Lumpy Rutherford's Blue Period

Prime Time

Lumpy Rutherford's Blue Period

by

Richard C. Walls

JUST KIDDING: David Letterman's late night extravaganza seemed doomed in Detroit for awhile (Detroit was one of the first markets to drop his morning show, replacing it with John Davidson's, an unforgivably crass thing to do) but after the local NBC outlet's nefarious plans were leaked to the public by Motown media watchdog and muckraking journalist Mike Duffy, the hue and cry was intense enough to make the powers that be decide to give the show more time to click, ratings-wise (while, in a let's-not-encourage-therabble type move, denying that the h & c had anything to do with their decision). Letterman's show is one of a handful of consistently funny programs on TV (along with SCTV, Taxi, PTL Club) but it does have the problem, once in awhile, of not being able to vary the mood to fit the guest, resulting in a non-funny guest getting guffaws as the audience hilarity slops over from the previous segment, helped along by Letterman's low-keyed but indiscriminate sarcasm. For example, when Allen Ginsberg was on recently. True, Ginsberg is a past master of buffoonery but not 100% of the time and the audience was ready to laugh before he even got rolling—ready? some of these jerks were almost hysterical, making one wonder if the show doesn't employ a couple of howlers to goose the merriment along (it's , not unheard of). Somehow the audience managed to pull itself together in time to give Ginsberg a rousing hand for his "rock" number, an awful performance, but gutsy as heck.

Obviously the people who put this show together are aware that Letterman appeals to a hip youngish audience and they book the show accordingly, but Letterman's humor, as funny and attractive as it is, can be a little constricting sometimes in its relentlessness—by aiming it not only at the stupid and bland but at the genuinely eccentric, the innovative and unusual, Letterman occasionally seems less hip than just uptight. But, as Phil Donahue would point out, nobody's perfect.

Speaking of Phil, I caught a rerun of his punk show recently which featured a group of diehards flown in from L.A., along with a woman determined to save pre-teens from the clutches of these part-time S & M troops, prone to violence between their computer programming classes., .ho hum. Unfortunately music was only peripherally referred to, the Donahue show being much too serious to focus on that sort of stuff. The alleged punks, with their inarticulateness, their futile anti-establishnlent gestures and their premature smugness reminded me very much of a buncha hippies. A rerun in more ways than one.

SLOUCHING TOWARD NICENESS: For those who think that this column is just about panning and bitching and creating grist for all the nattering nabobs of negativity (ah, Spiro, you old gonif) who, uh.. .anyway, before the drug wears off, something nice about Entertainment Tonight. I know, I said the show sucked, and it does, but 1) when Thelonious Monk died they showed a clip of him playing "Blue Monk" 2) when Art Pepper died they managed to come up with a clip of him and 3) now they've got Leonard TV Movies Maltin reviewing movies and giving them ratings between one and ten, something to warm the cockles of every nuance buff's heart, I'm sure. Now if they'd only get rid of the glitzy yahoos who host the show, drop the new album/movie/TV show promo tie-in interviews, and hire Tom Snyder to cover the music scene (no Wendy O., tho) they might have a decent show. Maybe.

BLACK AND WHITE WORLD; Been watching a lot of Leave It To Beaver lately. I'd resisted the fad for a long time, figuring it was just another retrograde fake nostalgia number, goofing on a past that never existed (I remember, vaguely, watching the show when it was new and, even though I was the same age as the Beav, being bored shitless by it) and have been surprised to find that there's a lot more to it than that.

The oddest thing about the show is that no matter how attractive Ward and June Cleaver may seem in their goodness, kindness, fairness and middle class serenity, the fact remains that the sons are total indictments of the parents' way of life, being incredible dullards, not so much repressed as unsparked. Assuming that it isn't some kind of genetic defect, how did they get that way? Could it have something to do with the fact that the only signs of culture, high or low, in the Cleaver household are a few short rows of uncracked books, a TV set that's never on, and a floral design on the gravy dish? Wally is a cheerful well-adjusted cynic (in a typical insight he explains to Beav that a youth center is "a place where the grown-ups get all the kids together to they can keep an eye on 'em") while Beaver's only sign of life is his anxiousness to please everyone. The show's neat little lessons are always undermined by the fact that the Beaver never understands them—by the end of each show he comes to a murky recognition that if he tries to please his friends he won't please his parents and vice versa but he always forgets it by the next episode. Despite this thickness, the little fellow seems likable, partly because he's as dumb and anxious to please as a puppy and partly because all the other kids in Mayfield are so comparatively grotesque. Eddie Haskell is Wally's mirror image, a maladjusted and unhappy cynic, incipient psychosis eating at his gut. Eddie's a cool guy when he's shoveling it to the old folks or razzing the Beav, but episodes centering around him always end with his humiliation, emphasizing his basic patheticness. Lumpy Rutherford is a glandular baby, terrorized by Richard Deacon, whom he still calls "daddy," feeling blue but unable to work up a decent depression as he shrugs and nonchalantly tells Wally that the reason that that neat club The Barons won't ask him to be a member is because "I'm a mess." Add to this Larry Mondello, an orally fixated mama's boy who wants to be a bully but can't quite cut it, and a half dozen or so supporting kiddies, each representing one aspect or another of childhood awfulness. Watching this show one begins to see the roots of the great 60's upheaval—when and if these kids ever bust out of Mayfield, they're gonna go insane.

Of course none of this sub-text is intentional. Back in those days "the good life" wasn't on the defensive and people were so secure in their banality that they could tolerate little jokes about how weirded-out their kids were. Wally's crack about the youth center was supposed to be cute but not accurate. It's this unintentionalness that makes the show so funny and which is why a modern version, currently under consideration, wouldn't work—in order to achieve the same humorous level the show would have to be aware of what it's doing, i.e., satirical, and that ain't the same. They could try to bring the characters into the modern era but then if TV were capable of doingthat we wouldn't have all the out-of-touch sitcoms we do now. Best to leave it alone—better to just enjoy the old 50's artifact that inadvertently sends a message that says this is a way of life that doesn't work, our kids are growing up bizarre.