"The Monkees" Rewatch: Your Friendly Neighborhood Kidnappers

In “Your Friendly Neighborhood Kidnappers” the Monkees make it to the finals of a talent contest. Nick Trump convinces the band to take him on as their PR agent, because the rules require them to “submit to exploitation and publicity.” They agree to multiple publicity stunts with the final one being a staged kidnapping attempt meant to drum up interest until they’re freed right before the contest. The only wrinkle? Trump is actually manager for rival band the Four Swine and the kidnappers aren’t actors, but actual criminals.

This episode feels like a good time to bring up a concern I’ve had regarding these posts: spoilers. Sure, the show is nearly fifty years old and I bet most would say that the statute of limitations is up when it comes to spoilers. However, I’ve always felt that using the age of a work as an excuse to ruin it for someone who has yet to experience it is, well, shitty. Take for instance Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet; they’re hundreds of years old, but plenty of people still haven’t seen or read them and I’ll be damned if I’m going to ruin them for those people. That said, I will concede that after a certain point you can’t expect to go into an older work completely cold. When it comes to The Monkees, while I do worry about giving away too much plot, my biggest concern is spoiling too many of the jokes and I think it’s a tightrope I’ll be walking throughout this whole project.

Now, I’m sure my sympathetic take on spoilers might seem ironic in light of how I opened this post, but that just leads into another sitcom trope: dramatic irony. Dramatic irony basically entails that the audience know what’s going on, but the character(s) do not and the humor or drama comes from the build-up to a reveal. It’s a common literary technique, but sitcoms use it quite often and would probably be among the most easily recognizable examples to people. As for this episode, the audience sees during the opening that Trump is the Four Swine’s manager and encourages sabotage against the Monkees. Even after the boys accept his offer all his publicity stunts seem intent on causing them humiliation or pain, so when Mike expresses doubts about the kidnapping plot one might hope they’d heed it. They don’t, of course, but it does make for some great moments. The hoods, Horace and George, hired to kidnap them are pretty fantastic. Plus, the “answering service” exchange Micky and Mike have while waiting for them to show up is probably the best part of the episode, at least for me.

The only proper romp in this episode is a chase scene set to “Last Train to Clarksville.” The romp also includes the same performance footage as earlier episodes and I can’t help but be curious how many times it was used throughout the show. Also of note, this is fourth episode of the show and “Last Train to Clarksville” has already been used in three romps. The heavy usage makes sense as it was their big single at the time these episodes aired and the show was a vehicle for the music as much as it was anything else (sometimes even before it was anything else.) I’m sure a spike in “I’m a Believer” romps coincided with that single’s release and popularity as well. I get it, believe me, but… I know I’m about to commit Monkee fan heresy, I just don’t like “Clarksville.” I can certainly see why it was a hit and endures and I wouldn’t call it awful, but it’s not for me.