"The Monkees" Rewatch: Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

“Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth” begins with Davy tumbling at the beach. A little kid with a horse approaches and asks him if he could watch the animal for him then runs away. Meanwhile, Micky and Mike are trying Peter’s latest cooking attempt, cream of root beer soup, which leads to loud joking around that raises Mr. Babbitt’s suspicions that the boys are keeping a dog. Davy brings the horse to the beach house, but with Babbitt lurking around they can’t keep him permanently. Soon Jonathan tells Davy that his father is threatening to sell Jeremy, the horse, because he costs too much and is no use as a work horse. The boys confront Jonathan’s father and offer to work on his farm in exchange for the original investment on the horse. After the trial period fails Davy must win a race to win a bet and save both the horse and their guitar.

This is one of those episodes that have kind of lost its luster for me with time. It used to be one of my favorites, but not so much now. Maybe I just watched it one too many times in my teens. Even though it might not rank highly for me anymore it still has charming and funny moments. I can still see what young me saw in it, despite not feeling strongly for it anymore.

Case in point, everything with the veterinarian Dr. Mann is hilarious. Something about him always reminded me of Mr. Merriweather from the I Love Lucy episode “The Séance,” though I’ve never been able to pinpoint exactly what. Some of the best moments in the episode involve him, including:

Mike: I’m the fella that called before.

Dr. Mann: Where’s the monkey?

Mike: Oh, I’m the Monkee.

Dr. Mann: You’re the monkey? You don’t need a vet, young man, you need a psychiatrist.

And:

Dr. Mann: Egad, this is even worse than I thought. This horse not only has delusions of singing, it has a split personality!

Another thing that likely contributed to my overplaying of “Gift Horse” is the romps for “All the King’s Horses” and “Papa Gene’s Blues.” As I said in my post about “Monkees in a Ghost Town,” any episode/romp with “Papa Gene’s Blues” ranked really high with me early on and watching the boys mess about on a farm is quite entertaining. And to be completely honest, if you think that thirteen year-old Shannon’s heart didn’t go all a-flutter when Mike winked at the camera and she didn’t rewind that bit again and again, well… all I can say is you might need to read between my lines.