Harry "Little Tich" Ralph (1867-1928) was a British music hall performer of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. The clip below is from 1900.
The second season features a jazzy new arrangement of the opening theme. Gone are the glissandi and trills of the flutes, and so different is the arrangement I had a hard time at first getting used to it. after watching season two in its entirety, though, I am completely used to it.
The Stephens have good taste in artwork, including a Picasso hanging over their fireplace. But it's hanging sideways, which bugs me to no end.
I'm not as familiar with Bewitched as I am with certain other shows I watched as a kid (I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, The Beverly Hillbillies, etc.). I tend to recall certain scenes and situations, but no complete plots. When I was a kid, I didn't like Endora, but now I kind of like her. I wasn't all that fond of Darrin, either, mainly, I think, because I didn't understand him. Now I like him even less because I do understand him.
Nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz disappears midway through season two because Alice Pearce, the actress who played her, died of ovavian cancer. She was replaced temporarily by the character's sister (played by Mary Grace Canfield, better known as "Raplh" on Green Acres), but would later be recast, played by Sandra Gould. The final episode of the season was presented as a flashback (featuring Pearce as Gladys), although it had never been aired before. Pearce later won a posthumous Emmy for the role.
Season Two presents an opportunity to win a bar bet. If you can maneuver the conversation around to who played the second "Darrin" on Bewitched, most people will say Dick Sargent. But in "Junior Executive" (S2 E10), Endora magically changes Darrin into a little boy, played by Billy Mumy.
I forgot to mention that season two introduces Samantha's pregnancy immediately. Elizabeth Montgomery was pregnant during season one as well, but it was able to be hidden with loose-fitting clothing, etc. But her IRL second pregnancy could not be hidden, so it was incorporated into the plot.
So I saw the other Canadian ep of Route 66. It's probably the weirdest thing the show ever did. Set in Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side, it gives us a look at the Falls of the past, one more like the town where my parents took their honeymoon in '53, and where Niagara, the Marilyn Monroe thriller of the same year, takes place, than the one you'll see now (the falls themselves are about the same). Everything about this episode is off, including the broadcast date. It was supposed to be the third-last episode aired, but it was pulled because of the Kennedy assasination. It concerns the assasination plot of a foreign king visiting the Falls. The shots of his motorcade are eerily, disturbingly prescient.
Then there's the story itself, a Hitchcockian thriller that varies quite a bit from the more typical episodes of the show, and relies heavily on the hoary trope of a main character having an exact duplicate. In this case, the assassin looks exactly like Tod and, of course, they both happen to be in the same town at the same time. Many misunderstandings occur. Martin Milner delivers a compelling double performance, as the script ties itself into knots trying to sell the absurdity of the premise, in the process putting on more lampshades than a convention of comic-strip drunks.
Then we have our foreigners. In a number of previous episodes, our heroes find themselves in ethnic communities, and these groups of Americans get treated respectfully. Efforts are made to incorporate members of those communities (the show was shot on location, of course) and present the various cultural groups realistically, at least for television at the time. The assassin's target is expressly an Arab Oil Sheik, dressed and made-up as we might expect. He gets presented as a wise and respectful man, and he refers to God as "Allah." So far, so good. However, his military aide (a key character) gets dressed in standard issue Generalissimo garb, and is surrounded by people who appear to be wearing East Indian uniforms. Someone is shown praying in Islamic fashion, but he has two icons on a little altar (definitely not Islamic practice!), and these look Chinese. They get scored, at times, by stock "Exotic Culture" music that could have been played a few years later on Star Trek, when they visit some hypersexed planet.
The king's itinerary includes a visit with the governor, even though they're clearly in Niagara Falls, Canada. Perhaps they planned to cross the border.
There's no epilogue. God knows how Tod and Linc escaped serious scrutiny for what would have to look, to the police, like involvement in a plot to murder a foreign sovereign.
To be fair, there is a legitimate question of whether Christian and Islamic conceptions of the God of Abraham should be treated as one and the same.
On the other hand, far as I know "Allah" is both the preferred name for the Islamic take on the idea and the regular word for "god" or "deity" in Arabic - and to the best of my understanding has been used traditionally in Arabic Bibles.
Michael Jackson: The Verdict (2026): three-hour doc series. While not as overtly damning as the 2003 Martin Bashir doc, it’s difficult to watch this and not conclude that he was guilty, but found not-guilty on the grounds of wealth and celebrity. It ends with the realization that, verdict notwithstanding, his career would not recover. This is made by someone close to him at the time. His untimely demise would occur four years later. I have not seen the recent biopic, but I have heard people describe this doc as the missing final act.
Funny thing: when I was a little kid and the Jackson Five were all over the radio, I loved that music. The fact that there was a kid in my age group who was a real pop star was amazing. We had Jackson Five 45s-- including "Ben." When Michael the solo artist took flight (Off the Wall, Thriller, and everything after), I could admire the videos and the production. I worked, when I was a high school senior, for a DJ service, and we played him all the time. People hit the floor. He was the biggest thing in pop-- especially when I was in university-- and I felt no affinity for the music. I don't even have "Thriller" on my Halloween playlist. *shrug*
I remember watching Ben, the movie sequel to Willard, and learning that the kid in the movie had his singing dubbed by Michael Jackson. If Ben was a friend to the kid, he wasn't to anyone else.
"Ben," a loving ballad to a rat, sung by Michael Jakson but lip-synched by a white kid in a sequel to a successful horror movie named for the protagonist who, in the novel that inspired it, has no name.
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Harry "Little Tich" Ralph (1867-1928) was a British music hall performer of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. The clip below is from 1900.
BEWITCHED - Season Two:
The second season features a jazzy new arrangement of the opening theme. Gone are the glissandi and trills of the flutes, and so different is the arrangement I had a hard time at first getting used to it. after watching season two in its entirety, though, I am completely used to it.
The Stephens have good taste in artwork, including a Picasso hanging over their fireplace. But it's hanging sideways, which bugs me to no end.
I'm not as familiar with Bewitched as I am with certain other shows I watched as a kid (I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, The Beverly Hillbillies, etc.). I tend to recall certain scenes and situations, but no complete plots. When I was a kid, I didn't like Endora, but now I kind of like her. I wasn't all that fond of Darrin, either, mainly, I think, because I didn't understand him. Now I like him even less because I do understand him.
Nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz disappears midway through season two because Alice Pearce, the actress who played her, died of ovavian cancer. She was replaced temporarily by the character's sister (played by Mary Grace Canfield, better known as "Raplh" on Green Acres), but would later be recast, played by Sandra Gould. The final episode of the season was presented as a flashback (featuring Pearce as Gladys), although it had never been aired before. Pearce later won a posthumous Emmy for the role.
Season Two presents an opportunity to win a bar bet. If you can maneuver the conversation around to who played the second "Darrin" on Bewitched, most people will say Dick Sargent. But in "Junior Executive" (S2 E10), Endora magically changes Darrin into a little boy, played by Billy Mumy.
I forgot to mention that season two introduces Samantha's pregnancy immediately. Elizabeth Montgomery was pregnant during season one as well, but it was able to be hidden with loose-fitting clothing, etc. But her IRL second pregnancy could not be hidden, so it was incorporated into the plot.
So I saw the other Canadian ep of Route 66. It's probably the weirdest thing the show ever did. Set in Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side, it gives us a look at the Falls of the past, one more like the town where my parents took their honeymoon in '53, and where Niagara, the Marilyn Monroe thriller of the same year, takes place, than the one you'll see now (the falls themselves are about the same). Everything about this episode is off, including the broadcast date. It was supposed to be the third-last episode aired, but it was pulled because of the Kennedy assasination. It concerns the assasination plot of a foreign king visiting the Falls. The shots of his motorcade are eerily, disturbingly prescient.
Then there's the story itself, a Hitchcockian thriller that varies quite a bit from the more typical episodes of the show, and relies heavily on the hoary trope of a main character having an exact duplicate. In this case, the assassin looks exactly like Tod and, of course, they both happen to be in the same town at the same time. Many misunderstandings occur. Martin Milner delivers a compelling double performance, as the script ties itself into knots trying to sell the absurdity of the premise, in the process putting on more lampshades than a convention of comic-strip drunks.
Then we have our foreigners. In a number of previous episodes, our heroes find themselves in ethnic communities, and these groups of Americans get treated respectfully. Efforts are made to incorporate members of those communities (the show was shot on location, of course) and present the various cultural groups realistically, at least for television at the time. The assassin's target is expressly an Arab Oil Sheik, dressed and made-up as we might expect. He gets presented as a wise and respectful man, and he refers to God as "Allah." So far, so good. However, his military aide (a key character) gets dressed in standard issue Generalissimo garb, and is surrounded by people who appear to be wearing East Indian uniforms. Someone is shown praying in Islamic fashion, but he has two icons on a little altar (definitely not Islamic practice!), and these look Chinese. They get scored, at times, by stock "Exotic Culture" music that could have been played a few years later on Star Trek, when they visit some hypersexed planet.
The king's itinerary includes a visit with the governor, even though they're clearly in Niagara Falls, Canada. Perhaps they planned to cross the border.
There's no epilogue. God knows how Tod and Linc escaped serious scrutiny for what would have to look, to the police, like involvement in a plot to murder a foreign sovereign.
It is suspenseful, so there's that.
Only the two-part finale remains.
He gets presented as a wise and respectful man, and he refers to God as "Allah."
There was a recent brouhaha when an Arabic translation of the Christian Bible (presumably for Coptic Christians) correctly translated God as Allah.
To be fair, there is a legitimate question of whether Christian and Islamic conceptions of the God of Abraham should be treated as one and the same.
On the other hand, far as I know "Allah" is both the preferred name for the Islamic take on the idea and the regular word for "god" or "deity" in Arabic - and to the best of my understanding has been used traditionally in Arabic Bibles.
COSMOS: I'm currently re-reading a couple of Neil de Grasse tyson's books, so I thought I'd re-watch his TV show as well.
Michael Jackson: The Verdict (2026): three-hour doc series. While not as overtly damning as the 2003 Martin Bashir doc, it’s difficult to watch this and not conclude that he was guilty, but found not-guilty on the grounds of wealth and celebrity. It ends with the realization that, verdict notwithstanding, his career would not recover. This is made by someone close to him at the time. His untimely demise would occur four years later. I have not seen the recent biopic, but I have heard people describe this doc as the missing final act.
Funny thing: when I was a little kid and the Jackson Five were all over the radio, I loved that music. The fact that there was a kid in my age group who was a real pop star was amazing. We had Jackson Five 45s-- including "Ben." When Michael the solo artist took flight (Off the Wall, Thriller, and everything after), I could admire the videos and the production. I worked, when I was a high school senior, for a DJ service, and we played him all the time. People hit the floor. He was the biggest thing in pop-- especially when I was in university-- and I felt no affinity for the music. I don't even have "Thriller" on my Halloween playlist. *shrug*
I remember watching Ben, the movie sequel to Willard, and learning that the kid in the movie had his singing dubbed by Michael Jackson. If Ben was a friend to the kid, he wasn't to anyone else.
"Ben," a loving ballad to a rat, sung by Michael Jakson but lip-synched by a white kid in a sequel to a successful horror movie named for the protagonist who, in the novel that inspired it, has no name.
And some people think comics are weird.
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