"The Monkees" Rewatch: Monkees à la Mode

“Monkees à la Mode” starts off at the headquarters of Chic magazine while Madam Quagmeyer and her employees discuss possible subjects for their annual “young America” issue. After Madam Q dismisses staff photographer (and utter snob) Rob Roy Fingerhead’s ideas as stale, writer Toby Willis suggests the Monkees are the “fresh and new” faces she wants. Q claims they are “possible” and “hideous,” but that they can remake the boys in their image. Soon the boys receive a copy of Chic with a letter saying they’ve been chosen as the Typical Young Americans of the year. Toby and Rob Roy arrive at the pad only for the photographer to prance disgustedly around the apartment, insulting it and the boys before leaving in a huff. Mike in particular has reservations about the article, telling Toby, “Well, I mean we are typical young people, but eh… well, young people just aren’t typical anything.” She responds by pointing out what the article could do for their career and ask them to trust her, so the boys reluctantly agree to meet with Madam Q at her office for a photoshoot and collection of background information. When Toby’s story “captures them just the way they are” Quagmeyer rejects it in favor of Rob Roy’s version that paints them out as snobs. Once printed, the article leads to problems with the Monkees’ friends, a sabotaged banquet, and a new editor at Chic.

Much like my previous post on Captain Crocodile, this post will include complaining about a certain character. Because $%*&$# Rob Roy Fingerhead. His face is stupid. His voice is stupid. He's an idiot and an asshole and I'm glad they made him crush his camera and put the poor thing out if its misery. Which... is certainly the character functioning as intended, but whoa boy, they may have done too good of a job with him.

Another thing that bugs me about “À La Mode” is that the band’s friends so readily believed what the article said. I mean, I guess you could say they felt lied to or some such, but surely they’d actually been inside their pad or to a gig and knew they couldn’t possibly afford gourmet food. Not to mention, if they love chamber music so much, then why do they play in a rock band with no such apparent influence. And yeah, I know, the show’s only about twenty-four minutes and the writers can only set up so much, but the lack of fleshing out here still bugs me. Especially considering that two of the angry friends appear to be girls that Davy and Micky are dating, but the article (as read in the show) makes no mention of them being, I don’t know, philanderers or something like that. I feel like I’m just rambling at this point, so I’ll just leave that there. 

Now, despite the things that annoy me (both intentionally and unintentionally) in the episode, the Monkees themselves do a fantastic job in it. They are all just on point, whether it’s Peter making faces in the background, Davy’s attitude (“You wanna get us arrested?” and the telegram), Mike’s dry delivery (“Well, I realize this is probably beyond your scope but I lived there”), or Micky’s physical comedy. And of course the banquet where they accept their trophy is an absolute riot and probably the highlight of the episode, though I do think their interview scene at Chic is a close second. If for no other reasons then “No, I lied, Burbank” and “Well, it all depends what I’ve lost,” but the whole scene is just joke after joke, it’s amazing. It also reminds me, fittingly, of the press conference scene in A Hard Day’s Night and anything that can do that must be doing something right.

"The Monkees" Rewatch: Captain Crocodile

In “Captain Crocodile” the Monkees are set to play on the children’s show of the same name. Unfortunately, convinced they’re an attempt to replace him, the show’s star sabotages their first appearance. When offered a regular spot on the show the boys initially refuse, but accept when executive Junior Pinter guarantees “no more pies in the face.” This change increases the Captain’s paranoia and he conspires to embarrass them or prevent them from playing. Finally, Mike demands he let them play or they quit, he relents, but once done the boys find out they’d been playing off the air. After the TV station receives twenty-seven letters (presumably from the captain), complaining about the band, a meeting is called to determine if they will continue to appear on the show before the final showdown between costumed Monkees and the Crocodile Corps. 

My biggest takeaway from this episode is that Captain Crocodile is a total asshole. He reminds me of The Golden Girls episode “Mister Terrific” where Rose (Betty White’s character) meets and starts to date the titular Mister Terrific, a children’s show host/superhero, who is grumpy and uptight because his producer wants to update the show, even if it means firing him. In both cases, the intent was add to the show, not to “ease [them] out” and their problems were the result of paranoia and resistance to any slight change. The big difference between Captain Crocodile and Mister Terrific is how their respective shows frame them. The Monkees rightly positions Crocodile in the role of a villain, complete with canned hissing and booing lest the audience miss that they shouldn’t like this guy and his “evil thoughts.” The Golden Girls, however, wants the audience to like and sympathize with Terrific, for reasons beyond me. Crocodile’s hubris and asshole-ery costs him his job and show, but even after multiple tantrums and a dangerous publicity stunt Terrific gets his show back, which he only lost in the first place because he didn’t want to have to change anything about it. And maybe it could’ve worked if the actor who played Terrific had approached the role with any kind of warmth or sympathy, but no.

And I’m getting way off track. Sorry.

Anyway. 

Something else worth mentioning from the episode is the sequence wherein the boys fantasize about the TV shows they could be successful doing, which include parodies of Batman and To Tell The Truth, among others. It’s really funny and one of those moments where talking would ruin it, so just watch it:

"The Monkees" Rewatch: Monkees at the Circus

“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