"The Monkees" Rewatch: Monkee Mother

“Monkee Mother” begins with Mr. Babbitt, armed with a list of complaints, kicking the Monkees out of the pad. He claims the new tenant will be there any minute, said tenant is Milly, a widow with a stuffed parrot (Lewis) and dog (Martin.) As Milly begins to settle in and arrange her belongings the boys confront her about how they were living there first. She responds with “So live!” that she’s had boarders before, a label the boys don’t take too kindly toward. Despite some heartwarming bonding moments with her, they decide the arrangement still isn’t working out once Milly brings over visitors in the form of her noisy relatives and an English girl she met at the store. Micky suggests that she really wants is a new husband and they decide to set her up with Larry, the mover who helped her into the pad and seemed to take a liking to her. The pair quickly marries and during the wedding Mr. Babbitt apologizes for inconveniencing the boys, because he wasn’t too fond of Milly’s visitors either. After the wedding, Milly says goodbye her “darling boys” with some advice and a promise to visit them “soon,” that is, that night.

This one’s a heart-squeezer, folks, and I love it so much. In the words of Miss Truvy Jones, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” “Monkee Mother” certainly fits that bill if you’re a big ol’ sap like me. As I said, there are some bonding moments between the boys and Milly and they all happen one right after the other and it just leaves me in pieces. The worst (best?) is the moment when Mike looks at her so, so sincerely and says, “Make me a success.” Ugh! I’m tearing up right now writing about it! Cap off the sequence with “Sometime in the Morning” and forget it, I’m destroyed. I love the comedy of The Monkees, that much should be obvious by now, I hope, but I love the rare, little moments of emotion and drama as well, so much so that they tend to define their respective episodes in my mind. Like, I can’t think of “Success Story” without thinking of “Shades of Gray” and Davy saying goodbye. Likewise, as hilarious as this episode is, for me it will always be about those times when Milly and the boys find a connection and learn to like each other despite all their differences and the fact that living in the same house didn’t work for them.

And the episode is hilarious. Rose Marie, in her second Monkees role after the Big Man, and the guys play off each other really well in both the comedic and dramatic scenes. I think my favorite line comes from Davy, “Listen, don’t worry, man, she’ll find somethin’ to do with yeh,” which may not seem all that funny on paper, but it’s all in the delivery, trust me.

The songs included in this episode are fantastic, too. I already mentioned “Sometime in the Morning,” probably one of the best Monkees ballads. It’s one of those songs that’s so sweet and so beautiful it makes my chest ache. The episode also features “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow,” which I love and is made even better by Peter and Mike being utterly adorable during the performance.

Lastly, I’m once again left confused by notes Past Me made regarding one of these recaps. The note in question this time says, “’I don’t care’ about ‘cupcakes in sour cream.’” …’Kay. Obviously, this is a reference to the only words Clarisse seems to know and Davy’s advice to Larry, respectively, but I don’t remember what exactly this was meant to prompt me to talk about. Only answer I can come up with is that it was about the humor and quotable lines, but surely, there had to be a more direct way doing that. Eh. Hopefully as I get into a routine where my note-taking and post-writing happen more closely together I won’t run into this issue as much.