"Too Real?"

Recently watching The Westerns Channel brought back a certain episode of Gunsmoke.  (For those of you charting “Blog Post Origins.”  Everyone needs a hobby.)

Gunsmoke ran on network TV for 20 years.  But they never produced another episode like this one.

An old friend of Marshal Matt Dillon’s visiting Dodge City comes to the aid of his compadre when the beleaguered lawman is in a tight scrape, facing a gang of gun-wielding Yahoos. (Because they shout “Yahoo!” when they dangerously fire off their weapons.)  (Perhaps.)

After Dillon dispatches the rowdy ringleader, ostensibly quelling the threatening “Hoorah-ing” (because they unruly revelers shout “Hoorah!’” during the commotion…. perhaps), his pal belatedly runs in to help.  Blinded by the harsh glare of the kerosene lamps leaving him unable to distinguish friend from foe, Dillon tragically shoots and kills his approaching compadre.

Now here’s the thing.

A real-life counterpart to this lamentable homicide actually occurred, involving the legendary “Wild Bill” Hickok, while marshaling in Kansas.  Gunsmoke apparently appropriated that unfortunate happenstance, and they developed it into an episode.

And you know what?

It just didn’t feel right.

Meaning, it felt different from all the rest of the Gunsmoke episodes, in its harrowing harshness and in its divergence from Matt Dillon’s habitual behavior.  In hundreds of episodes, Dillon never did anything wrong ever.  And yet there he was, dispatching a longtime compadre to “Boot Hill.”  

Leading to the conclusion:

In the planetary context of a television series – defined in this instance as an individualized “Real For Us” – a proposed story idea can actually be too real.  

Rather than grounding the credibility of the series, the episode stands out instead as a jarring anomaly.

Bringing to mind a similar misstep on Friends.

I regularly watched Friends because, for me, it was reliably funny. (Until the show went full “Soap Opera” in its terminal season.)  

Random examples…

On a recent rerun I watched, Chandler fondles one of those miniature liquor bottles provided on airplanes, explaining,

“Sometimes I hold stuff like this and pretend I’m a giant.”

In another memorable interlude, a character excitedly says,

“Guys!  Guess what, guess what, guess what, guess what!”

To which Chandler snappily replies,

“Um, okay.  The fifth dentist caved and now they’re all recommending Trident?”

I guess Chandler was my favorite character.

Anyway, once they attempted an episode based on the portrayed financial circumstances of the characters.

With a deliberate emphasis on “once.”

Someone on the Friendswriting staff seems to have noticed that three of the “Friends” made reasonable livings, whereas the other three were considerably poorer.  This led to the idea of doing a story about how the disparity in their personal incomes threatens to tear the sextumvirate’s relationship asunder.

Same problem as Matt Dillon massacring his longtime compadre.

The situation was real. But it was “tooreal” for that particular series.  (And had never been spoken about before.)

Pondering those strategic “boo-boos”, it occurs to me that I may have championed both of those ideas.  

Being the passionate “Truth Teller” that I am.

Comparative example…

Writing on the seventh and final season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I detected a down-turning – I thought – trivialization in the storylines, where entire episodes now being devoted to yawning mundanities such as, 

“Mary Breaks a Nail.”

Or the like.

Distressed by the show’s narrative descent into “Who cares?” – andbeing a subliminal rebel – I come into a meeting and pitch a “heart attack” story.

“Let’s really hurt someone,” I recall myself saying.  (Meaning, “Let’s make ‘real’ legitimately and meaningfullyreal.)

With the larder of viable story ideas dwindling perilously towards “Empty”, they decide to give my suggestion a shot.  From that depleted circumstance arose an episode entitled, “Ted’s Change of Heart.”

Written by Earl Pomerantz.

The script won the (prestigious) “Humanitas Prize” and was subsequently nominated for an Emmy.  (Beaten out by the Mary finale.  Am I still bitter after 41 years?  How petty would that be? And yet…)

Anyway, when we assembled to watch its scheduled broadcast during an annual Mary Tyler Moore Company weekend excursion, following the final “Fade Out”,  Mary was heard to opine about the episode she had just witnessed,

“Strange show.” 

Ouch.

And also literally correct.

It was indeed like nothing they had ever done before.  

Confirming – for the third time in a single blog post – the immortal pronouncement in The Three Amigos concerning the inevitable consequence of stylistic transgression:

“We strayed from the formula, and we paid the price.”

But you know what?

I really liked that “heart attack” story.

So “So there.”