What I've been watching: February, 2026

Shows I’ve Watched:
The Rebel Blue Light Nixon in China

Mou may recall my occasional series "If I Ran the Network," in which I propose ideas for various series that would run on a fictional television network I owned. (Then again, you might have a better chance of remembering it if I did a better job of running it more than just occasionally.) Anyway, one idea that has come true, more or less, is that of the Saturday Night Opera, which we've taken to watching the past couple of months. Most of these have been 20th-century operas, including one I reviewed last month, Doctor Atomic by John Adams. 

This month features another Adams work, Nixon in China, based on President Richard Nixon's historic 1972 trip to Communist China. Now, if that seems like an unlikely subject for an opera, you're right; even Adams was somewhat skeptical when he received the commission. However, the result was one of the greatest operas of the late 20th century, a work that manages to be both historic and creative, and unlike anything that anyone might have expected. In this Metropolitan Opera performance from 2011, James Maddalena reprises his role as Nixon (which he created in 1987 for the opera's world premiere in Houston), with Janis Kelly as Pat Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, and Russell Braun as Chou En-lai, and Adams himself conducting. 

Adams's music could best be described as a pleasing minimalism, with elements of atonality that nevertheless avoid many of the less pleasant aspects of dissonance. The story is built around four major events: the arrival of the Nixons and the president's meeting with Mao; a tour by Mrs. Nixon of various sites in China; a visit to the Peking Opera where a Chinese political ballet is performed; and the final night of the trip, in which the principals reflect on the events that brought them to this time and place. 

In interviews, director Peter Sellars has talked about how the production of the opera has evolved over the years, particularly since more and more of the atrocities committed by Mao have come to light, while Maddalena has mentioned the depth and complexity of Nixon's character, which he describes as peeling away various layers of an onion. This, along with the historical nature of the opera's events, should enable it to remain in the repertoire without undergoing some of the more bizarre reinterpretations that have become commonplace in modern opera productions; it would be difficult, for instance, to stage it as science fiction or to place it in the American antebellum South, as I've seen in some operas I won't mention right now. 

Two things that stand out every time I see this opera: first, the second act political ballet, "The Red Detachment of Women," in which the villain of the piece, an unscrupulous landlord taking advantage of the peasants, is played by the same singer who portrays Henry Kissinger, in this case Richard Paul Fink (who played Dr. Edward Teller in Doctor Atomic). Fink's portrayal, which includes a fair amount of interaction with the ballet dancers, is both harrowing and hilarious, given that everyone recognizes that the character so closely resembles Kissinger. 

But the real power of the opera comes to light in the final act, in which Dick and Pat reminisce about his time in the Pacific during World War II; Mao and Chiang Ch'ing dance together; and Chou, dying of cancer, looks back with the faint air of disillusionment carried by a man who, with glistening eyes looks into the distance, asks rhetorically "How much of what we did was good?" It is a profoundly moving moment in an act that transcends everything we've seen to this point, a surrealistic look at the ways in which these characters have been scarred in one way or another by how their lives have played out. It is as good a meditation as one will ever see of the immense price that history demands from those who dare to shape it. Whatever one might have been expecting in this opera, this would not have been it; it provides a powerful conclusion to an opera of unique depth and emotion, and well worth the investment in time.

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As we seem to be on the subject of historical events, let's go back now to that post-antebellum time following the American Civil War, and the philosophical Western, The Rebel, co-created by and starring Nick Adams. I wrote about this series at some length a few years ago, so I'm not going to go into great detail about the existential meaning of the war, or of this series. Instead, let's look at it for what it is: a very effective half-hour drama that provides both action and an opportunity for reflection.

Adams plays Johnny Yuma, a former Confederate soldier looking for both adventure and a meaning to his life following the war. In that sense, it's reminiscent of another Western, Rod Serling's The Loner, which sought to break away from the conventions of the genre. The Rebel doesn't quite go that far; its situations are more traditional, and Adams's character is a more conventional Western hero. He does, however, have one trait that stands out: a journal that he keeps as he tries to come to terms with the horrors of war and the things he sees and experiences during his journeys.

Although Adams would be nominated for an Academy Award for Supporting Actor in 1963's Twilight of Honor, I'd never really paid that much attention to him in the roles I'd seen him play. He famously self-funded his Oscar campaign, and I'd frequently seen his name used as a punch line for such campaigns. Well, he's really good in The Rebel, and I mean really good. Perhaps it's just me, but he seems to infuse his character with a certain depth, a dignity and gravitas that one doesn't often see in shows like this. I recall a particular moment where he encounters a man who had deserted his unit during a critical battle; notwithstanding the "fog of war" that can cause men to do strange things under stress, Yuma reacts with a subtle but visible disgust that this man would have actually run from his duty—and, perhaps more important, his brothers-in-arms. 

Yuma does the things you'd expect him to do: fights for the underdog, fights against injustice, sees both sides of the conflict with the Indians, etc. He stops to help those who need help, and helps fight their battles even though they're not his battles. But Adams displays a toughness in the role that I hadn't expected. He's more than willing to beat the crap out of the bad guys or hold their heads under water until they cry uncle, and quite honestly, I'm much more partial to that than I am to seeing a hero who tries to get everyone together to talk it out like reasonable adults. Screw that; I say, if you've got a gun, use it! (Of course, with an attitude like that, you can see how television shows got in so much trouble over excessive violence.)

The Rebel may not be a great show, although it ran for two seasons. It is, however, a good one, and frequently a very good one. As I say, I've come to have a greater respect for Adams as an actor, and I like his character. The Rebel is a rare example of a Goodson-Todman production that isn't a game show, and for the most part it's a successful one. There is one sour note though, and that's the theme song, played at the beginning and end, and sung by Johnny Cash. There's nothing wrong with the song per se, and Cash is, of course, a legend, but the song's line doesn't do Cash's voice any favors, calling for a certain smoothness in the high notes that doesn't really suit his style. It's a small quibble, though, and I suspect that Cash fans are fine with it. I'm not his biggest fan myself, but who am I to complain?

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Our trio of "based on historical events" ends with a World War II drama, Blue Light, that stars Robert Goulet as David March, an American journalist who has supposedly renounced his American citizenship and joined the Nazis in their campaign to conquer the world. It's a ruse, however, as we're shown in the premiere episode; Goulet is actually a deep-cover sleeper agent; having successfully been planted in Germany prior to the war, he ingratiated himself with the Nazi hierarchy, even taking orders from Hitler, while secretly reporting back to the Americans under the code name "Blue Light," and occasionally being called on to sabotage Nazi war efforts. We're frequently reminded of the importance of March's mission: he is the lone survivor of a 18-man infiltration unit, thus he must be protected. He receives his orders from French underground member Suzanne Duchard (played by Christine Carère), who herself poses as a Gestapo officer.

This is another of the half-hour dramas that used to be common on television in the 1950s and 1960s before the networks were forced to give up a half-hour of prime time to local affiliates. The format works both for and against the show; stories are forced to cut extraneous events in favor of spare, lean storytelling that can work under the right circumstances. It can also be a detriment if the stories are forced to wrap up too quickly and too conveniently. Blue Light is not immune to to the latter, but what helps mitigate this tendency is that the series functions much like a serial, with each episode leading into the next, so much so that the first four episodes were edited into a feature-length movie after the show's cancellation. 

Now, this is by no means a perfect series. It's been said that Goulet, who was a star on Broadway and in television for such hits as Camelot, Brigadoon, and Carousel, to branch out into truly dramatic acting, and in Blue Light there's nary a hint of Goulet the recording star; it's very much to the series' credit that they made David March a journalist rather than an entertainer, which would have given the excuse to have Goulet sing a couple of songs in each episode. On the other hand, perhaps the series would have lasted more than 17 episodes if they had done that; one of the drawbacks, one would suppose, of the half-hour format.

Goulet does, however, acquit himself very well as a dramatic actor. He's credible as a tough, smarmy turncoat who secretly carries the burden of playing the heel (his girlfriend was so distressed at his apparent act of treason that she committed suicide; he had been unable to tell even her of his true mission), and at times he shows a true ambivalance about his work, such as an early episode in which March is ordered to kill a fellow double-agent to assuage the Nazis of their suspicions about him; the fellow agent is not only an American but a friend with whom he's worked in the past. The fact that this agent was suffering from an incurable disease and had volunteered for the mission to give his death some meaning was no real solace to March, who worked to find a way in which he could throw the ever-suspicious Nazis off his trail while not having to kill his friend. ("There might yet be a cure!") All right, that was perhaps a little too neat of an ending, but the premise was really good, and posed an interesting moral dilemma.

Something difficult to accept, however, is the many scenes in which March and Duchard discuss his secret plans in settings where they're literally surrounded by German officers and Gestapo agents. Yes, I know they're supposed to be talking sotto voce, and the only reason they seem to be talking so openly is so they're audible to the viewers. Still, it works against the show's credibility, which is important when you're dealing with a premise such as this. Blue Light is not particularly a good show, but it's not a bad show either, which is something, and it's an enjoyable show to watch, which is something more. The Rebel may be the better show of our hour-long bloc, but Blue Light holds up its end of the bargain in fine form. TV

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What's on TV? Monday, February 28, 1966

Following Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall special with Judy Garland and Bill Cosby, NBC presents its version of CBS's successful "National Test" series (National Driving Test, National Citizenship Test, etc.), called Testing: How Quick is Your Eye? It's the second of four such planned programs, hosted by Frank McGee, with reports by Robert MacNeil, and TV Guide inlcludes a scoresheet for viewers to play along. Among the questions into which the program delves is the reliability of eyewitness testimony in trials. The show hopes to demonstrate "some of the factors that influence and even distort our visual perception." I see, and you can see it as well, in this week's Northern California edition.

This week in TV Guide: February 26, 1966

This week's headline proclaims, "TV's Impact on Our Civilization—A startling appraisal." Well, I'm always up for being startled, and this website is all about television's relationship with culture, so this sounds like a pretty good place to begin.

The author is Louis Kronenberger, Professor of Theatre Arts at Brandeis, author of novels and essays, and former drama critic for Time magazine. This must be understood, Kronenberger says at the outset: "[T]elevision is not just a great new force in modern life, but that it virtually is modern life. What, one might ask, doesn't it do?" It is, he concludes, "a truly stupendous addition to American life—our supreme cultural opportunity." It is, as well, "a supreme cultural commodity," a case of Big Business operating in tandem with Bigger Business. "Business calls—or cuts short, or calls off—the tune." And because of this, nothing else about television and its potential matters; "it makes any other fact about TV and its effect upon our civilization ultimately subsidiary and expendable."

Kronenberger compares television to the menu of a vast banquet; a fair amount on the menu is "unexceptionable" while a good deal more is "harmless entertainment." Some is even very good, but much else is not good, and even more is "truly dreadful." In offering this argument, though, Kronenberger goes beyond the artistic merits of the program itself, whether it is "good" or "bad" in conventional terms. Instead, he refers to the effect that such programs have on the audience. Not only does it pander to the lowest common denominator, it does so in the hopes of keeping that denominator low - hence, making it easier to keep the audience entertained, and available for the messages of its advertisers.

More than that, however, is the corrosive effect the programming has on the, for lack of a better word, dignity of the individual watching it. Take the Quiz Show Scandal, for example: the technical crime, as Kronenberger puts it, was that the shows were being rigged, the immorality being that the networks should and probably did know about it. "But what was really degrading, indecent, uncivilizing was that, rigged or not, the quizzes pandered to the venality of a whole nation, had multitudes glued to their televisions not at all for the fun of the game, but for the size of the stakes. Knowledge had become the grossest, the most uncultural, of commodities." To despoil the purity of knowledge, to turn it into a tool for making ever larger sums of money—aye, there's the rub.

It's not just this, of course—the corruption extends to violence, to "cheap gags and gossipy wisecracks," to an invasion of privacy—"not just in terms of outright gossip, but in the way of candid 'discussion,' or psychiatric 'discovery,' or photographs of the sick, the unhappy, the doomed?" In other words, the kind of exploitation found in everything from the early pity-party Strike it Rich to today's reality television. (Or, as I put it some time ago, trafficking in human misery.) The ratings system encourages "not merit but mass popularity"; by basing the value (and therefore continued existence) of programs on ratings, "it turns any illiterate into a critic; an entrepreneur into a craven; a defeated contestant into a criminal."

And it all surrounds money, money, money, making the offscreen antics just as craven, just as uncivilized, as what happens on the tube: "TV doesn't even wash its dirty linen in public; it merely waves it." The Great Networks are assisted by the Great Advertising Agencies and the Great Artists' Representatives, with the end result that "the alluring daughters and nieces of art—Language and Laughter, Melody and Declamation and Dancing—are constantly bedded and wedded to the paunchy sons and nephews of Mammon. The general effect is often about as civilized as gluttony." There's nothing in the least altruistic about the actions of the network executives responsible for all this; they have absolutely no interest in improving their audience, in enlightening them, in doing anything other than analyzing them not as individuals, as humans, but as statistics on a balance sheet.

It's a pretty harsh assessment, especially for a self-professed fan of television such as yours truly to have to record. And yet while I don't know that I can wholeheartedly agree with everything Kronenberger says—to do so would be to call into question most of the shows that I spend so much time watching and enjoying—I find it difficult to disagree with most of what he says, particularly the idea of how the quest for profit has made television's effect on the public both coarse and profane. "TV," writes Kronenberger, "has consistently either imposed uncivilized elements on American life, or aggravated and intensified those it found there. It has helped destroy respect for privacy, it has helped foster a more rackety publicity."

But herein lies the dilemma. Certainly we can argue about the corrupting influence of advertisers on viewers. Quoting Gore Vidal from some time back, what television could use is "a sense that getting people to buy things they do not need is morally indefensible." As for the coarsening of culture, as my friend Gary used to say, he feared letting his small son watch something as harmless as golf on TV because he didn't want to be asked "What does erectile dysfunction mean?" It's understandable that under these circumstances, networks want the highest ratings they can get in order to attract the advertisers whose dollars keep the network on the air. And since Kronenberger mentions sports in passing, let's take a moment with that as well—it's more than just ED commercials. Look at how TV has gone from covering the games to influencing them—start times, endless commercials stretching game lengths, advertising covering the players and saturating the stadiums, rules changes designed to make the game more exciting, more palatable to targeted demographics. And whereas once upon a time the goal was to win the championship, now it often seems that, as was the case with the quiz shows, winning means being able to get more money in the next contract negotiation.

What's the alternative, though? Sure, there's government subsidy, as you'd see in Britain, but if television is as pervasive in the culture as Kronenberger said it was in 1966 (and, expanding the definition of television to encompass all of today's mass media, it's probably even more so today), do you want the government to be controlling that? Really, do you? But if you go the PBS route, you're going to run into what PBS itself has discovered, namely that you still have to have "popular" programs in order to get viewers to contribute, which means more British series and aging Baby Boomer rockers. Plus, of course, the ever-present fear that if you broadcast something the government doesn't approve of, your funding will suddenly die out. Frankly, I don't have an answer, if indeed one exists, which suggests that perhaps television was doomed from the start.

Kronenberger's conclusion is not optimistic. About television, he says, "There has been nothing too elegant for it to coarsen, too artistic for it to vulgarize, too sacred for it to profane." For whatever good television may have done, truer words have seldom been spoken.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Scheduled guests are comic Alan King; singer Petula Clark; rock 'n' rollers Gary Lewis and the Playboys; singer Jerry Vale; comic Richard Pryor; the Tokyo Happy Coats, a girls' jazz band; and the Berosini Chimps. (According to the episode guide, Nancy Sinatra was also a guest tonight, taking the place of Pet Clark, and singer Blossom Seely and The Trio Rennos, an aerialists group, also appeared. Jerry Vale was "scheduled," but it sounds as if he might have been a no-show.)

Palace: Host Liberace presents comedian Bob Newhart; singers John Davidson and Marni Nixon; the comedy team of Avery Schreiber and Jack Burns; magician Channing Pollack, and trapeze artist Betty Pasco.

Well, this was easy. Liberace and Newhart start out pretty well, but after that the Palace goes off a cliff. No offense to Marni Nixon, who has a lovely voice and a lovely television presence, but I can't stand John Davidson, and Burns & Schreiber always left me cold. On the other hand, Ed has a strong lineup with King, Pryor, and Gary Lewis, and if Jerry Vale does show up, it's icing on the cake. This week is a comfortable victory for Sullivan.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.

This week we're looking at the original Smothers Brothers show: not the variety show, but the sitcom that preceded it, wherein Tom plays an angel (on probation) who has to do good to earn his wings (quite possibly the most incompetent angel since Clarence, or perhaps Jack Benny in The Horn Blows at Midnight), and Dick is his brother, presumably the beneficiary—or victim, if you prefer—of Tom's good deed-ing. "If you accept it all," says Cleve, "you can have a very good time with this show. If, however, you can't accept it and are on the side not of the angels but the angles, and you even regard the whole thing as a rather "B" switch on Bewitched—you won't have a good time."

Amory is of two minds on the show; sometimes it works, other times, "we have seen another one which was so bad we wouldn't have accepted the fact that there were ,are, or even ever have been, two brothers named Smothers." A different producer has made the show, in Amory's words, character-funny instead of funny-funny, which is an improvement—especially when the writers avoid saddling Tom with hackneyed jokes, such as his telephone calls to his angel-in-chief, Ralph—e.g., "when he takes the telephone off his chest, and says inevitably, 'I've got to get something off my chest'; or. when he says, 'Roger and over,' and then asks, 'I wonder who "Over" is—I know who Roger is.' " Well, I think you get the point there. 

So things are looking up. Under the new regime, the show is, in Amory's opinion, "now developing some very funny character funnies—as, for instance, in the recent Christmas show when the brothers did an inimitable 'There isn’t any Kriss Kringle' routine." (It's possible that this could be due, in part, to Tom's more active participation in the production of the show; his involvement in the details didn't begin with the later Comedy Hour.) But there's one thing they absolutely need to do, according to Cleve, and that's improve the show's beginning. I mean the real beginning—the theme, which is "bad enough," and what follows it, when the brothers come on to tell everyone what's about to happen in the show. "Honestly, it takes strength to handle it when you don't know, but when you do—well, never mind." After one particularly painful beginning, "you could hardly wait for the first commercial." (You can judge it for yourself here.) His final verdict: like the angel Tom, the show needs to do not only good, but better.

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As predicted, the resignation of Fred Friendly makes headlines in "For the Record"—right below the item commending the networks for covering the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearings into the progress of the Vietnam War. (In particular, author Henry Harding singles out NBC for covering the hearings in their entirety, unlike some other networks we could name but won't, other than their initials are C, B, and S.) As you might recall, on February 15, Friendly "quit his job as president of the CBS News division after John Schneider, newly promoted No. 3 man in the CBS corporate hierarchy, turned down his request that the network telecast a specific session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Vietnam." The network instead scheduled a rerun of I Love Lucy. 

I don't suppose it's an exaggeration to say that these hearings, chaired by powerful Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, mark the beginning of the end of majority support for the war, or, as the above article says, they "parted the curtain," allowing the public a view of what was actually going on. Although the clip below shows the appearance of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, it is probably the testimony of General Maxwell Taylor, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that is the most pivotal; it is Taylor's contention that Hanoi will never agree to negotiate unless they are convinced that the United States is committed to fighting on behalf of the South Vietnamese. Harding calls the broadcast of the hearings "some of the most rewarding, most effective, most important, presentations in the history of network television."


The hearings, according to historian Marc Selverstone, "legitimized public dissent" over the war, creating a story that, along with its fallout (e.g. Watergate), would dominate television—and the nation—for much of the next decade.

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On Saturday's episode of Secret Agent (8:30 p.m. PT, CBS), a captured British agent is being tortured to reveal the links in his espionage network. There's nothing new in particular in this episode, but don't you find this title just a bit revealing, considering Patrick McGoohan's follow-up series The Prisoner? It's called "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk," with one of the key lines being, "We all talk. It’s just a question of time." Interesting, hmm? Ironically, NBC's Saturday night movie is a Bob Hope vehicle called My Favorite Spy (9:00 p.m.), about a burlesque comic mistaken for a foreign agent. My suspicion is that he won't be mistaken for John Drake. 

The Twentieth Century (Sunday, 6:00 p.m., CBS) profiles the show's "Man of the Month," Dr. Michael DeBakey, already a renowned cardiovascular surgeon, a pioneer in heart transplants, and already at work on the development of an artificial heart; "We could help many people if we had a truly workable artificial heart, and there is no really basic reason why we cannot," he tells Walter Cronkite. Later, it's a historic airing of Perry Mason (9:00 p.m., CBS). Does Mason finally lose to Hamilton Burger? Don't be ridiculous; that's already happened, and he managed to get his client off any. No, it's series' the first, and only, color episode. Had it continued for another season, every episode would likely have been in color. Personally, I don't think it worked; things just didn't look right, and the series lost whatever noir qualities it still had. A better story might have helped as well. Still, Mason is Mason, and there's a great turn from Victor Buono, so there's that.

On Monday night, Vivian Vance guests on I've Got a Secret (8:00 p.m., CBS), and that's followed (not surprisingly) by The Lucy Show, with guest stars Jay "Dennis the Menace" North and the wonderful character actor Vito Scotti. Meantime, on the music side, Hullabaloo (NBC, 6:30 p.m.) has George Hamilton doing the hosting, with guests Lainie Kazan, Simon and Garfunkel, Mel Carter, and the Young Rascals. Later, at 8:00, NBC preempts Andy Williams for Perry Como's once-a-month Kraft Music Hall, with Judy Garland and Bill Cosby. Big show!

Tuesday's highlight is the first of the two-part episode "Hills Are For Heroes" on Combat! (7:30 p.m., ABC), in which the platoon is given a hopeless assignment: take two entrenched German pillboxes preventing the Americans from advancing. It's a hopeless task, and the story (directed by Vic Morrow) doesn't shy away from the "Knee Deep in the Big Muddy" vibes, fully justifying the two-hour overall length of the story, as well as co-star Rick Jason's comment that it was the greatest anti-war movie ever made. Later, on the IBM-sponsored Town Meeting of the World (9:00 p.m., CBS), the subject for debate is "How to Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons." The debaters: Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in New York, French presidential adviser General Pierre Gallois in Paris, former West German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss in Munich, and Lord Chalfont, British Foreign Minister, in Geneva. Eric Sevareid is the moderator. Perhaps the best-known of these Town Meetings would come a year later, when RFK debates California Governor Ronald Reagan over the Vietnam War (there's that war again). Alas, it was not to be a preview of coming presidential attractions.

Wednesday has some fun highlights of over-the-top performances, beginning with Cesar Romero as The Joker, the Guest Villain on Batman (7:30 p.m, ABC), and continuing with The Beverly Hillbillies (8:30 p.m., CBS), starring John Carradine as Marvo the Magnificent, an unemployed magician. And it wouldn't be an over-the-top evening without the presence of William Shatner and John Cassavetes, who appear on Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre  (9:00 p.m., NBC). For a little sanity, we'll go with The Danny Kaye Show, featuring a rare television appearance by Academy Award-winning actress Joanne Woodward, and Robert Goulet, who appeared earlier in the evening on the WWII spy drama Blue Light, seen, as they say, on another network.

Gilligan's Island always was a little surrealistic, but on Thursday's episode (8:00 p.m., CBS), things go a little too far: somehow or other, a lion has wound up on the island. Don't ask me; I just write these things. After that, one of my favorites, Leon "General Burkhalter" Askin, is secret agent U-45 in the short-lived spy spoof The Double Life of Henry Phyfe (8:30 p.m., ABC), starring Red Buttons. Secret Agent it ain't; I'm not even sure it even measures up to My Favorite Spy. 

On Friday Britt Ekland, aka Mrs. Peter Sellers, makes her U.S. TV debut on Trials of O'Brien (10:00 p.m., CBS). We mentioned a while back that one of O'Brien's low-ratings problems was its lack of clearance on CBS affiliates, and this is a good example: of the four CBS affiliates that appear in the Northern California edition, only one of them carries O'Brien. Meanwhile, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show (8:30 p.m., NBC), a show that ought to have been much, much better than it was, features Jonathan Winters, the Supremes, the Andrews Sisters, and singer Johnny Hartman. And Johnny Carson wraps up yet another week off on The Tonight Show (11:30 p.m., NBC); his guest hosts this week are Bob Barker (Monday), Alan King (Tuesday and Wednesday), Hugh Downs (Thursday) and Henry Morgan (Friday). 

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Didn't we just do a profile of Debbie Watson? By golly, you're right; if you're a regular reader, you'll recognize her from just two weeks ago. No matter, here she is in an earlier phase of her career, doing a fashion layout. Apparently, in 1966, women are just panting for pants. Speak for yourself, I say.  

We've also got a profile of Dick Kallman, the young star of NBC's sitcom Hank, who first came to attention in the national touring company of the smash musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Kallman comes across in Michael Fessier Jr.'s article as a good guy with endless energy and ambition, who hopes that someday people will feel about him as a comedian the way he does about Sir Laurence Olivier. Alas, he never quite makes it in showbiz, but becomes a very successful antiques dealer before he and his partner are murdered in a robbery attempt in 1980.

Of course, how can we leave without at least a word about Barbara Stanwyck? Missy, she's called on the set (mostly affectionately) comes across as confident yet insecure, an accomplished actress who feels she still has something to prove, a strong woman who still hasn't found what (or who) she wants in life. A woman of contradictions, a puzzle, but leaving absolutely no doubt that she's a star. And when you're a star the magnitude of Barbara Stanwyck, you don't get that way simply by telling people you're a star, or acting like a star. You just are. Her anthology series of the early '60s was, she hoped, a way to be able to play a strong character on television, and although that failed, I think you can say that as Victoria Barkley, the matriarch of The Big Valley, she's tougher than all of her sons put together. I like that woman.

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MST3K alert: The Amazing Transparent Man (1959) A crazed master spy hopes to build an army of invisible men. Marguerite Chapman, Douglas Kennedy (Sunday, 6:00 p.m., KGO in San Francisco). This movie runs only about an hour, and you're really not missing too much. It's very predictable, in a way; stories like this are so transparent. 

I'll show myself out now. TV

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Around the dial

Remember the sitcom Angie? I do, although I'd have to be prompted for it; it's not the kind of show I'd think about casually. But David remembers it, and at Comfort TV, he gives us five reasons the show didn't last longer, despite having a lot going for it.

At Cult TV Blog, the Tony Wright Season continues, with John looking at the 1968 Avengers episode "Whoever Shot Poor George Oblique Stroke XR40?" I just saw this episode a couple of weeks ago, in fact; it has some very funny lines about treating a computer like a human.

At RealWeegieMidget Reviews, Gill remembers Catherine O'Hara and Bud Cort with a pair of "cautionary tales with a twist," with O'Hara in "I'll Die Loving," from Really Weird Tales; and Cort in the Twilight Zone revival episode "The Trunk." 

Now, this isn't television related, but you don't think I'm going to pass up a post titled, "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting...Vampires!" do you? That's the brilliant header for Rick's post on The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, aka The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula, at Classic Film & TV Cafe.

Roger continues his look at The A-Team at The View from the Junkyard, with "Trouble on Wheels," which finds our heroes dealing with a stolen car parts ring that quickly escalates into kidnapping, torture, and more. 

Another of our beloved figures from the past has passed on: Lauren Chapin, Kitten from Father Knows Best, who died of cancer aged 80. At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence looks back at a career that may have been short, but also made her a lot of fans.

Martin Grams looks at the comic book series Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, based on the radio series, which itself wound up moving to television. Ah, for the days of simple adventures like this on television!

The Winter Olympics may be over for another four years, but they're not forgotten: Garry Berman gives us a brief history of the winter games on American television, starting with 1960 and the broadcasts from Squaw Valley. I don't watch them anymore, but back in the day, they were great fun, especially on ABC. TV

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Lenny Bruce introduces us to the 1960s

LENNY BRUCE UNDER ARREST—AGAIN

Here's a clip of Lenny Bruce appearing on Steve Allen's show, April 5, 1959—one of only six appearances that Bruce ever made on network television.

You might be wondering why I chose to post this today. It's not that I've been thinking about Lenny Bruce specifically, but I have been thinking about popular culture in general, thanks to a recent conversation I had regarding the differences between the classic TV era and that of today; more precisely, the evolution—or devolution, if you prefer—of that culture. (I'll have more on that conversation at an appropriate time.) And that's what started me thinking about how virtually every aspect of modern entertainment, and all of modern life for that matter, has coarsened significantly over the decades. I'm not going anywhere with this particular point, or trying to prove anything. It's just that thinking about it invariably led me to Lenny Bruce.

I know that there was already a counterculture in the 1950s; Bruce himself was one of its leading lights. But he paved the way for this new brand of comedy—edgy, political, topical, willing to take on sacred cows and taboo subjects—to become a dominant force n the cultural earthquake of the 1960s. (His numerous arrests for obscenity also fit right in.) You can almost feel the tension present in 1959; the established mores of the postwar era trying desperately to hold on against the gathering storm coming from a new generation with a new take on life. The pressure would become unbearable before the dam finally burst, creating a permanent change in our way of life.

Did you catch Bruce's remark about sticking to the script? Yes, such was his reputation that he did have to submit his routine in advance. I can only imagine how even straying slightly from that script must have made the network S&P people very nervous.

Now, from what I understand, Lenny Bruce was a pretty intelligent guy; certainly, smarter than today's "comedians" and their hyperpoliticized "comedy" that seems to be the rule in modern entertainment. And in that context, much of Lenny's material seems pretty tame to us today. But right or wrong, everything has to start somewhere, or with someone. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!