“Monkees at the Circus” begins with the boys sneaking into a closed circus. They fiddle around with some of the props until caught by one of the performers, Victor, who threatens to call the police while throwing knives at Davy. Victor then gathers up the other performers to encourage them to leave, claiming “the circus is dead” due to lack of crowds, payment, and good equipment since the rise of discotheques and rock ‘n’ roll groups. This upsets Susan, the daughter of the circus’ owner (Pop), who tells Davy the difficulties they’ve had maintaining the circus without crowds to perform for. So while Victor tries to rile the performers, Davy rushes the stage to convince them all to stay, saying the kids and crowds will come back as long they are there when they do. His plea only briefly succeeds and when the boys see Victor confront Pop with a petition signed by the other performers they pose as an ambitious circus act called the Mozzarella(i?) Brothers, which excites the performers and leads to a sell-out crowd. However, when worries force the Monkees to come clean about being a rock band and not trapeze artists, the circus’ fate is again in jeopardy.
I need to be honest and say that I think I waited a little too long to write this post, because one of the topics I put to talk about doesn’t seem like as good of a jumping off point as it may have at the time I wrote it. The prompt, such as it is, in my notes goes like this, “Mozzarella brothers, seriously, wtf is any of this? (at least it’s wtf in a mostly good way?)” And yeah, the Mozzarella/Mozzarelli stuff is funny, don’t get me wrong, but that’s about where it ends. I’m not sure what Past Me thought I could expand on that topic with.
However, one topic that I think works for discussion that I, funnily, didn’t include in my list of topics is the circus and rock’n’rollers rivalry. I get that The Monkees casts the boys largely in the roles of underdogs and lovable misfits, but even so, circus performers being bitter about rock music and discotheques seems really random. Even the show implies that the circus’s audience skews young, certainly younger than most discotheques allow, since the boys themselves range from seventeen to twenty-one. So what exactly is the problem? Plus, it’s rather funny to me that a circus, a form of entertainment commonly portrayed as a venue for, well, “freaks” is used as a symbol old, stuffy adults when compared to rock’n’roll.
The next topic in my notes reads, “And who’s this Susan when she’s at home? A plank of wood, that’s who.” Again, I’m not sure what prompted the latter bit, but in hindsight I find it rather harsh. She’s not totally wooden as she does show some emotion during the course of the episode and is rather sympathetic. When she does come off wooden I think it’s because her resting face is rather blank. Either way, she feels like much more of a real human than most of the lady leads so far, though Valerie from “One Man Shy” is definitely still my favorite.
My last note mentions “terrifying clowns,” which feels a little redundant, but here we are. I also don’t have much else to say beyond that. I mean, look at this:
Shudder
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