have a rebound effect later in life when you least expect it (I couldn't abide Lawrence Welk when we had Sunday dinner at Granny's...and now, I kinda...love it).  Certainly late-night, afternoon movie show exposure to big, soapy movie melodramas (entertaining mellers like Peyton Place, The Long, Hot Summer, and of course, Valley of the Dolls) also primed me for the daytime soaps, too.

 

By the time I was in middle school, prime-time network soaps were coming back in style, too, with the biggest thing on TV involving the devilish antics of J.R. Ewing and the folks on Dallas.  Even better, due to the size of my old man's Channel Master TV antenna (biggest on the block, he'd proudly proclaim, while cranking that beautiful "sundial" CM rotor), and by geographic luck, living about 60 miles (downwind, thank god), of Windsor, Ontario, we were able to get CBC's Channel 9 crystal clear.  And that meant repeats of Britain's greatest serial, Coronation Street.

 

I wish I could convey how amazing it was for me, an Anglophile as far back as single digits, who delighted in any "foreign" movie from England, suddenly discovering that I could watch little 30 minute "kitchen sink" movies every day, with grotty, pasteboard sets and marvelously funny, touching characters like Ena Sharples, Annie Walker, Elsie Tanner, Mike Baldwin, Eddie Yates, Albert Tatlock, and my favorite, ear-splitting, hair curler-wearing Hilda Ogden (the amusing irony of this kind of programming seeming wildly "exotic foreign fare" to a know-nothing Midwestern boy, was completely lost on me at this early point).

 

Still, Hilda Ogden's curlers and shrill fishwife screech could only get you so far, if you know what I mean...so when high school rolled around and I discovered more, um...mature visual stimulation in the American network soaps, I was hooked.  If I was home sick, or if I had a day off from my various summer jobs, it didn't hurt to flip the channels real quick to see if power-mad, slutty lynx Brenda Dickson was lounging poolside on The Young and The Restless ("Well, hello!"), or dark, sensuous brunette Colleen Zink, with that impossibly silky bob, was trying on some new lingerie (black, of course) on As the World Turns, or statuesque California "good girl/blue balls-giving champ" Katherine Kelly Lang, rocking some impossibly tight-fitting bikini on The Bold and the Beautiful.

 

WHY THE SOAPS AREN'T JUST FOR WOMEN AND THE GAYS

(in top-to-bottom order of hotness) 

 

Those beautiful, sexy women made it a lot easier to rationalize watching a genre that the public's--and more importantly my old man's--perception said was strictly for women and gay men.  And once hooked, and armed with a more educated palette, I could appreciate some of the remarkably talented performers that were turning the frequent dross of dialogue into comedic and dramatic gold.  If Brooke didn't have the latest swimwear on, then TBATB's Daniel McVicar's and Darlene Conley's Clarke Garrison and Sally Spectra exchanging barbed insults was just as entertaining.  And if As the World Turns' Barbara Ryan already boffed some guy before you switched over (she was such a wonderfully bitchy piece of ass), you could hit the floor over expert farceurs Elizabeth Hubbard and Larry Bryggman fighting to the death as sex-crazed power boss Lucinda Walsh and devious, perverse Dr. John Dixon.  God, soaps were great then.

 

It's not surprising, then, that when Retro TV announced in 2014 that they had the rights to broadcast all the extant episodes of The Doctors, I went into paroxysms of ecstasy.  I was stunned, frankly; I had no idea this treasure trove of vintage TV had survived The Great Wiping apocalypse.  As a historian (hahahaha!) but more importantly, as a hard-core lover of anything television-related, I was positively freaking out.

 

These kinds of re-discoveries of so-called "lost media," particularly one of The Doctors' magnitude, is a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence.  And this wasn't just another shot-on-35mm film sitcom or adventure series cleaned up for modern consumption.  This stuff was network-produced, but far rougher, more immediate, in its execution, with frequently flubbed lines, technical difficulties (boom mikes and giant cameras frequent prowl around in full view), giving a delightfully crappy verisimilitude that only adds to the crudely vibrant melodrama. 

 

As for sociological study, here's a rare opportunity to see fictional characters move through 20 years of an America experiencing seismic changes, not only in political terms, but in every kind of term, from gender roles, religious convictions, social decorum, and moral standards, to what jokes are funny, what you have for breakfast, and what clothes you do or don't wear. 

 

If you added it all up, allowing about 20 minutes or so for each episode, it took in the neighborhood of 68 days for me to watch all of The Doctors.  That's if I was watching 24/7 (the most I ever did in one sitting was an epic drunk where I started on a Friday night and let it run until I passed out on Sunday morning.  I remember every episode).  What a phenomenal waste of time.

I can't wait to do it again.

 

Reading back over this...am I crazy for wanting to start reviewing The Doctors, right from the beginning?  Each and every episode?  A lot more needs to be said about this remarkable achievement (I mean me watching over 1,600 hours of this soap again).  We'll have to see....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Hofstede's Comfort TV--a Classic TV Blog to Bookmark!

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention another classic TV blog that I visit weekly, particularly during these past few difficult weeks:  TV historian David Hofstede's marvelous Comfort TV.  Each week, David looks at the shows that influenced him growing up, while also discussing the cultural threads that are woven through those shows...and past times.  I never miss it, and I highly recommend it to you!

 

NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration...It Can't Be Worse Than the Upcoming 100th!

 
Coincidences abound in the classic TV world.  A never-miss TV blog I catch, Mitchell Hadley's It's About TV, mentioned the upcoming NBC 100th anniversary special to air sometime in 2026...just as I was getting through a Youtube download of NBC's 60th Anniversary Celebration, that aired May 12th, 1986. How serendipitous.

Having previously seen NBC's 50th anniversary special, hosted by Orson Welles, back in 1976 (we had to have been over at our grandparents, who loved fusty old NBC and their radio origins), I was curious why NBC would bother with another orgy of self-celebratory masturbation just a mere ten years later.  

Until, that is, I remembered that NBC, perpetually number 2 network to first "Tiffany Network" CBS and then upstart ruffian ABC, had finally, after being dead last for almost a decade in the year-end Nielsen's, clawed its way up to being the number one-rated network for 1985-1986.  No wonder they were looking for a chance to finally crow about something, like their admittedly exalted legacy.

If you grew up during the 70s and 80s, there was an undeniable "house style" to the networks that I've written about before, even a distinct look and feel to the lighting and editing and sound design of their individual shows, that was unmistakable to close TV watchers back then.  For me, CBS was motion-picture gloss and sheen, their shows looking the most like something akin to what was being shown in big screen theaters.  

ABC was brighter, faster, punchier, like comic books come to life, while NBC was always rather, well...dowdy and bit frumpy, even a tad dark whether filmed or videotaped.  If you watch an episode of Adam-12 or Emergency today, on any medium, you can tell instantly that they're former NBC productions.  They just wouldn't have looked and sounded and played like they do if they had been on CBS or ABC (if this all sounds very vague and subjective, well...yeah, of course).

For me, NBC was always the network of my parents or more specifically my grandparents.  Shows like Bonanza, Sing Along with Mitch, Hazel, Perry Como's various incarnations, Dragnet, Daniel Boone, Ironside, and The NBC Mystery Movie, seemed indelibly linked with older audiences like my grandparents, who religiously watched them.  Growing up, the only NBC shows that were "must see" for me were Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Adam-12, Emergency! and Sanford and Son.  Other, more "youthful" NBC offerings that would remain huge in my memory, such as Star Trek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and The Monkees, I saw later in syndication, far removed from their original network context.

With little in the way of repeated viewing history, I had no gravitational pull from NBC, then, to keep me in their orbit as the 80s rolled around and I entered my teen years (ABC and to a lesser extent CBS owned that time period for me).  Even in elementary school, I read our local rag for any entertainment or movie or TV-related features, which deepened when I was able to score an occasional Variety or Hollywood Reporter from our local bookstore.

So I was well aware of NBC's widely-publicized problems going into the late 70s and early 80s, and particularly the high drama of TV executive Fred "The Man With the Golden Gut" Silverman being poached from ABC and going to dead-last NBC.  Even casual followers of TV knew he flamed out (despite some hits like CHiPs, Diff'rent Strokes, Real People, and the miniseries spectacular, Shogun) through a series of expensive misfires like Supertrain, Pink Lady and Jeff, Hello, Larry, and The Krofft Superstar Hour, and simple bad luck, such as the former worst president in U.S. history, Jimmy Carter (until the day he died, he prayed to shrine featuring Obama and Biden), boycotting the Summer Olympics...leaving NBC and Silverman holding the bag to the tune of about $34 million dollars in lost advertising (over $133 million in today's dollars).

Not until MTM co-founder Grant Tinker and his lieutenant, programmer Brandon Tartikoff, showed up at NBC, and put into place a long-term strategy of leaving so-called "quality" shows on the air long enough to find viewers, did NBC's fortunes begin slowly to turn around.   With ever-more-sophisticated and focused work on satisfying advertisers with demographic mumbo-jumbo, NBC could charge the same amount for commercials on a mid-level performer like Hill Street Blues, as CBS and ABC were charging for higher-rated competition.  Overall ratings may have been down, but NBC was going up in the all-important young, urban, upscale demos.

So by the time of this NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration special, it's not too surprising that the network would take the rather arbitrary 60th landmark and make it into something to finally celebrate:  profits, after years and years of deep red losses. By the time everything was tallied for 1985-1986, NBC had 5 of the Top Ten shows (#1 The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Golden Girls, Miami Vice), 5 in the Top Twenty (Night Court, The NBC Sunday Night Movie, Highway to Heaven, You Again, and 227), and 4 more in the Top Thirty (The NBC Monday Night Movie, Valerie, The Facts of Life, and The A-Team).

So why not take a three-hour chance on reminding viewers why NBC was now flourishing?  What followed was a clip-heavy pat-on-the-back, and a missed opportunity to tell viewers why NBC's history was indeed worth celebrating. To establish the anniversary, the NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration opens with the numerals "1926," along with a radio microphone graphic...before it quickly inserts Milton Berle trying to recreated the familiar NBC 3-tone audio logo, lest audience click off in droves, thinking this is going to be a documentary on radio.

The special's framing device is then introduced:  everyone's going on a 30 Rock guided tour, including Paul Schaffer, Uncle Miltie, Doris Roberts, Barbara Eden, and those four untalented Cosby Kids (minus the other untalented one who may have been off filming Angel Heart).  Even Bob Hope is shown getting a ticket, but he's strangely missing from the elevator, and that inconsistent anchoring device--the guided tour that drops in an out with no rhyme or reason--pretty much sums up the NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration as a whole: a clip show with very little if any structure (or logic).

The special's first musical number--a rather sad collection of dancers, dressed as peacocks, throwing themselves around the cramped elevator lobbies of 30 Rock, is introduced by Malcolm-Jamal Warner...who...can't...deliver...a...simple...line...to...save...his...life (apparently the little kid thinks there are live peacocks in the building).  I can guarantee you:  if I did happen to tune into this back in 1986, the combination of bored performers (the Cosby kids are literally smirking at their co-stars, whom they probably never heard of), terrible writing, and kitschy production numbers had me tuning right out.

The big marching band-like opening song, Hey Did Ja Know? basically implores us to realize NBC, despite the last ten years, has a remarkable history, and that it now stands tall again with Bill Cosby, Johnny Carson, the Today Show, The Golden Girls, Hill Street Blues, and David Letterman.  It's immediately apparent that this 60th anniversary celebration will be just as much promotion for current hits, as it will be reverent memories of past NBC glories.

Unrelated clips of the Kraft Music Hall (featuring a 2 second shot of Rudy Vallee), a Kraft cheese commercial, an extremely brief shot of Your Show of Shows (when the hosts tell young Malcolm this was shot live in black and white, he incredulously drawls, "Riiiiight,"), some Arturo Toscanini and more Uncle Miltie, a brief shot of the Hallmark Hall of Fame logo, some Howdy Doody and the SNL '80 logo--all of which are flashed too quickly in front of the viewer, with zero context.

The theme song continues, inexplicably, with NBC pages dancing on the SNL set (with a truly bizarre Busby Berkeley shot of Keshia Knight Pulliam lip-synching some adult singer moaning the blues), before Warner comes back, bedazzled in a jacket and hat and looking like the spitting image of Judy Garland singing, Get Happy in Summer Stock, as he tries to (unsuccessfully) vamp with the dancers (he almost gets out, "...and the perennial Mr. Hope!") as we get more unrelated, unexplained snapshots of forgotten NBC alumni.

At this point, you feel anything can happen in the NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration, and it does:  we get a pre-recorded roll call of "NBC's Family of Stars."  The men in tuxes and the women in evening dress, we're treated to 2-4 second shots of the stars walking out, before the next performer fades up.  Participants (in alphabetical order) include:  Steve Allen, Fran Allison, Harry Anderson, Bea Arthur (imperious), Gene Barry (great hair), Uncle Miltie, Tempestt Bledsoe, Tom Brokaw, Pierce Brosnan (looking suitably embarrassed since NBC cancelled his Remington Steele, then renewed it, causing him to lose the role of James Bond), Raymond Burr (liverish), Red Buttons, Sid Caesar (looking iffy), MacDonald Carey, Johnny Carson (contractually obligated to be there), Nell Carter, Connie Chung (my first laugh of the show), Dick Clark, Robert Conrad (looking puffy), Robert Culp (are those chalk marks on his tux?), Ted Danson, and Don Dafore (looking chipper).

Angie Dickinson (looking swank), Hugh Downs, Barbara Eden (did they want another Jeannie TV reunion movie out of her?), Ralph Edwards, Nanette Fabray (does a jaunty little dip at the opening), Kim Fields (looking beautiful), Michael J. Fox (get your goddamn hands out of your pockets), Arlene Francis, Soleil Moon Frye, Estelle Getty, Marla Gibbs, Melissa Gilbert (our first non-smiler), George Gobel (poor guy--they don't show him walking; he's already standing there, and he fakes getting ready to move on), Lorne Greene (are those huge hands real?), Deidra Hall (that huge rack looks real), Valerie Harper (begin termination countdown, Val!), Julie Harris (smug), The Hoff! (big handsome lug), Ed Herlihy, Bob Hope, Don Johnson (again with the hand in the pocket), and Perry King (hands! pockets!--this is a formal occasion, you ape!).

Jack Klugman (grimacing as usual...with no idea his highly-rated new NBC sitcom is going to get shit-canned next season), Hope Lange (real tart), Sabrina Le Beauf, Jerry Lester (single best walk-out:  energy, fun, happy to be there), Sherri Lewis and Lamb Chop, Hal Linden (dapper...and certainly unaware that his NBC series, Blacke's Magic, would be cancelled before this special aired), Norman Lloyd, Shelley Long (eye on the big screen), Gloria Loring, Peter Marshall, Dick Martin (big smile, always), Rue McClanahan, Ed McMahon ("he has that...glow"=5 Hamms beers), Mitch Miller (back from the dead), Edwin Newman (bemused at his new "celebrity"), Merlin Olsen (still waiting on an explanation for this guy), and Jack Paar (you can see where Johnny got that "trademark" nod & grin).

Patti Page, Burt Parks (always game), George Peppard (very shiny), Reha Perlman, Keisha Knight Pulliam, Sarah Purcell (stunned to be invited), Charlotte Rae (delightful), John Ratzenberger, Gene Rayburn, Martha Raye (huge Polident smile), Carl Reiner, Alfonso Ribeiro (okaaaaaay....), Joan Rivers (just months away from backstabbing NBC and Johnny), Doris Roberts, Dan Rowan, Pat Sajack (Flattop, from Dick Tracy), little Ricky Schroder, Doc Severinsen (just keeping it cool, keeping it together until he can blow this place), and Dinah Shore (serene).

Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody (like...from another world), Robert Stack (easy on the hair ink), Craig Stevens, Mary Stewart, Philip Michael Thomas (biggest inverse ratio of gratitude-to-actual worth), Daniel J. Travanti (cripes...stop looking so tortured all the time.  Drink up!), Robert Vaughn (magnificent snot), Malcolm-Jamal Warner (we don't see enough of him nowadays, do we...), Betty White (she's not fooling us), Jonathan Winters (watch out for that cane), Jane Wyatt (lovely), and Robert Young (a ghost).

I hope you got a good look at these NBC "family of stars," in their 2-second walk-throughs, because almost all of them ain't coming back until the very end of the special.  Next, a commercial break, including a groveling "Thank you," from a bunch of NBC stars, kissing the viewers' asses for tuning in that year (most sincere:  Michael Landon.  Most snide:  John Laroquette).

Back at 30 Rock, Barbara Eden suddenly (and completely illogically) morphs into a tour guide, along with Doris Roberts, and starts giving out info on the old Studio 8H (prior to upstart SNL's tenure there), including clips from Toscanini, The Philco Television Playhouse, and Kraft Television Theatre.  We see Grace Kelly, Sidney Poitier, Don Murray, Jack Lemmon, James Dean, Anthony Perkins, Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, Nina Foch, Jack Weston, George C. Scott, and Larry Hagman in various black and white dramas (originally telecast live), which historians have been telling you for decades were superior to the filmed shows you actually enjoyed more, like Bonanza, Ironside, and The Rockford Files.

Announcer Ed Herlihy comes out and dithers on merrily about live commercials, before the Cosby kids rebel and state SNL is the king of live TV, whereupon we're subjected to multiple clips, only a few of which are genuinely funny, such as Ed Grimley taking a hot pie out of the oven without mitts, and Piscopo and Murphy as Sinatra and Wonder, singing a duet:  "I am dark and you are light," "You are blind as a bat and I have sight.  Side by side you are my amigo, negro, let's not fight." (worst clip:  Lily Tomlin giving a cheer for New York, and proving yet again she was never funny.  Not once.).

Little Keisha splits from the tour, so Malcolm tries to find her, before a commercial break (on Hunter, Sergeant Dee Dee McCall rather blandly states, "We definitely have a psycho on our hands,").  A totally random trip to the "mini-control room" where one of the Cosby kids tries to be a weather girl follows (god this is all so mindless), before random clips of The Tonight Show, featuring Steve Allen (his own biggest fan), Jack Paar (head case), who has Cassius Clay and Liberace on (Lee kills when he puts his hands on Clay and states, "Move that way a little--you're standing in front of my candelabra,"), and of course, Johnny Carson.  That triggers little Keisha's desire to see the real Mr. Carson.

Meanwhile, Malcom runs into Uncle Miltie (not, unfortunately, with a forklift), and we get some Texaco Star Theater clips (Elvis is dying at Uncle Miltie's antics).  Not to be outdone, Bob Hope pushes his way back onto the special, and talks about radio, before we somehow get a rehash of his USO trips (hey man--he was out there, doing his part).  

Never mind why, but suddenly John Chancellor appears, and reassures us that we're getting all the news we deserve because guys like him at NBC are "doing their jobs" (thanks, John, but I'll get my own news now).  Malcolm and Keisha then barge into the Today studio and bother Jane Pauley (who seriously looks like she's annoyed) and Bryant Gumbel (the Durwood Kirby of TV journalists).  Lots of stroking about how great the utterly useless Today show is, before Malcolm and Keisha decide they need to go to Burbank, CA, to see Carson.

Some more commercials.  I love the McDonald's one, where the kid guilt-trips Dad into skipping an important business trip, so they can go to the park (hope you like sleeping in the park, kid, when heavily-leveraged Daddy loses everything because you had to have a f*cking Happy Meal....), and a NBC News Digest, where 15 seconds are devoted to the Chernobyl disaster, the Bhopal disaster, and Princess Di wearing safety glasses (John Chancellor was right!  That's all I needed!).

Next, insincere little shit Michael J. Fox (get your goddamn hands out of your pockets, lift your goddamn head up, and quit mumbling you shiftless little prick) schmoozes with Bob Hope, who talks about vaudeville evolving into TV variety shows, with clips from Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Abbott & Costello, Martin and Lewis, Caesar's Hour, The Chevy Show, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, The Lux Show, with Rosemary Clooney, Steve and Eydie, Andy Williams, Your Hit Parade, The Donald O'Connor Show (that fountain sequence is spectacular), Fred Astaire, Julie Andrews, Gene Kelly, Hullabaloo, The Dean Martin Show, Flip Wilson, Jack Benny, Laugh-In, SCTV (probably the first time most NBC viewers even saw the McKenzie Brothers), and the Motown 25 Special.

Then, in the special's first large musical set piece, Bob Hope warbles Be a Clown (as Fox just...stands there, arms crossed, useless as a fishnet condom), while real clowns cavort around before Debbi Allen sings quite badly (really, really off-key and sharp).  Dinah Shore, Rowan and Martin, Berle and Caesar also knock off a few bars of some tunes, before George Gobel tries Funny Face (it's so earnest and strange and heartfelt--completely unexpected and rather touching).  Sherri Lewis tries to sing Send in the Clowns, but Lamp Chop (delightfully) deflates it with a simple, hilarious, "What are you talking about?"  Red Buttons and then Donald O'Connor also croon a bit (O'Connor, very nicely), before that smarmy little git Fox takes off.

Don't ask how, but apparently Malcolm and Keisha hitchhike to Burbank, CA, where we get some Hallmark Hall of Fame clips (predicated, not very much, on the theme of theatrical makeup), featuring Julie Harris (what a ham), Peter Ustinov (even worse), Geraldine Page, David Wayne, John Forsythe, Paul Ford, Anthony Hopkins (the hams of the world have a new king!), Lesley-Ann Down, Joan Collins, Lee Remick, Orson Welles, and Christopher Plummer.  Zero context for any of this.  No history on Hallmark's landmark series.  Nothing.  Just random clips that mean next to nothing to the casual viewer.

Commercial break (please bring back Kellogg's Raisin Squares--those were insane).  Next, one of the other Cosby kids says, "Hey, Pepper!" to a decidedly un-amused Angie Dickinson, who then talks about cop and detective shows (and for the first time on the special, with a modicum of historical fact and context), including Dragnet, Adam-12, McCloud, McMillan & Wife, Columbo, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (not really a cop or detective show), I Spy (again, not...), The Saint (again...), The Rockford Files, and Remington Steele (what, no M Squad clip?).  Also, Quincy, CHiPs, Hill Street Blues (most overrated show in TV history), Miami Vice ("...wearing outfits Joe Friday would have run them in for," Angie crisply states).  One of the better montages.

Pat "Flattop" Sajak and Deidra Hall's breasts stop by (nope, the tour angle has been dropped again) to discuss daytime TV--that would be soaps and game shows back in the 1980s.  Hall, who seems to be having a hard time forming words, talks about Another World (I miss the old-timey organ cues), Search for Tomorrow, Santa Barbara, and Days of Our Lives.  It's all meaningless to me because the only NBC soap I watch--to this day, on Retro TV--is The Doctors, and that was long gone by the time of this special.  So...snores.

Sajak presents a furious clip montage of Break the Bank, Juvenile Jury, Name That Tune, Truth or Consequences, People Are Funny, Queen for a Day, Twenty One (of course they don't mention the scandal!), The Price is Right, Concentration, Play Your Hand, It Could Be You, The Match Game, Jeopardy, Let's Make a Deal, GE College Bowl, The Hollywood Squares, Super Password, Sale of the Century, and of course, Wheel of Fortune (no game play featured, unfortunately, for any of these ridiculously short clips).

NBC's Western series are given a very nice production number, with a stylized curved set and some nice modernized hoedown dancing, while Michael Landon, sucking in that gut, talks about all the tropes that made up a typical TV oater (he claims that between 1950 and 1974, NBC aired over 2000 Western episodes).  Little in the way of attribution for the clips, but they're integrated with the dancing in a fun way.  Probably the best segment in the special.

Unctuous little toad Michael J. Fox is back, to insist that NBC has had a 60-year commitment to children's programming.  Clips include Ding Dong School, Kukla Fran and Ollie, Mr. Wizard, Howdy Doody (those kids in the Peanut Gallery are flying), and then crap nobody watched like NBC Special Treat, NBC Children's Theatre, Big Bird in China (jee-suz), and Main Street.  Thank god, though, for The Smurfs--the only cartoon they deign to mention (whoever wrote this obviously feels mere cartoons are unworthy of being mentioned in the same affected breath as "children's programming," so screw marvelous creations like Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Pink Panther, Atom Ant, and Woody Woodpecker).

In case we missed it, Bob Hope is God, apparently, at 30 Rock, so Dinah Shore reminds us yet again of this sacred fact, with clips of Bob's specials...before Bob returns (he must have had the contract to end all TV contracts...), talking about, what else, TV specials (or "spectaculars," as they were famously known on NBC).  We see clips of Peter Pan (one of those holiday shows your parents made you watch because it was "good" for you), Sinatra's Our Town, with Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, The Petrified Forest, with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda (they imply it was lost at this point in 1986, but apparently a kine-scope was later found of the production).  We also see miniseries clips including Wallenberg, Shogun, King, Sybil, The Execution of Private Slovik, and The Burning Bed (random choices, to be sure, among the many minis they had--why not show what some say was the first U.S. mini:  NBC's The Blue Knight, with William Holden?).

Hey!  Bill Cosby finally shows up!  In a Jell-O commercial! (what, you thought he was going to be on this thing?  You've got to be kidding).  Barbara Eden, now divorced completely from the tour guide framework, appears in a stylized sitcom house and talks...sitcoms, with clips from The Goldbergs (no context why this series was so important), Blondie (Arthur Lake does his hilarious adding machine bit), The Aldrich Family, Father Knows Best, Mister Peepers, Hazel, Bachelor Father, Car 54, Where Are You?, My Mother the Car (included without a shred of irony), I Dream of Jeannie (seriously:  the most perfect rack-to-waist ratio), Flipper (um...not even close to a sitcom), Get Smart, The Monkees, My World and Welcome to It (someone was having fun in programming), Chico and the Man, Sanford and Son, Love, Sidney (no mention of the  show's controversy), and of course, The Cosby Show (I loved the Bill Cosby of Mother, Jugs & Speed; Cliff Huxtable, however, bored me to tears).  Nell Carter (who literally sneers at poor Eden), Bea Arthur, Marla Gibbs, that Alfonso kid and Punky Brewster join in for a song about We're a Family.  Whatever.

Tom Brokow comes out to finish the job John Chancellor apparently didn't, mentioning a bunch of serious news stories of the past, all of which are major bummers, and none of which I want to be reminded of in this anniversary celebration.  Next!

Whiny little crybaby Jack Paar returns for some incoherent jumble of clips that supposedly represent "hellos and goodbyes," the latter which can't come soon enough.  Clips from Little House on the Prairie, Barbara Walters (who did she have photos of, seriously), Bill Cosby, Liza Minnelli, Huntley and Brinkley, and a creepy af Clarabell whispering, "Goodbye, kids" (call the special victims unit!), are featured, before we get a clip of Paar stupidly quitting The Tonight Show (I love whoever picked these clips--clearly they weren't going for the demographics NBC was clutching for in 1986).

Finally, little annoying Keisha and her equally talent-less brother Malcolm find Johnny Carson, joining him and all the stars that weren't used in the specials for a ding dong, reprising the irritating, Hey Did Ja Know?  The look of grim gamesmanship on Carson's face, as he's forced to sing this stupid ditty while pretending to cheer on his hated employer, NBC, is worth the price of the entire special.  You can watch the various stars' faces the editor cuts to, like the Zapruder film:  endlessly going back, trying to discern what in the world they were thinking while having to endure this torture.  It's the best part of the NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration...particularly because it's the last part of the NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration.  I can't wait to see who they can corral for the upcoming 100th anniversary!