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Episode # in order of airing: 82 (aired October 2, 1968)
Episode # in order of filming: 82 Apparent J/A intimacy: *** Hey, looks like Jim and Artie fool around in the bushes til they get caught. But the slashiest part is the slashy slashy tag. Compelling plot holes to be spackled: Well, sir, I can’t get as worked over the DOOMSDAY FORMULA as the show wants me to. Importance of having this on a pimping tape: **** Only the tag, and only if seen through slash goggles. H/C & Angst potential: YUM! In the tag, Jim needs Artie a lot more than Artie needs Jim. Jim beauty: ***** Fabulous chaps action and the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen. Artie beauty: *** Okay, we’re going to have to skip from denial to acceptance pretty quickly here. See, Artie pretends to be a Middle Eastern arms merchant complete with a number of unpleasant caricaturish elements. All that being said, he still looks great. He looks great as Artie in crotch- hugging taupe trousers; he looks great as Middle Easterner Mr. Ortugula with a snazzy super long keffiyeh (I think that’s what they’re called), rose colored granny glasses, and a big moustache. (His horrid rubber nose is distracting in close up, however.) BTW, the drape of that keffiyeh makes RM look quite willowy and long-legged, and so we’re all have just going to have to forgive Ross for his stereotyping. You have to remember, things just didn’t matter in the sixties because of all the LSD in the water supply. I was there; I know. General bizarreness of episode/bad script writing: I’m still unable to work up a shudder over the DOOMSDAY FORMULA. Fashion note: That snazzy keffiyeh! It’s just too bad it isn’t a giant fez. ‘Cause don’t you just know Artie has a giant fez?! Recap: Ooh, nice start. They’re opening up the side of the horse-carrying car of the Wanderer (that’s the car right behind the engine for them that’s counting), and Jim leads out his beautiful horse and rides off in the name of justice! (I like to imagine that this horse car also serves as the bunkhouse where the invisible yet Walt-Whitmanesque engineer commits spirited acts of sodomy with his lissome young fireman.) Jim is making this trip so he can talk to this here doctor who’s invented the DOOMSDAY FORMULA! Now cut to home of the famous scientist. We don’t see him, but his daughter is napping in front of a roaring fireplace while three stuntmen goggle at her. Ohoh, there’s a knock at the door and the stuntmen creep away. The daughter wakes up and answers the door. It’s blue-coated, black-chapped SexJim! He says he’s a government agent! “Where’s ya daddy?” he dimples! Turns out Doc Daddy DOOMSDAY FORMULA has just told his daughter he’s gone off to meet with Secret Service Agent West, James West!! No! At this, the stuntmen return and fight with Jim to a lively spy-disco beat! Oh, double no! They knock JW out! He awakens only to see a ugly fist-shaped cane looming over him (that’s a clue, see) and now here’s the credits. Uh-oh, the bottom-left Mexican’s rear-end is REAL prominent here; wonder if that’s a secret gay code Bruce Lansbury is issuing. Okay, cut back to the stairs where Jim was crushed: ah, Artie is walking around wearing his peekaboo-package tight taupe pants. Gee, Artie sounds like he has a cold. (Well, I wonder if RC and RM are having a lover’s spat. They read their lines as if they are utterly uninterested in each other. That’s just not characteristic. Still, they make up by the tag.) More clues: the Professor’s home has a central heating system AND a pot bellied stove AND, AND the daughter was lying in front of a roaring fireplace. I guess this is all sort of an allusion to the heat of the DOOMSDAY FORMULA. Oh, more likely, nobody in production gave a big rat’s ass. Anyways, Jim and Artie find the FORMULA for DOOMSDAY in the potbellied stove, and then go back to the Wanderer to test it out. Unfortunately, they crouch in a most unmanly way behind the golden sofa as they test the DOOMSDAY FORMULA, but it ultimately goes well. Very doomsday. None more doomsday-er. Then Artie disguises himself as the Doctor and he and Jim go to a joint called the Union Hotel (wonder if it’s any kin to “Deadwood’s” Bella Union see below). There they have some badinage with the VERY attractive and animated African-American bartender who thinks Artie is the real doctor and ribs him about the last time he was at the Union. Seems like the last time Doc was there he drank so many Shenadoahs he passed out. Wooohoo!! Doomsday dude!!! Way to go!! At this remark, Jim gets a really curious look on his face and Artie asks him why. Jim says, “Well, during my stint with General Grant, I had sex with a group of officers I called the Improbables because of their incredible sex technique. They often indulged in cocktails they had named Shenandoahs as they stood in line to sodomize me.” Oh, hell, wait, no, Jim actually just says he “knew of a group of officers called the Improbables who drank drinks called Shenandoahs.” (But isn’t my version so much better!?) And, speaking of General Grant, have I told you about the totally sexiest sentence I ever read in an American history book? It was in volume one of Brooks Atkinson’s biography of Ulysses Grant (I am waiting for volume two with quivers galore) where he brings up this little anecdote about Grant at West Point. It seems that, because Grant was one of the shorter lads, he was picked to play “Juliet” in the annual West Point revue of “Romeo and Juliet.” Grant was all for it, I believe, but they ended up using a “New Orleans actress.” And what a great intro for a Frustrated-Cadet-Slash/Gangbang story that is! And doesn’t it send you into an erotic frenzy to imagine the reaction at West Point on the first day the young Jim showed up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Throbbbooooovius!!!! What did it cost that lucky upperclassman they raffled Jim off to? You know, the highest-bidder cadet who served as Jim’s first bunkmate/sponsor/mentor/top? (Heavens, I am breathless from the speed and distance of these plot bunnies.) Things happen now, although I disremember the sequence. Artie’s back on the Wanderer inventing various things when he hears a knock at the door. “Oh, hey, Colonel Richmond,” he purrs. “Nice aftershave.” Well, you know what, it’s not Colonel Richmond at all but a beautiful young blonde secretary type who’s come to give Artie a report on the Improbables. But Artie doesn’t miss a beat. He’d have been glad to dick around with Colonel Richmond, but he’s just as happy to jump the blonde. She reads him Richmond’s report on the Improbables as he listens. Where oh where is Ross Martin’s Emmy! Where oh where is his Oscar! Where oh where is his Nobel Prize for Fabulousness!!! Because he isn’t doing a thing on earth but listening (we can hardly even see his face, but we can see what he’s up to as he surrounds the blonde with his all-powerful pheromones, you know, the ones he uses on us out here in TV land. *SIGH*) But then she discloses where Doc Doomsday might be, and we realize, as Artie does, that there his true jellyroll lies, and he’s off! Seems like Doc Doomsday and his lovely daughter are being held in an underground cavern-y type place by the evil General Something Something, played by Kevin McCarthy (star of the great 1950’s “Invasion of the Bodysnatchers”) who is the owner of that fist-shaped cane. Well, now this is interesting: Kevin McCarthy seems to be doing a preemptive imitation of Powers-Booth-as-Cy-Tolliver-in-“Deadwood”. You know, I am awfully in love with “Deadwood” right now: I sho love me some X-rated cowboy desperadoes. (Actually even as we speak I am writing a WWW/Deadwood crossover it’s not outside the realm of possibility, you know. In my story, I have Artie disguising himself as well-hung prospector Mojave Mike as he investigates Cy Tolliver’s joint because word is that Cy is trying to assemble a WWW-trademark Disgruntled Costume Queen army (which Cy really did attempt in ep 12 of “Deadwood.”) Meanwhile, I have Jim over at Al Swearigen’s saloon enquiring about Al’s involvement in the death of federal employee Magistrate Clagget (this murder also takes place in ep 12 of “Deadwood”) and of course there’s a big fight between Jim and Al’s henchmen. Big knives. Guns. The surprising thunk of flesh against girders. Jim could even rush to the second floor balcony of the Gem and swing down on one of Al’s iron candoliers and kick Johnny or Dan in the teeth! Uhoh, I seem to be drifting from my purported topic. So Artie shows up, only this time he’s Mr. Ortugula, a Middle Eastern arms merchant who wants to buy the D.Formula from General Something. There’s skulking about galore, and, oh, look, Artie’s just invented an MP3! It’s a teensy little Victrola, and it’s singing a mean little parody of some Middle Eastern music so General Something will think Artie’s in his room when he’s really out getting a blowjob in the bushes from Jim. Again, we need to pop over to acceptance and accept Ross’s sinister/funny performance, particularly when he breaks into stupid tizzified Arab squeaks over a few fireworks set off as a diversion. Just remember: he’s still our Artie. Then the episode just kinda ends. I’ve seen it seven or eight times today alone, and I just can’t work up any interest. The doctor dies of a heart attack, and Jim saves his daughter (actually, Jim uses his fabulous sleeve-prong-thingy to make a cable across the fiery . . . things that surround the daughter and then rides the cable over and grabs her. Except it’s obvious that he’s really grabbing Stuntman Whitey, whose lumpy face you can clearly see in the wig and dress.) An odd ep, really, almost more about Artie than Jim. Hmmm. Still, I like to think it might have inspired the young and gorgeous Powers Boothe (a mere 19 years old when this was first aired, just listening to Johnny Rivers albums over and over again in his little dorm room at Southwest Texas State University and deciding he wanted to be a hot cowboy actor in a swank cravat just like Jim ‘n’ Artie wear and then writes “Powers Luvs Jim‘n’Artie‘n’WWW 4-Evah!” all over his blue canvas three-ring binder.) Anyways, the best part next to Jim’s chaps is the tag: Artie and Jim are on the Wanderer. Jim is lying on the sofa while Artie does some paperwork. But Jim’s getting bored. “Pay attention to MEEE, ARTIEEEEE.” Turns out Artie is refiguring their paychecks. See, if they got paid by the mile, he says, rather than their flat monthly rate, they’d be $2,000 richer. Jim is devastated! Is money the only thing their many passionate nights mean to Artie? So he stands up and says, look, lover, I can show you some figures and he starts showing Artie all these erotic engravings!!!! How slashy is that!!!! And I love how Jim keeps rattling the etchings at crotch level, so Artie can look at nothing but the front of Jim’s pants. A solid ending to a so-so show. (And then the young Powers Boothe writes a fan letter: “Dear Mr. Martin, or may I call you Ross, My name is Powers Boothe, hey, it really is my name although they call me Boomboom here at my dorm and anyways I look like a damn 19 year old god. Do you need any help in Hollywood? I want to be a leading man, see, by 2005, and I thought that a) you could help and b) I could have sex with you and Robert Conrad and c) it’ll all be groovy. Powers to the People haha. ((signed)) your future buddy, Powers “Boomboom” Boothe.) |
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