This week in TV Guide: May 11, 1968

Let's start the week with a couple of related articles on what we can expect to see on the tube this summer, and what we may or may not be seeing this fall.

There is a general sense out there that this summer may well have some television goodies in store, including a surprising number of new shows. The biggest, however, "the Most Gigantic Spectacular Three-Ring Show on Earth," is one that comes along every four years: the campaign for the Presidency of the United States—or, as it's known these days, the Baatan Death March. That wasn't always the case, though; if people weren't exactly looking forward to the presidential campaign, they did concede that it was a colorful, exciting, and often dramatic time, from the primaries through the nominating conventions to the home stretch, ending on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year promises to have more uncertainty than usual, although I don't think anyone was prepared for the amount and kind of uncertainty that we wound up with.

British cloak-and-dagger adventure stories are on hand, including Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, which replaces Jackie Gleason on CBS, plus Man in a Suitcase on ABC and The Champions on NBC. Red Skelton's CBS variety show will be replaced for the summer by Showtime, a revue show out of London, while NET Playhouse will offer Thirteen Against Fate, a 13-week series of British dramas based on novels by George Simenon. We'll have American-made shows as well, with Dom DeLuise filling in for Jonathan Winters and Glen Campbell taking the place of the Smothers Brothers, and the Golddiggers getting an hour-long show of their own to replace their mentor, Dean Martin. 

If you're more in the mood for fun and games, all three of ABC's prime-time game shows, The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and Dream House will have first-run episodes. ABC's also cornered the market on major golf tournaments, with the U.S. Open in June, the British Open and the PGA Championship in July, and the U.S. Amateur in August. You can also get your fill of summer football, with the Coaches' All-America Game in June, and the College All-Stars taking on the Green Bay Packers in August. On a more serious note, documentaries will be in short supply, according to the editors, although we'd be overwhelmed by the numbers that the article cites, including ABC's look at Christian missionaries, CBS's three-part series on "The Cities," and a seven-part prime-time series called On Black America. NBC follows up with a Huntley-Brinkley special on "Whatever Happened to the British Empire," plus reports on the Catholic Church and the art world. 

One thing you won't be seeing more of, reports Richard K. Doan, is original drama, to the regret of CBS. To great acclaim, the network introduced an irregular presentation of taped original dramas under the umbrella title of CBS Playhouse, which I continue to consider a reboot of Playhouse 90. The four dramas presented so far have met with mostly promising reviews, and respectable if not sensational ratings; the season's final installment, Tad Mosel's "Secrets," will be aired this Wednesday at 9:30 p.m., with Arthur Hill and Barbara Bel Geddes. The network promises at least four more next season. 

Unfortunately, this hasn't caused a rush of copycat programs. NBC, of course, has its venerable Hallmark Hall of Fame (which in those days really was good), but most of their presentations are "warmed-over classics," though we might see one original this year. The network also boasts the upcoming On Stage series, sponsored by Prudential, which promises five specials, varying between an hour and 90 minutes in length. "They will be based on original scripts with contemporary themes; only time will tell whether they have more serious theatrical intent than, say 'Fame Is the Name of the Game.'" And that, as they say, is it. 

If Shakespeare wrote for TV, would people watch?

Why the lack of such prestige drama? Well, for one thing, the public doesn't seem to be interested in it; "Hundreds of CBS Playhouse viewers have cried 'More! More!' But they are not an overpowering voice. (Far greater numbers, for example, cried 'More!' for Star Trek.) With the increase in made-for-television movies, the original dramatic play doesn't stand out the way it once would have; many viewers, in fact, don't even notice the difference between the two and are perfectly content to view "Death of a Salesman" and "Dial 'M' for Murder" as movies. 

Good scripts are also hard to come by; CBS's chief programmer Mike Dann complains that sponsors haven't been able to find good scripts for proposed dramas. This, however, is not a universally accepted argument; some of the great playwrights of the Golden Age, such as Reginald Rose, Ernest Kinoy and Paddy Chayefsky, argue that "if the medium provided again the kind of wide-open market it once did for teleplays, the writers would produce them." Chayefsky complains that the networks shy away from anything that has the whiff of controversy, but Barbara Schultz, who oversees Playhouse for the network, says they'd jump at something controversial, "if it's a play." 

These shows aren't exactly cheap to air, either. GT&E paid $525,000 for the Playhouse presentation "Dear Friends"; that air time is normally worth $160,000 per hour, but after the production costs, the net for the network was a mere $75,000. The dramas also tend to be on the dark side; while Dann says that he'd "love" something from Buck Henry or Neil Simon, most of the best writers are looking to make a serious statement with their work. (Those intense dramas don't always pay off, though, as is show in this reap of NBC's "Flesh and Blood" from earlier in 1968.)

So what are we left with? Well, there will be a CBS Playhouse this coming season, and Dann insists it will continue even if it doesn't introduce a new Golden Age. But, as Doan reminds us all, "These are no days in TV for shows that don’t pay their way."

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.

It's "Second Thoughts" week, where your favorite critic and mine takes another look at reviews and comments from earlier in the year. And leading off is his Unaward of the Year, "familiarly known as the Enemy," which goes to NBC for its cancellation of I Spy, with an honorable mention to the network for halting Ben Gazzara's Run for Your Life. Of I Spy, he says, "Not only has this show been—in acting, in dialog and in scenery—the best one on the air for three years, it is still, for literally millions of people, their No. 1 favorite show." And while Run for Your Life "wasn't always great, it was usually at least good." 

He heaps praise on CBS's aforementioned revival of Playhouse, minus the "90" that used to accompany it. All three of its presentations, especially "My Father and My Mother" with Gene Hackman, were "television landmarks." It was, and should continue to be, "great television." He also has high praise for ABC's evening-long documentary Africa, and the special "How Life Begins." And then there was "The Now Generation," which was nothing more than an interview with Mia Farrow, conducted by her Peyton Place costar, Ryan O'Neal. It was "on the surface charmingly natural and light but underneath made a forceful statement for all of today's youth." He particularly recalls one memorable exchange when O'Neal asks Farrow, "Are you excited about now?" She replies, "Sure, all those things that you wanted to do as a child—living as you please, doing what you please, liking whom you please, loving whom you please—it’s all accepted now." It is, indeed, as good a summary of the Sixties as you can get, for better and worse. 

Lest one think that Amory's got a thing for ABC, though, he saves his greatest vitriol, as always, for The American Sportsman. This show has been a perennial thorn it the side of the animal-rights activist Amory, and he speaks dismissively of the irony of Governor John Connally of Texas, survivor of the Kennedy assassination, talking about the hunting merits of "the eye shot" or "the brain shot." As well, there are the weekly appearances of "endless celebrity has-beens attempting to prove his virility." Cleve concludes the column, and his reviews for the year, by urging readers to continue to write letters of protest to the network. Their responses "are as offensive as ever—but now they are also defensive."

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Speaking of Run for Your Life as we were above, Richard K. Doan says that the network's decision to cancel the series after three seasons was not without some controversy. We, and by that I mean those of us living in today's world, have become so accustomed to "final episodes" of even marginal series, that it might seem unthinkable that Run for Your Life would end without resolving terminally ill Paul Bryan's situation. Bryan, the character portrayed by Ben Gazzara, was, you'll remember, presented to us as a man with an incurable disease, who had only a couple of years to live. And NBC wanted, very much, to have Universal Studios, the production company, wrap up the series with a two-hour climax in which Bryan would either be cured of his illness, or die. 

The studio, however, declined, "insisting this would hurt syndication of the series." Now, this was an argument that unfolded in reverse with The Fugitive, where the same arguments were made—that resolving Dr. Richard Kimble's own run for his life would hurt the show in syndicated reruns—but the final episode pressed on anyway, with record-breaking ratings. NBC made that very point with Universal, to no avail.

Now, this is an interesting argument, this idea that viewers are incapable of watching a series if they know how the premise concludes--essentially, that they can't appreciate a given episode without regarding it as anything more than a piece of the whole. Let's run with that for a minute (pardon the pun). Would you lose interest in watching an episode of Cheers because you already know Sam won't wind up with Diane? If you were a fan of Newhart, is your pleasure of seeing Larry, Darryl and Darryl diminished because they all turned out to be part of a dream? Somehow, I have a hard time believing fans would feel that way. 

On the flip side, there are series like Dexter, How I Met Your Mother, and St. Elsewhere, where the final episodes were considered by many to be less than satisfactory. If you're one of the viewers left with a sour taste in your mouth by how things wrapped up, did it keep you from wanting to revisit your favorite episodes? Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. Maybe the real answer is that if the producers nail the ending, they won't have to worry about whether or not the viewers will lose interest. A radical thought, to be sure, but worth considering all the same.

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On Tuesday, NBC preempts The Jerry Lewis Show for a World of Amimals special, "Big Cats, Little Cats." (8:00 p.m.), "A far-ranging look at the feline world, from the American alley cat to Africa's lord of the jungle," narrated by Lorne Greene. Among the cats portrayed in tonight's special is Room 8, "a feline who 'adopted' a group of sixth-graders in 1952 and has since attended classes daily." In fact, Room 8 was more than this brief description might indicate. He was about five years old when he popped in through a window at Elysian Heights Elementary School in Echo Park, California, settling down in Room 8. He'd disappear during the summer, but would always return on the first day of school in the fall, popping up when the bell rang; newspapers and television stations from around the area would show up every year on that day to watch him make his appearance.

In addition to appearing on "Big Cats, Little Cats" (you can see that segment here), Room 8 was featured in an article in Look magazine, was the subject of a piece by guitarist Leo Kottke, and had several books written about him, including the children's book A Cat Called Room 8. He would lay on desks during the day, sleeping, and enjoyed children reading to him. He died on August 13, 1968, at the age of 21; his obituary in the Los Angeles Times ran for three columns and included a photograph, and was picked up by newspapers throughout the country. Students raised money to purchase a gravestone for Room 8 at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, where his grave is the most visited to this day, and a foundation named after him helps fund cat shelters. He was a little animal, but he made a big impact, and there's a lesson somewhere in there.

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Saturday begins with the fourth (and final) game of the Stanley Cup Final, with the Montreal Canadiens taking on the St. Louis Blues (Noon, CBS). Although the Canadiens sweep the expansion Blues in four games, don't be deceived: all four of the games were decided by one goal, and two of the four went into overtime. In primetime, "The Singers," an ABC News Special (preempting The Hollywood Palace!) profiles two female singers on opposite sides of the success scale: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, and up-and-coming pop singer Gloria Loring. (9:30 p.m.) You're probably familiar with Franklin's career, and you might know about Loring as well; in addition to a singing career that continues to this day, she acted on Days of Our Lives for six years, was married to Alan Thicke, and had a number of hits, including "Friends and Lovers," which made it to #2 in 1986.

ABC's Sunday Night Movie is 1963's The Leopard, winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and while the version on ABC is the butchered, edited, and dubbed English version that was widely panned by critics, the release of the longer, classic version in 1983 established it as a classic; it's now considered one of the all-time greats. The historical epic stars Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, and Alain Delon, and was directed by Luchino Visconti, whom Lancaster considered the finest director he ever worked for. Judith Crist isn't all that impressed with it, calling it "beautifully photographed and badly dubbed," and finds it "ultimately stultifying." I'm sure she must have seen the original at one time; I wonder if it just left her cold, or if she's basing her comments on the edited edition?

A local note on Monday, but one that's not insignificant for TV news buffs: Ray Tannehill is the new anchor of KGO's 6:00 p.m. news, taking over for Roger Grimsby, who's moved to WABC in New York, where he starts a legendary run on the ABC affiliate, co-anchoring with Bill Beutel until 1986 (a news team that included Howard Cosell on sports, and Tex Antoine with the weather). Grimsby is also responsible for beginning the newscast, "I'm Roger Grimsby, here now the news," which SNL fans will recognize as the intro to Weekend Update used by Jane Curtin in honor of Grimsby. So what do you think: was he saying "here now the news" or "hear now the news"? And speaking of all-time great movies, as we were, KEMO has one at 9:00 p.m.: Ingmar Bergman's Oscar-winning Through a Glass Darkly, starring Max von Sydow and Harriet Andersson. If you're a fan of Bergman's, I need say no more.

Tuesday night the Nebraska Presidential Primary takes center stage on the national news scene, but you'll read more about that on Monday. In the meantime, The David Susskind Show (9:00 p.m., KQED) has one of those shows I'd love to have seen. Three segments: segment one features writers Rex Reed, Guy Talise, and Liz Smith discussing show-biz personalities; segment two has culinary experts James Beard and Craig Claiborne talking about food; and segment three has French Canadian politician Rene Levesque on the move for Quebec independence. I don't know how big separatism is anymore, but De Gaulle did quite a bit of rabble-rousing when he was president of France, and I remember watching the returns from a referendum in the 1980s (I think) in which the question very narrowly lost. It seems as if the Canadians have had a lot of problems holding their country together, doesn't it?

Wednesday marks the return of Emma Peel to The Avengers, but before anyone gets too excited, it's only in the form of reruns. (7:30 p.m., ABC) And besides, I think Linda Thorson, as Tara King, was a more than adequate replacement for Diana Rigg (no offense intended). On a musical note (get it?), Kraft Music Hall continues its run of "County Fair" episodes, with host Eddy Albert welcoming Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, Dana Valery, Chris and Beter Allen, and John Byner. (9:00 p.m., NBC)

Maybe the summer preview was right; there won't be as many documentaries on the air as usual. You couldn't prove it by this week, though; in addition to Saturday's ABC News Special on "The Singers" and NBC's special on cats, we've got four crammed into the final two days of this week, proving that the networks still have a "dedication to serving the public interest." And over the last couple of years, no area has been as trendy for documentaries as Africa. Hence, Thursday's NBC News Special "Man, Beast and the Land " (7:30 p.m.). It's bille as "an introduction to the importance and function of the balance of nature," and takes a close look at the Serengeti-Mara region, on the border between Kenya and Tanzania. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. narrates. The documentary preempts this week's cover stars from Daniel Boone, but don't worry; Dwight Whitney's article is mostly about Fess Parker's real estate holdings, and how he's quickly building up one of the most impressive (and most valuable) portfolios around. 

And guess what? On Friday night Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is on another documentary, this time on a different network. It's ABC's Saga of Western Man presentation "Robert Scott and the Race for the South Pole" (7:30 p.m.), narrated by John Secondari, and Fairbanks is on hand to read passages from Scott's journals. At 10:00 p.m., it's another NBC News Special, "Discover America with Jose Jimenez," in which Bill Dana plays his famous (and now-forbidden character) as he takes a whirlwind tour of America, from the Pennsylvania Amish country to forests of Northern California, and a little of everything in-between. You can see it, in segments, here.

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MST3K alert: Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955). Three dangerous juvenile delinquents take refuge in the home of a farmer and his family. Tommy Cook, Mollie McCart, Sue England. (Tuesday, 1:00 a.m. KGO in San Francisco) Let's see, so far we've had Teen-Age Caveman, Teen-Age Strangler, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and Teenagers From Outer Space, so I suppose this would be the natural succession. Our three stars are the three teens holding the family hostage, but of course one of them has to be the weak link, allowing the plot to fail. Well, what did you expect—In Cold Blood? And if those actors are teenagers, then I'm Truman Capote.  TV

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World without end

By the time you read this, the final episode of one of television's most acclaimed recent series will have aired. Succession, the comedy-drama about one of the most, if not the most, disgusting, reprehensible, repugnant, and despicable families since the Manson clan, came to the conclusion of its four-season run on Sunday night, and it seemed as if, over the last week, you couldn't avoid online speculation about it no matter where you looked. I've never seen an episode of Succession, since we don't subscribe to HBO, but I've read enough about it to know that it's not my kind of television. I had to work for too many people like them while I was working; now that I'm retired, why would I want to spend any more time around them? 

At any rate, this isn't about Succession, although it does provide a nice lead-in to what this is about. In Brian Phillips's Ringer article "In Praise of the TV Shows That Just Won't End," Phillips meditates on the nature of a series finale—why they invariably cause so much anxiety for true fans of the series—and then returns to the idea of shows that "never really end." In this case he's referring to shows that somehow seem to continue in the television universe, whether through spinoff series, reunions, or movies. Take Star Trek, for example; the existence of Star Trek movies has removed the pressure to nail the series finale; "You’re always encouraged to imagine that more will be coming, whether or not it actually arrives. And that little hedge against finality, that slight ducking of last-act obligation, frees you to keep your imagination in the ongoing present where the rest of the show has taken place."

That's pretty good, and it reminded me of a series that had a final epsiode of sorts, even though it didn't really need one: Perry Mason. By happenstance, last week I saw the final episode of the show's nine-seasons run, "The Case of the Final Fade-Out." It's a whimsical episode, set in the world of series television, the story of an egomanical TV star who's murdered while filming a scene of his popular television show. Mason and Paul Drake interview the show's crew to find out what they know; most of the crew members are played by actual members of the Mason crew. The judge is played by Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner in an unbilled cameo. The killer turns out to be none other than (spoiler alert) eternal teenager Dick Clark! The story itself, as is the case throughout most of Mason's final season, is no great shakes, but it's an appropriate series finale in that it gives everyone a chance to take a final bow, turning the episode into a kind of wrap party.

The point of all this, though, comes in the very last scene. Having won yet another case (and once again humiliating Hamilton Burger in the process), Perry, Paul, and Della discuss an upcoming case. When Paul and Della ask where they should start, Perry replies, "It seems to me that the place to start is at the beginning." Fade out, end of series. 

It's a simple, but stunningly effective ending. It's symbolic in that it sends a message that the work of the lawyer in pursuit of justice will never end; in the world of the series, it also suggests that while the series has come to a conclusion, Perry's work (and Paul's and Della's) will keep going on—we just won't see it every week. Their universe will continue to exist, so if you ever thought to yourself that Perry Mason is the man who you'd go to if you found yourself in trouble, you won't have to worry about convincing him to come out of retirement or anything like that—they'll still be there. In that sense, it is a series that, in Phillips's words, never really ends; it can continue for as long as you want it to. (Gardner himself wrote six more Mason mysteries after the show left the air.)

Of course, Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale did return as Perry and Della in a series of movies, although they're pale imitations of the show (and many Mason fans don't consider them to be canonical). But putting that aside, the show's perfect ending left you with an even more perfect message: Perry and the gang aren't going anywhere, so there's really no need to say farewell, when au revoir will do. And isn't that the way it's supposed to be with friends? TV  

The long and the short of it

A while back, I was reading a thread—I think it was on Twitter—that asked a simple question: Would you start watching a show knowing that it was had already been cancelled? I was particularly interested in someone who replied that, sure, if there was a final episode that provided a resolution, they'd watch, but if the series ended without a resolution, they wouldn't even start. (Coronet Blue would, I suppose, be the preeminent example of the kind of show they're talking about, although that didn't prevent it from becoming a cult classic.)

What interests me the most about this conversation is that it highlights how much television watching has changed over the decades. Many people today never knew, or don't remember, the days when most television series consisted of self-contained episodes, with stories that began and ended within the episode. If the story was really big, it might rate a two-parter, or in rare cases even a three-parter, but that was about it. No, today's television viewers are used to a series that is essentially one very long episode with a story that begins with the first episode and ends with the last episode, at which time the question which has been with us since the beginning comes to a resolution. Of course, real life often isn't quite that neat; there are many, many things over the course of a lifetime that are never resolved or are so inconsequential (a meal is cooked and consumed, the dishes are cleaned and put away) that they would never work as a series-long story arc. Our modern-day desire for "closure" can result in a great deal of frustration, because that's not the way life is.

Although it wasn't the first series to have a final episode, when it comes to wrapping up the storyline, most people think of The Fugitive, and Dr. Richard Kimble's elusive search for the one-armed man who had killed his wife, while he in turn is being hunted by Lieutenant Gerard, the man who wants to return him to death row. You'd think that perhaps the ending to this saga had been written at the very outset, but it hadn't; in fact, Quinn Martin had to be talked into providing an end for the series. He feared that doing so would damage the show's prospects in syndication—who would want to watch it when they already knew how it would end? This is precisely the opposite way of thinking from that which we saw in that Twitter thread, but times change.

(By the way, one of the things that made The Fugitive's final episode unique was that it came not at the end of the first-run cycle of episodes, in May or June, but in August, after the rerun season had concluded. The final episode of The Fugitive was, in fact, the final episode, and it was an extraordinary way to end the series. And it happened because Quinn Martin needed to be convinced to do it, which meant a conventional airing date of May/June wasn’t possible, and the network decided to go with the next best thing. Still, you have to admit that even if it was accidental, it was a stroke of genius, a felix culpa.)

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In replacing episodic television with increased serialization, it's sometimes said that the new way of looking at things is more realistic, allowing for an opportunity to explore the story in more depth, more detail. Now, I'll grant that the traditional episodic form of a series such as, let's say, Perry Mason, can leave something to be desired; an attorney who specializes in trial law can hardly be expected to try 30+ cases a year. We didn't really think about that, though; we relied on being entertained for one hour each week by Perry and his latest case and didn't try to fit it all into some larger puzzle. (Hopefully, Peacock's new hit Poker Face can help revive, at least in some cases, the idea of contained episodic television.)

A series like this didn't need a final episode, because there was no overarching theme that required resolution. It was just a series of snapshots of a very successful attorney's life, and if you were willing to overlook the flaws inherent in the construction of said series, it was a template that could be applied to the lives of most of us; life was simpler back then. As I said, real life isn't nearly as neat as television can make it out to be. In that way, Coronet Blue was probably more realistic than we'd like to admit; Michael Alden didn't have any guarantee that he'd ever figure out what "Coronet Blue" meant, any more than Dr. Kimble was guaranteed he'd find the one-armed man. By being more realistic, television can also be less realistic, and if you can figure that out, then you're way ahead of the game. Life also isn't always lived on an epic scale; I'm nearly 63 and I'm still waiting to figure out what my storyline is. 

One of the other trademarks of the new television (if we can call it that) is the shorter number of episodes in a season. Back in the day, the average television season for a series could consist of anywhere between 28 and 39 episodes; today, somewhere between ten and 12 is more likely. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, viewers can binge-watch an entire season over a weekend, and can catch up on a long-running series over a few weeks. This makes sense on a couple of levels; if your series is going to tell a unified story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, you've got to make it digestible for the viewer. Watching the whole season in two or three days makes the story more cohesive, easier to remember and follow, without the writers having to spend time recapping the story or using clumsy techniques to remind us of what's going on.

It's also said that writing and production quality can be higher when resources don't have to be stretched as far as they did over the course of a long season, and it's probably easier to get big-name stars to commit to longer arcs that it used to be (although one of the pleasures of the classic era was in seeing a big-name star appearing in a one-off guest spot, and in the age of the self-contained episode that was usually good enough). In the pre-VCR era, the reruns gave you the chance to catch up on what you might have missed during the regular season, which made the 52-week season practical in more ways than one—it kept the show foremost in the mind of the viewers, keeping them poised for the show’s return during the always exciting Premiere Week in September.

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But let's go back to The Fugitive for a minute. There were 120 one-hour episodes of The Fugitive 4(an average of 30 per season), and but through the course of those 118 stories that led up to the final two-parter, a tremendous amount of suspense built up. Yes, we knew that our hero would escape the clutches of Lieutenant Gerard, or whatever ham-fisted local policeman happened to have Kimble in his sites, but that didn’t prevent the viewer from experiencing the sense that Kimble was on a type of epic journey, an Odyssey if you will, crisscrossing the country in search of a goal so elusive that it was only the occasional glimpse of the one-armed man that convinced Kimble it wasn’t all just a dream. The Harrison Ford big-screen version of The Fugitive was swell and all, terrific on its own terms, but it all happened just too fast; it lacked that sense of ordeal that Kimble had suffered. If The Fugitive were made today, I wonder; could this sense of time and journey, could the epic nature of it all, have been done in just 30 or 40 episodes?

Maybe it could—The Prisoner ran for just 17 episodes, after all, and yet created one of the most bizarre worlds television has ever seen, one that left viewers and actors alike utterly exhausted when it was done. Had the series lasted longer than it did, I’m not sure anyone could have stood it. For it to have come back for a second season would have been ridiculous. There’s a key difference, though, one that might help answer the question, at least in part. Number 6 (or John Drake, if you prefer) was never someone we actually were supposed to know; it was the enigmatic quality of the show that made it work in the first place. The Fugitive, on the other hand, succeeded precisely because of our ability to know and trust Kimble, to believe that he was innocent of his wife’s murder, and to put our rooting interest in his escape from authority. Therefore, while brevity was an asset to The Prisoner, familiarity was essential to The Fugitive.

So there are the requirements for today's successful television series: it needs to tell a serialized story with a beginning and end, and it will probably run for about a dozen episodes. In that respect, modern television most closely resembles the old miniseries, a genre that was hugely popular but, at its peak, ruled for a relatively short period of time. The original concept of the miniseries was to tell a story in an epic amount of detail, far more than could be handled in a traditional movie (even a three-hour or two-part movie), but a story that nonetheless fell short of filling the space necessary to occupy a multiseason series. Rich Man, Poor Man was a huge success at 12 episodes of varying lengths (the sequel was somewhat less successful, possibly because it was written entirely for television); Roots, at eight consecutive nights, was a success beyond all expectation and triggered an avalanche of miniseries, from Shogun to Holocaust to The Winds of War and the incredibly ambitious War and Remembrance. What these all had in common was that they had literary sources, were of limited duration, and told stories that had finite endings.

Today's modern series, with the beginning, middle, and end, have copied the MO of the miniseries, but with the advantage that they’ve not limited to one six- or eight-week season, but can keep coming back for years and years. The drawback to this, as anyone who’s read the original source material for shows such as, say, Game of Thrones, is that the book generally runs out of material before the series runs out of time (or, in the case of GOT, isn't even written yet). 

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You could call this the long and the short of the new television: longer storytelling, stretched over an entire series; and shorter seasons, designed to be compatible with the new storytelling.

What we’re missing, I think, is a commitment to our favorite show as viewers, and a concurrent commitment by those shows to us. There was something comforting to being provided with a guaranteed hour of entertainment at the same time every week all year long, save an interruption or two for specials or something unexpected. Yes, as I said at the outset, not all of them were winners, but a lot of them were pretty good, and most of them were at least entertaining. At the end, they usually gave you what they wanted, which was all we usually asked from our shows. The summer season, when some of the series went off the air to give prospective new series a tryout, was what brought shows like The Prisoner to American television in the first place.

Sometimes I think too many television shows today try to operate on too grand a scale, as if every episode was the second act of Tosca, where the diva gets to sing the show-stopping aria before plunging the dagger into the chest of the villain, thus setting the stage for the grand finale. That kind of emotion is unsustainable over a protracted season, one reason for the truncated seasons. But not every series needs to be Tosca; sometimes it's enough to simply provide, as my friend David Hofstede calls it, Comfort TV. We burn through a season a weekend and look for more, we catch up on a decade's worth in a month, we text and talk and our attention spans grow ever shorter, and then we wonder why our comfort turns to indigestion. TV  

Hogan's Heroes - the final episode

Idon't think I've ever given an old piece a bump to the top; to be sure, I've resussitated a few old pieces here and there, if they prove to be timely in their subject matter (or if I prove to be untimely in my ability to come up with something new), but usually once I write something, it becomes part of the archives, destined to be found only by people looking for it (or stumbling upon it). Today, though, I make an exception.

A few years ago—almost nine now, if you can believe it—I wrote what I thought was a fanciful little piece speculating on what would have happened if one of my favorite shows, Hogan's Heroes, had been given a final episode. Today, of course, it would go without saying; just about any series that isn't cancelled in the middle of its first season gets the chance to have the last word. Back then, though, that generally wasn't the case. But if there were ever a series that deserved a closing episode, it's Hogan. After all, the concept is a closed circuit; we all know that World War II ended, and so the heroes' time in Stalag 13 would have come to an end as well. Additionally, there's the unique dymanic of the relationship between the captors and captives, especially that between Hogan and Klink, that really begs a "rest of the story" story. And, being a comedy, we can be pretty sure that it won't be a tragic end that befalls these much-loved characters.

Over the years, this post has continued to get comments; two, in fact, in the last couple of weeks. I have no other essay that can make that claim, which I think speaks less to my skill as a writer and more to the enduring popularity of Hogan's Heroes. However, because it was originally published so long ago, it occurs to me that very few of you have had the chance to see this continuing discussion in the combox. Therefore, for your pleasure, as well as that of those who'd like to offer their own scenario on how Hogan's Heroes ends, I thought I'd bump it back to the top. And so, we return to February 21, 2012, and an episode that never was.

t  t  t

I've never been embarrassed to admit that Hogan's Heroes was, and remains, one of my all-time favorites. It was the first series I got in its entirety on DVD; the acting was superb, the writing spot-on, the plots often literate and clever and frequently downright hilarious. The cast—Bob Crane as Hogan, Werner Klemperer as Klink, John Banner as Schultz, Klink’s nemeses General Burkhalter and Major Hochstetter (Leon Askin and Howard Caine) and the whole cast of heroes (Robert Clary, Richard Dawson, Ivan Dixon,* Larry Hovis, and Kenneth Washington)—were uniformly great.

*Ivan Dixon—Sergeant Kinchloe, Colonel Hogan's chief of staff, whom Hogan would almost certainly have taken with him wherever he went—was, as loyal reader Fred Baillargeron points out, was the first black television actor to receive "equal-billing" in a show's credits.

The last episode, airing on July 4, 1971 could have been any particular episode from that final season, and in fact there’s no reason to think it was conceived any other way. A seventh season had been expected, and so the show's cancellation came as something of a surprise, but, in fact, it had been around for six years and, like most extended-run shows, was beginning to show its age, and the ratings had begun to fade. In other words, a perfect candidate for a wrap-up episode.

So what would that final episode have been like? Well, many of the major events of the war had come and gone during Hogan’s run (though not necessarily in linear order) including D-Day. The Allies might have come to liberate the camp, or they might simply have terminated Hogan’s assignment (the POWs, you recall, were stationed at Stalag 13, posing as prisoners but in reality operating a massive underground commando and espionage ring). Myself, I prefer to think of the series concluding with the end of the war; Burkhalter and Hochstetter, being true believers in the Nazi regime, probably would have been taken prisoner themselves by the Allies. (In reality, they might have committed suicide, but let’s not make this too realistic.)

Hogan and his men probably would have vouched for Schultz, who really was just a working man at a job he didn’t particularly like, and possibly even Klink, who when all was said and done didn’t really bear the POWs any real malice; he was too incompetent to have done too much harm. The men would have been lauded as true heroes for their daring behind-the-lines escapades, none more so than Colonel Robert Hogan himself. Already a full colonel, it’s reasonable to assume that Hogan would have come out of the war at least a Brigadier General, with a brilliant future should he decide to stay in the service. The Army, recognizing what it had on its hands, would have made the most of the photogenic, dynamic Hogan. (An earlier episode had actually involved the brass bringing Hogan back home, cashing in on his accomplishments by having him lead bond drives throughout the country.)

And where do things go from there? There certainly would have been a book about such an audacious assignment, just as there was with A Bridge Too Far, A Man Called Intrepid, The Great Escape and other true war stories, probably called, simply, Hogan’s Heroes, by General Robert Hogan as told to David Halberstam. In due course, a movie would have been made based on the book, and it’s fun to speculate on who would have played Hogan in the movie. (Greg Kinnear, anyone? Probably more likely Kirk Douglas.) Hogan might have served in Korea, flying the same kinds of bomber missions he flew in Europe during WWII; on the other hand, he probably would have already been back in Washington, with a high-level job in the Pentagon.

Come the early 60s, Hogan would still have been only about 50. JFK, who also recognized talent when he saw it, might have made Hogan his Air Force aide, working directly out of the White House. (I'll bet they would have had some adventures together.) Our co-blogger Steve suggests that Hogan might have been in charge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which would have meant that the fiasco would have been averted, Castro toppled, and Cuba liberated. Without Castro and the CIA working behind the scenes, JFK doesn’t meet his death at the hands of conspirators in Dallas, and as we all know that means no expanded war in Vietnam. (Yeah, right.)

See how easy this is? The world as we know it changes completely! Kennedy goes through with his plan to dump LBJ from the ticket in 1964, choosing instead the charismatic Senator from Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey. Bobby lives, not being shot in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, because it is JFK’s loyal Vice President Humphrey who becomes the unanimous choice to continue the legacy of the New Frontier. (Bobby continues as Senator from New York, even providing consultation with that young Clinton fellow from Arkansas who’d had his picture taken with JFK that time. Bobby and Bill fly to Hollywood often and hang out with friends.

The Republicans, of course, turn to Richard Nixon as the best bet to unseat Humphrey and end eight years of Democratic dominance. In a peaceful campaign prosperity becomes the number one issue, and the voters decide to give the Republicans and their tax breaks a chance, electing Nixon as president. True to form, Nixon immediately sees an opportunity to wreak havoc on his enemies, even authorizing a burglary at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. (What was that about history changing?) The country in a shambles, being led by the president who pardoned the man responsible for it, the people turn to someone they can trust: Robert Hogan, the now-retired military hero, the man who has always stayed above politics, the most trusted man in America (next to Walter Cronkite). And with him, the charismatic former actor and governor of California, Ronald Reagan. What a match! Hogan and Reagan – or is it Reagan and Hogan? Whatever. Happy days are here again.

All that from a simple half-hour sitcom. See why it’s so important for series to have final episodes? You can never tell how history could turn out differently. TV 
 

The long and the short of it

More, as we know, is not always better; in the immortal words of Captain Kirk, “Too much of anything, Uhura, even love, isn’t necessarily a good thing.” And so it’s understandable how, as Ben Lindbergh pointed out in this recent article at The Ringer, there are some definite positives in the continued shrinking of the average television season. That season, which once ran as long as 39 episodes for some series, now averages about 12 or 13, and that’s just an average, mind you; it can be even shorter for some. Given this culture’s proclivity for binging nowadays, that means that, whereas most dramatic series of the ‘70s used to combine new and repeat episodes to fill out an entire 52-week calendar run, today’s short-run series can be wrapped up over a weekend, leaving avid viewers with 51 weeks (at least) to wait before the story picks up again.

In 1967, when Quinn Martin decided to bring to a conclusion Dr. Richard Kimble’s four-year chase after the one-armed man, The Fugitive chose a unique way in which to wrap up the series.* The final episode came not at the end of the first-run cycle of episodes, in May or June, but in August, after the rerun season had concluded. The final episode of The Fugitive would, in fact, be the final episode. It was an extraordinary way to end the series, and one which viewers would never stand for today. Or maybe they would – when you consider the hype that series like Mad Men and The Sopranos were able to create over the final half-season, imagine what an enterprising network could to do promote a one-off (or, in the case of The Fugitive’s final two-parter, a two-off) finale.

*It’s possible that, given the relative lateness with which the decision to end the series was made, a conventional airing date of May/June just wasn’t possible, and the network decided to go with the next best thing.

There are, to be sure, a few clunkers in the 120 episodes that comprise the original run of The Fugitive (an average of 30 per season), but through the course of those 118 stories that led up to the final two-parter, a tremendous amount of suspense built up. Yes, we knew that our hero would escape the clutches of Lieutenant Gerard, or whatever ham-fisted local policeman happened to have Kimble in his sites, but that didn’t prevent the viewer from experiencing the sense that Kimble was on a type of epic journey, an Odyssey if you will, crisscrossing the country in search of a goal so elusive that it was only the occasional glimpse of the one-armed man that convinced Kimble it wasn’t all just a dream. The Harrison Ford big-screen version of The Fugitive was swell and all, but it all happened just too fast; it lacked that sense of ordeal that Kimble had suffered. I wonder – could this sense of time and journey, could the epic nature of it all, have been done in just 30 or 40 episodes?

Maybe it could – The Prisoner ran just 17, and yet created one of the most bizarre worlds television has ever seen, one that left viewers and actors alike utterly exhausted when it was done. Had the series lasted longer than it did, I’m not sure anyone could have stood it. For it to have come back for a second season would have been ridiculous. There’s a key difference, though, one that might help answer the question, at least in part. Number 6 (or John Drake, if you prefer) was never someone we actually were supposed to know; it was the enigmatic quality of the show that made it work in the first place. The Fugitive, on the other hand, succeeded precisely because of our ability to know and trust Kimble, to believe that he was innocent of his wife’s murder, and to put our rooting interest in his escape from authority. Therefore, while brevity was an asset to The Prisoner, familiarity was essential to The Fugitive.

These are just two examples, the long and the short of it you might say, but they do raise interesting points about the relative merits of long vs. short television seasons. There’s another aspect to this which Lindbergh mentioned only in passing in his fine article, which I think bears a paragraph or two, and that’s the miniseries. The original concept of the miniseries was to tell a story in an epic amount of detail, far more than could be handled in a traditional movie (even a three-hour or two-part movie), but a story that nonetheless fell short of filling the space necessary to occupy a multiseason series. Rich Man, Poor Man was a huge success at 12 episodes of varying lengths (the sequel was somewhat less successful, possibly because it was written entirely for television); Roots, at eight consecutive nights, was Roots was a success beyond all expectation and triggered an avalanche of miniseries, from Shogun to Holocaust to The Winds of War and the incredibly ambitious War and Remembrance. What these all had in common was that they had literary sources, were of limited duration, and told stories that had finite endings.

Speaking of which: television's approach to storytelling has changed dramatically over the past decade or two. Whereas the classic structure of a season involved a series of self-contained episodes, with the odd two-part storyline but otherwise with no particular order from episode to episode or (barring cast changes) even season to season, this gradually evolved to encompass story arcs that covered multiple episodes (Wiseguy and Crime Story were two of the first series I can remember to successfully utilize this technique, although I'm sure there are other examples), cliffhanger endings that left viewers guessing as to how the next season would begin (effective especially if certain cast members were up for contract renewals), and eventually serialized storylines more reminiscent of soap operas than anything else. With these new constructs providing less and less flexibility in terms of the shape a series takes, it's easy to see why a shorter season might look more attractive.

Today's modern series all seem caught up in providing a finite ending as well, suggesting the existence of one final episode that promises to tie all loose ends together. In other words, they’ve copped the MO of the miniseries, but with the advantage that they’ve not limited to one six or eight week season, but can keep coming back for years and years. The drawback to this, as anyone who’s read the original source material for shows such as, say, The Man in the High Castle, Orange is the New Black, and House of Cards is that the book generally runs out of material before the series runs out of time. House of Cards, for example, is actually the first book of a British trilogy (the other two titles being To Play the King and The Final Cut). When it was made into a TV series (which appeared in the United States on Masterpiece Theatre), it was over three series, each one bearing the name of the book which it adapted. I don’t know what season the U.S. version of House of Cards is in now.

So where have we gotten from this shorter season mania? It is true, as Lindbergh points out, that writing and production quality can be higher when resources don’t have to be stretched as far as they did over the course of a long season. It is also true, in all likelihood, that it is easier to get big-name stars to commit to longer arcs that it used to be, although one of the pleasures of the classic era was in seeing a big-name star appearing in a one-off guest spot, and in the age of the self-contained episode that was usually good enough. In the pre-VCR era the reruns gave you the chance to catch up on what you might have missed during the regular season, which made the 52-week season practical in more ways than one – it kept the show foremost in the mind of the viewers, keeping them poised for the show’s return during the always exciting Premiere Week in September.

What we’re missing is a commitment to our favorite show as viewers, and a concurrent commitment by those shows to us. There was something comforting to being provided with a guaranteed hour of entertainment at the same time every week all year long, save an interruption or two for specials or something unexpected. Yes, as I said at the outset, not all of them were winners, but a lot of them were pretty good, and most of them were at least entertaining. At the end, they usually gave you what they wanted, which was all we usually asked from our shows. The summer season, when some of the series went off the air to give prospective new series a tryout, was what brought shows like The Prisoner to television in the first place

Sometimes I think too many television shows today try to operate on too grand a scale, as if every episode was the second act of Tosca, where the diva gets to sing the show-stopping aria before plunging the dagger into the chest of the villain, thus setting the stage for the grand finale. That kind of emotion is unsustainable over a protracted season, one reason for the truncated seasons. But not every series needs to be Tosca; sometimes it's enough to simply provide, as my friend David Hofstede calls it, Comfort TV. We burn through a season a weekend and look for more, we catch up on a decade's worth in a month, we text and talk and our attention spans grow ever shorter, and then we wonder why our comfort turns to indigestion.

When TV series say goodbye

When I'm not watching television (which, you may be surprised to learn, is actually most of the time), I'm often reading about it, including shows and series that I never watch.  (And if you think that's strange, well, there are even stranger things about me you'll never hear about.)

So even though I didn't see it last night, it's impossible to not have read about the final episode of How I Met Your Mother which, I gather, stirred a fair amount of controversy among fans and critics.  I've written in the past about the final episodes of series, how some of them work and others don't, and how some series that should have had one never did.  Which begs the question: why does every series have to have a wrap-up episode?  It's one of the pitfalls, I suppose, of the increasing serialization of television: the need to have an end game, a conclusion that wraps up all the loose ends and ephemera that have been created during the course of storytelling.

Isn't it true we didn't really know anything about Perry?

Take, for example, Perry Mason.  The last episode in that series, "The Case of the Final Fade-Out," resolved nothing; Perry, Della and Paul were presumably going to continue on as they had been for the previous nine years, with Hamilton Burger always getting the short end of the stick.  The real function of the episode was to act as something of an inside joke, with Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner serving as the trial judge, and others from the crew playing various roles.  There was no resolution because nothing needed to be resolved.  Or how about Mission: Impossible?  Do we know what happened to Jim Phelps and his team after the last episode?  Do we even care?  After all, we know virtually nothing about any of them, and the only time we've ever seen Jim's apartment is when they're putting another mission together.  And do we really need to know anything about Steve McGarrett besides the fact he hates bad guys?

I could go on, but my point is that until relatively recent TV history, the "final episode" was unique.  And the reason, in large part, has to be because today's shows are far more character-driven than plot-driven.  I was skimming through some of the comments about last night's HIMYM, and a good chunk of them referred in one sense or another to how the show had become constrained by its storyline - certain characters behaved in ways that seemed to betray that development, all in the service of a preconceived story that might or might not have been valid based on the lives the characters had taken on during the course of the show's run.

As prime-time programming borrows from the soap opera playbook, it's inevitable that viewers see the series as one with a definite beginning, middle and end, requiring a final episode.  When we've invested years in a series, we want to know how everything turns out, what happens to the characters with whom we've grown old.  Contrast that with the episodic series, where each storyline was self-contained (with the occasional two-part episode), and it was fairly easy to assume that the series would never end, that in a sense the characters would just keep on doing what they had been doing until the actors playing them died.*

*Or found themselves a new series.  Even so, I can't help but think of Perry Mason defending a client who'd been busted by Robert Ironside.

And you know what - I'm OK with that.  I don't think every series has to consist of a gimmick, a hook, some kind of story that arches over the length of the show's run.  I don't necessarily want to watch a character grow, change, evolve, whatever you want to call it - sometimes it's good to have a dependable archetype to come back to week after week.*  The trend we see today is a trend that, frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing disappear, or at least diminish.

*A good example of this is Nero Wolfe.  I have no interest in seeing these characters grow old, or in wondering what happens to Archie when Wolfe retires from crimefighting.  And apparently neither did Wolfe creator Rex Stout; although the stories were generally set in contemporary times, the characters themselves never aged, nor was there any explanation how Archie remained a young man in the 60s even though he served in World War II.

I'll grant you that there are shows that had to have a final episode: The Fugitive had to stop running, it made sense for Route 66 to finally come to the end of the trail, and as I've mentioned before, Hogan's Heroes should have had one.  But you'll notice that all these shows were built around a specific concept (a gimmick, if you prefer) that, because of its finite nature, justified a conclusion to the story.  Many of today's series don't fall into that category organically.  They come that way because the series itself is less about the plot and more about the character, which means that even if Perry Mason continues to defend the innocent and uncover the guilty for years to come, his own personal story is what the viewer wants resolved.*


*If it were being made today, the conclusion would probably involve the resolution of Perry and Della's relationship which, you know, inquiring minds and all that.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the rise in serialized storytelling comes in an Oprahfied world.  The personal is now what matters - the cops in today's police procedurals spend at least as much time romancing their partners and fighting their own personal demons as they do catching the bad guys.  A little of that is OK, but when it gets to be the norm, when every series has to end its season with a cliffhanger and end its run with some kind of grand, bringing-down-the-curtain finale, then we've got a problem.  The cliffhangers are stupid - you know all the regulars are going to survive, unless someone's contract is up, in which case they might as well be wearing a red shirt in a Star Trek episode.  And the finale, as was the case with HIMYM, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Lost, True Detective and almost every other series*, is never going to please everyone; indeed, if it tries, it usually winds up pleasing no one.

*Including The Fugitive, which introduced a heretofore-unseen character in the final episode to help resolve things, and Route 66, the last episode of which is considered by many to be one of the weakest of the whole series.  Nevertheless, as one writer pointed out, these episodes often have a way of aging well.

If anything, the lesson learned last night may be that it's not the best idea to plan out an entire beginning-to-end story arc without considering that the characters themselves, as they develop, might have a say in the matter.  For as much as the writers may try to claim that they're only portraying real life, real life rarely comes with a script included.

Hogan's Heroes: the final episode

I do have a point to this piece, although it takes me a while to get to it - just bear with me.  It starts, unlikely enough, with the Isaac Asimov Super Quiz.  I don’t know how many of you have the Isaac Asimov Super Quiz in your newspapers, but a while back there was one that that dealt with final episodes of TV series. You might think that this would be a quiz in which the Cultural Archaeologist would have excelled; if you’d had that thought, you’d have been wrong. I owe it to the abundance of questions featuring series from a year starting with 2. (Frankly, it’s been about twenty years since I’ve watched any current series with any kind of regularity. I don’t say this boastfully, except to note that most of what passes for TV nowadays is crap. I still prefer the oldies but goodies, which is another reason why I get down on my knees every night and thank God for the DVD. 

Anyway, back to the quiz - none of us sitting around the table that day did very well, but it did instigate an interesting question – what TV series do you think should have had final episodes? The phenomenon known as the “final episode” is a fairly new innovation, relatively speaking. Can you think of the final episode of I Love Lucy? Gunsmoke? The Beverly Hillbillies? Does Lucy leave Desi, is Matt gunned down on Main Street, does Jed hit rock bottom as oil prices collapse? These series didn’t require any kind of resolution; they left you with the impression that things would continue more or less the same forever. 

Today, it’s almost obligatory that a long-running series gets to call it quits with a finale, often taking up two or three times the length of a normal episode.  Some, like St. Elsewhere and Newhart, end in a delightfully surrealistic manner.  M*A*S*H ended with the end of the Korean War, albeit a few years overdue.  Seinfeld’s final episode was, to many, disappointing.  The last episode of Cheers was probably better known for the drunken afterparty. 

One of the first major series to introduce a final episode was, if I’m not mistaken, Route 66.  In that final story, shown in March 1964, Tod Stiles (Martin Milner) calls it a day after four years of crisscrossing America behind the wheel of a Corvette.  Having finally found that place where he belongs, he pulls off the road for the last time and settles down in Tampa with Barbara Eden. (And if you remember Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie, then you’ll agree that this is not such a bad way to settle down.) And that’s a nice way to end the series – logical, low-key, and inevitable 

The most famous final episode is probably that of The Fugitive, in which Richard Kimball finally catches up with the One-Armed Man. (Sorry if I’ve ruined it there for you.) This made sense; the whole series was about Kimball’s dual quests to clear his own name and to find the man who actually killed his wife, all the time while escaping from the relentless Lt. Gerard. The final episode of The Fugitive was the highest rated program ever seen on television at the time, and remained so for many years. The lesson for television executives and producers alike: final episodes could be profitable as well as fun.

One series that definitely deserved a final episode was a 1967 mid-season replacement called Coronet Blue. It starred Frank Converse as an amnesiac trying to find out who he was and why people were trying to kill him. (Think The Bourne Identity, which once again proves there’s nothing new under the sun.) Converse’s only clue was a piece of paper he was found clutching, with the words “Coronet Blue” written on it. Coronet Blue was thrown on almost as an afterthought by CBS, with little publicity or notice, and only after it had been sitting on the shelf for months. It went on the air and immediately became the smash hit of the summer. By that time, however, all those involved with the show had gone on to other projects, since there’d been no particular reason to think they’d be needed again. Despite best efforts, they were never able to pull everyone together to continue the series, or even offer a one-shot episode resolving the loose ends. Today, they’d probably get together for a big-screen movie.

But the series I’d most have liked to see come up with a final episode was the long-running sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. I’ve never been ashamed to admit that Hogan was, and remains, one of my all-time favorites. It was the first series I got in its entirety on DVD; the acting was superb, the writing often brilliant, the plots usually literate and clever and frequently downright hilarious. The cast – Bob Crane as Hogan, Werner Klemperer as Klink, John Banner as Schultz, Klink’s nemeses General Burkhalter and Major Hochstetter (Leon Askin and Howard Caine) and the whole cast of heroes (Robert Clary, Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis, Ivan Dixon and Kenneth Washington) were uniformly great. 

The last episode, airing on July 4, 1971 could have been any particular episode from that final season, and in fact there’s no reason to think it was conceived any other way. The show had been around for six years and, like most extended-run shows, was beginning to show its age, the ratings had begun to fade, and the cancellation was not particularly unexpected. In other words, a perfect candidate for a wrap-up episode. 

So what would that final episode have been like? Well, many of the major events of the war had come and gone during Hogan’s run, including D-Day. The Allies might have come to liberate the camp, or they might simply have terminated Hogan’s assignment (the POWs, you recall, were stationed at Stalag 13, posing as prisoners but in reality operating a massive underground commando and espionage ring). Myself, I prefer to think of the series concluding with the end of the war; Burkhalter and Hochstetter, being true believers in the Nazi regime, probably would have been taken prisoner themselves by the Allies. (In reality, they might have committed suicide, but let’s not make this too realistic.) 

Hogan and his men probably would have vouched for Schultz, who really was just a working man at a job he didn’t particularly like, and possibly even Klink, who when all was said and done didn’t really bear the POWs any real malice; he was too incompetent to have done too much harm. The men would have been lauded as true heroes for their daring behind-the-lines escapades, none more so than Colonel Robert Hogan himself. Already a full colonel, it’s reasonable to assume that Hogan would have come out of the war at least a Brigadier General, with a brilliant future should he decide to stay in the service. The Army, recognizing what it had on its hands, would have made the most of the photogenic, dynamic Hogan. (An earlier episode had actually involved the brass bringing Hogan back home, cashing in on his accomplishments by having him lead bond drives throughout the country.) 

And where do things go from there? There certainly would have been a book about such an audacious assignment, just as there was with A Bridge Too Far, A Man Called Intrepid, The Great Escape and other true war stories, probably called, simply, Hogan’s Heroes, by General Robert Hogan as told to David Halberstam. In due course, a movie would have been made based on the book, and it’s fun to speculate on who would have played Hogan in the movie. (Greg Kinnear, anyone? Probably more likely Kirk Douglas.) Hogan might have served in Korea, flying the same kinds of bomber missions he flew in Europe during WWII; on the other hand, he probably would have already been back in Washington, with a high-level job in the Pentagon. 

Come the early 60s, Hogan would still have been only about 50. JFK, who also recognized talent when he saw it, might have made Hogan his Air Force aide, working directly out of the White House. (I'll bet they would have had some adventures together.) Our co-blogger Steve suggests that Hogan might have been in charge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which would have meant that the fiasco would have been averted, Castro toppled, and Cuba liberated. Without Castro and the CIA working behind the scenes, JFK doesn’t meet his death at the hands of conspirators in Dallas, and as we all know that means no expanded war in Vietnam. (Yeah, right.) 

See how easy this is? The world as we know it changes completely! Kennedy goes through with his plan to dump LBJ from the ticket in 1964, choosing instead the charismatic Senator from Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey. Bobby lives, not being shot in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, because it is JFK’s loyal Vice President Humphrey who becomes the unanimous choice to continue the legacy of the New Frontier. (Bobby continues as Senator from New York, even providing consultation with that young Clinton fellow from Arkansas who’d had his picture taken with JFK that time. Bobby and Bill fly to Hollywood often and hang out with friends. 

The Republicans, of course, turn to Richard Nixon as the best bet to unseat Humphrey and end eight years of Democratic dominance. In a peaceful campaign prosperity becomes the number one issue, and the voters decide to give the Republicans and their tax breaks a chance, electing Nixon as president. True to form, Nixon immediately sees an opportunity to wreak havoc on his enemies, even authorizing a burglary at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. (What was that about history changing?) The country in a shambles, being led by the president who pardoned the man responsible for it, the people turn to someone they can trust: Robert Hogan, the now-retired military hero, the man who has always stayed above politics, the most trusted man in America (next to Walter Cronkite). And with him, the charismatic former actor and governor of California, Ronald Reagan. What a match! Hogan and Reagan – or is it Reagan and Hogan? Whatever. Happy days are here again. 

All that from a simple half-hour sitcom. See why it’s so important for series to have final episodes? You can never tell how history could turn out differently. TV