“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.
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