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Episode review: TNOT Cadre (or, as I think of it,
TNOT Disgruntled Costume Queens)
Episode # (aired): 54 (first aired March 24, 1967) Episode # (filmed): 54 Apparent J/A intimacy: ****** (so happy together, with one FABulous slash moment) Compelling plot holes to be spackled or fixed: well, it depends on if you believe in "franconium" or not. If you're into the whole mysterious-element-of-franconium thing, then this is a perfectly sensible ep (except for the parts which don't make sense, like the character of Josephine). On the other hand, if you don't believe in "franconium", then WWW may not be the show for you :0 Reason to spackle the episode anyway: Hey, no sluts in the tag! Yay! But still there's some lag time there at the end that we can speculate about. Shirtlessness: Yum yum yum, it's our favorite flavor: Jim is shirtless AND tied up! Physical contact: None. H/c potential: None. Angst potential: Jim shoots "Artie" who begs for his life, but, since it's all part of an elaborate prank, the alleged shooting is weirdly enjoyable. Jim beauty: ****** Everyone -- Artie, Trask, Josephine, Stryker, the Cadre, the writers, the director, the audience, and the camera especially -- all are utterly besotted with Jim's supernatural loveliness in this ep. Artie beauty: Artie-as-Artie: **** Artie-as-prison-guard: ** (Is he wearing padding? He seems very plump when he takes his Kevlar vest off.) Artie-as-Kelton: **** (not really that cute, but a great performance!) General bizarreness of episode/bad scriptwriting: see franconium note above. Importance of having this on a pimping tape: There's one significant scene where Artie is SO out of the closet. Apparent relationship status: Total Longtime Companions. Plot recap: This weird prison warden is telling Jim "we're all in our little prisons"; then convicted killer (and sworn enemy of U.S. Grant) Ralph Kleed is brought in to see Jim and the Warden. Hey, Ralph's an African-American! Way to go! The first three times I saw this I thought they were going to electrocute Ralph right there, amidst the books and flower pots and crap, but no, they're just strapping him into an ordinary chair. Ralph says a few things and blows a little whistle (you know how to whistle, don't you, Ralph?) and the Warden goes all funny and lets Ralph go. "Warden, no!" they say, but nobody *does* anything. Then the Warden drops dead, and Jim finds Ralph's whistle. Credits. In a big burst of exposition, Jim and Artie a) tell us all about the wiggly element of franconium being implanted into the brains of people like the Warden, and b) give the other details of the plot. This time Jim will be pretend to be an anti-Grant murderer who's being transported through the area as a bait to whoever is implanting wiggly-element-franconium in people's brains. So Artie-as-prison-guard and Jim-as-murderer travel through the desert until a "cadre" of incredibly baroque Costume Queens attack them, knocking Jim out and kidnaping him after they make him "shoot" Artie. (Oh, yeah, for the most part, the Cadre also has franconium implants so they obey The Whistle too.) Jim awakens in the HQ of the Costume Queen Cadre, where we meet Josephine who's wondering what color his eyes are. Huh? Josephine is a hard number to figure out. Who the hell is she? What's her job description? Head Costume Queen Trask calls her his secretary, but do madmen really need secretaries? (On the other hand, her main duties are eating candy and eavesdropping, so maybe she is a secretary.) Just to muddy the waters, Trask makes a big deal about the fact that Josephine likes good-looking young men; he seems quite overcome by this and beats his head against the wall the way Charlie Brown does in "Peanuts". But we only see Josephine relate to Jim and Artie and never to anyone in the Cadre. I can't figure it out – maybe she's some sort of sexual idiot savant. There's also Stryker, Trask's second in command. He's a massive slab of pink and yellow pretty-boy and quite sufficient to serve as Trask's main butt-toy. Until. Yep, Stryker's sufficient UNTIL Trask sees Jim, and then all bets are off. (When Jim wakes up, he's wearing one of the Cadre's costumes; wonder who changed his clothes? Probably the boring brain surgeon and his nerd assistant, but, since Trask is so completely taken with Jim, I bet he peeked.) You know, Trask has put so many of his energies into designing those weirdly elaborate costumes that Artie and Jim have no trouble defeating him. Actually, the only person who has a clue that Jim's an agent is Ralph! Yes, Ralph's back! When Ralph spills the beans to Stryker, Jim's out in his new costume avoiding land mines. Stryker then tells Trask, who's kinda disappointed. But he still sends the Cadre out to get Jim. The moment when Jim faces them down is the best butt-shot I've seen so far. (Well! Thank you, Jim, thank you very much. Damn!) Jim gets transported back to the dispensary for franconium-brain surgery, so he'll be obedient. Meanwhile, though, Artie has disguised himself as a cockney traveling salesman. He gets into the HQ of the Cadre by telling the guard he'll give him a free sample of the "self-inflating Little Jim." (Remember when it was revealed that Elvis used to call his "ugly uncircumcised hillbilly pecker" Little Elvis? Hmmm.) But the Little Jim is filled with poisonous gas so the guard passes out and Artie is able to break in. Cue the massive *slash* scene. Artie tries to bribe Josephine with all sorts of things to get her to cooperate. A lace mantilla! "I hate it!" "You're roight - it's not you." Perfume! "It stinks!" "Well, we ‘ave ‘ad a ‘eat wave lately." Pearls! "They give me the hives!" "Strange, they ‘ave the syme effect on me." And *then*: A picture "in true color of one of the most glorious creations in all of nature!" And, right there, plain as a day, Artie gets out a nice line drawing of Jim!!! (Well, Artie, I guess we know where YOU'RE coming from.) At first he shows Josephine a mirror pretending she's the "glorious creation". She just laughs, and then Artie turns the mirror over and shows her the line drawing of Jim! This is a nice, well-written scene, not just because Artie's declaring his undying love for Jim, but also because RM is a very alert actor and he gets a nice kind of rhythm going with the actress who plays Josephine. It's almost like a musical duet. Josephine tells Artie is down stairs in the surgery. Which he is, all nice and immaculate and shirtless and hot, and about to be surgically implanted. But, before that can happen, Artie and Jim beat up the surgeon, and Jim puts a bandage on his head to pretend like he's had the surgery. Then he goes out with the rest of the Cadre in a cavalry outfit. Okay, big fight: bad guys get arrested or killed and President Grant is saved once again. Tag spackle: okay, after everybody's dead or arrested, Jim and Artie watch Grant and his party of guards go by and then they go back to the train and have sex. Not great sex but comfortable married sex, possibly taking turns topping each other. Actual tag: They're in their dressing gowns, like the good couple they are; Jim is reading a newspaper and Artie's experimenting with knock-out gas. The Wanderer stops: knock-out gas is knocked over, and, after Artie passes out, Jim chuckles and covers Artie's sleeping form with an afghan (as he's done so many times before.) Since Jim doesn't ravish Artie, that's why I assume they've had sex; no urgency now. Awwwwwwwwwwwww. The end. |