It happens quite often: I sit down to watch an old movie or program that I once enjoyed, only to be disappointed by its failure to live up to my remembered expectations. The magic that once tripped the happily entertained button is gone.
What happened? Did my memory embellish the original product over the years or has my taste in movies discreetly changed? I wonder: “How I could have thought that this was good?”
I think most of the problem stems from the advances in technology. It’s hard for me — if not impossible — to watch a situation unfold in a movie that wouldn’t be a “situation” in today’s world, even if it happens to be in something I previously liked. I find myself irrationally challenging the actors and plot by talking to the television, asking, “Why don’t you just use a cell phone, you idiot?” (And not once has John Wayne turned to the camera from atop his horse and answered me. That’s because he knows I’m right.)
I watched an old episode of the television show “Mission Impossible” not long ago. This was one of my favorite TV programs the last half of the late ’60s, early ’70s. It was the closest thing that television could offer to match the blockbuster James Bond movies of that time.
This particular episode involved a machine — the size of a refrigerator — that would print money. The villain was duped by this seemingly impossible function. What made it sadly laughable is not only the fact that a small printer could duplicate the process today but because the audience is made aware — as we watch — that one of the show’s stars is hidden inside the box. Sweating profusely, he slides already-printed sheets of money out through a slot in the machine to the unsuspecting evil dictator. What I used to watch with awe and intrigue, now looked like an episode of “Get Smart.”
Time had stolen the glitter from a very good show. Something I once took as plausible had gone the way of a once-great athlete reduced to irrelevance by the non-sentimental process of aging.
Another thing that I can’t overlook in older shows is their lack of concern in portraying the time-period as it was — or at least trying to make a “ballpark” effort. The programs cared little for a sense of reality.
Case in point: While watching an episode of “Gunsmoke,” (you remember “Gunsmoke” — the show with the opening sequence that society deemed too violent because it showed Matt Dillon draw his pistol, yet they had no qualms about sending 18-year-olds to Vietnam), I noticed something that I probably never would have caught back when it was originally aired (I guess I was able to ignore the inconsistencies and just “go with the flow”).
A cowboy rode up to a ranch, a very liberal description of a rundown-shack, and was greeted outside by a young boy and his mother. Sitting low in the saddle and wiping his brow — an obviously hot day — he asked the lady if she would “... by any chance, have a cold drink inside?”
A “cold drink” is all it took for alarms to go off. As they walked toward the door, I looked for electrical poles or one of those long orange extension cords stretching from the distant hills, over the prairie and down into this 10-by-20-foot-long hut, didn’t see any.
Naturally, when they walked into the room, it was the size of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Sure enough, sitting there on the table was a pitcher of lemonade. And it was filled to the top with ice cubes. She poured a glass full (not a tin cup as I’m sure would be the case) and the very pronounced sound of clanking ice cubes was unmistakable. The ice rattled inside the glass throughout the dialog, which I had no chance of following because I was obsessed with the ice-noise.
By the way, I also wondered where she got the lemons. Loblaws?
Fresh lemons and ice cubes in the middle of the wild west, that’s a program idea for “Mission Impossible.”
And that’s the way it looks from the Valley.
Contact Tom Valley at Tvalley@rochester.rr.com.
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