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Episode # in order of airing: 75 (January 19, 1968) Episode # in order of filming: 75 (pc 6719) Apparent J/A intimacy: *** They are close, but nothing seems to point to their being lovers. Compelling plot holes to be spackled: As Animasola points out, you can't breathe in the sewers of New Orleans, much less make elaborate chalk-board diagrams down there. Hey, the City that Care Forgot won't even put dead people underground, so I don't know what Nehemiah Persoff, Cangey, Whitey, and Red think they're doing. Reason to spackle the episode anyway: Hmmmm? Shirtlessness: Wowsy! Shirtless Jim gets tied up to a kind of cruciform-torture thingy. And then (be still, my beating heart!) during a fight scene, the front of Jim's pants bursts open!!!! Physical contact: Is there some? I didn't notice. H/c potential: Minor potential, as Jim comes close to being crucified. Angst potential: They coulda gotten all teary-eyed about the Civil War, but Jim compartmentalizes very well, and Artie even more so. Jim beauty: ****** He plays Don Juan at Mardi Gras: so gorgeous! Then there's the deific beauty of his back! Artie beauty: ***** He's Hamlet in tights and doublet! General bizarreness of episode/bad scriptwriting: Well, except for the million dollars in gold (with the un-gold appearance of the gold) and the utterly implausible way Jim figures out the plot and the even more implausible way Artie fools the bad guys, this script actually stands up to some scrutiny. Importance of having this on a pimping tape: If you like Jim ‘n' Artie, this is right up your alley. But it doesn't give any real proof. Importance of having this on a WWW drinking-game tape: Oh, yes!!! a) Three Star Trek actors show up (Miramanee, Droxine's Dad, and Nehemiah Persoff who played a Slinky-headed alien on an ep of TNG). (b) Plus: Shirtlessness! (c) Double plus: Clowns! (I just made this rule up -- you must take a swig every time you see a clown on WWW.) Apparent relationship status: Extremely good and supportive friends. Plot recap: Mardi Gras. I suspect stock footage of Mardi Gras because it's awfully well done. (There's clown footage too!) We then cut to the traditional WWW grand stairway where a massive costume ball is going on. Jim and Artie come out in costume: Jim is Don Juan, and Artie is Hamlet, complete with skull! At the ball, Jim hooks up with Miramanee (who's disguised as Columbine) while, Artie gets a cup of something from a cutie; on the side of the cup is the number 443. He goes to 443 (443 Bourbon Street I guess) and stands around in his Hamlet drag leering at some passing girls. Then he gives his skull a double-take and SLAPS it for its naughty hetero thoughts. Gee, it must be nice to be Artie, to see the whole world as your tramp, to ALWAYS think "I could have some of that." I Could Have Some of That. The motto d'Artie. However, Artie's legs are a little bit of a disappointment to me (I realize this might not be universal). I like meaty stems on my men, and Artie's legs are slender. On the other hand, these very same extremities look ultrahot when he's Lightning McCoy, especially Lightning's thighs, so what do I know. Anyway, after this brief het excursion, Artie meets Droxine's Dad who lives at 443 and who threatens him. Meanwhile, Miramanee has dragged Jim into the sewers of New Orleans, where he meets a truly gnarly bunch of Yankee veterans led by Nehemiah Persoff. They're all legless and noseless and handless and eyeless and stuff because they were tortured in a Confederate prison camp named Susquehanna. Plus they live in a New Orleans sewer! Yeccch! Can I say something about Nehemiah Persoff? He's good, he's really good. He plays the legless Yankee and he's utterly convincing, physically and vocally. Sabrina Scharf (i.e. Miramanee) plays his daughter, but she sure looks a lot dowdier here than in her ST Indian maiden drag. Of course, it could just go with the costume territory. To me, even Artie looked foxy in his redskin-maiden drag. (Later on, in RL, Sabrina Scharf became a California state legislator. How strange can life get?) There sure is a lot of argy-bargy going on. Seems like everybody wants a Confederate war criminal named Colonel Mosley on trial for what he did at Susquehanna. Turns out Colonel Mosley is Droxine's Dad and only pretending to be a Creole sugar planter at 443 Bourbon Street. Jim goes to arrest Droxine's dad and take him back to Washington, but, alas, he runs afoul of Mosley's minions (who have all taken their Ren-and-Stimpy pills and sound like parodies of Cajun chefs). After they capture Jim, they bring him to Mosley; Mosley goes into some rap about how Jim has everything he wants, knocks him out with belladonna, and ties him up with, you know, blahblahblah, a rope attached to both a jug of nitroclyerin AND a ticking clock hand, etc. etc. But Artie (disguised as Mosley) dashes in and saves Jim while knocking out the original Mosley. Then Artie uses the word "terse". It just sounds so good the way he says it! They load the original Mosley in a grandfather clock and ship him, unbeknownst to the minions, back to the Wanderer. BUT out of the sewers have wended the gnarly veterans, and they crawl and slither, etc., on to the Wanderer and kidnap both Jim and Mosley, because they say Mosley's the guy who made them all gnarly and they want their own trial. However (this ep has a LOT of PLOT), when they start their little amateur gnarly trial, Jim reveals that he's read the script! Not only does these guys really have legs and noses, etc., but they are actually Mosley's sadistic Confederate assistants and they've kidnaped Mosley so as to get him to tell them where some hidden gold is. They tie Mosley/Droxine's Dad and Jim (both shirtless) to two crosses; Jim's back is purrrrrrrrrfect (as usual, Jim is ALL perfect). There's also all sorts of sexy Confederate-prison flogging-and-sodomy threats going on under the surface. And then. And then. And then, along comes Artie. Oh, I love his disguise: Artie's a slightly effeminate British gold dowser (well, British = effeminate in the parlance of WWW). And, in the midst of all this whole flogging/tied-up nightmare, he rambles in because his fabulous ancient astral dowsing rod has told him there's gold in them thar prison camps. Gold! That's even better than flogging and sodomy! So Nehemiah, Red, Whitey, and Cangey and them begin to follow Artie and his fab dowsing wand around. Artie cleverly buries a nugget of gold at Nehemiah Persoff's toes so, when Nehemiah and the stunt guys find it, they think Artie's character is legit. Artie is Classic Amoral Artie here: like M.C. Hammer, you can't touch him! He does some double talk to get the bad guys to put their guns off in a big pile (he tells them the metal is messing up his astral rays). Then he frees Jim. Fight! Jim is in excellent form here. Hey, know how I know? Because he splits his pants and we see his surprisingly spacious y-fronts. Gee, with those pants, you'd think he'd wear a dance belt. That underwear must have some built-in somethingness that holds his, uh, "information" in place. Hey, if you wake up in the middle of the night, as we all surely do, wandering why God made the world, why, indeed God made *anything* and the only thing that can calm you down is to re-tell yourself the plots of various episodes of the WWW, this is a good one because it makes a certain sense. So, why doesn't Mosley rat out the gnarly veterans as his associates? Well, because he wants to maintain plausible deniability to the feds that he's not the evil sadistic prison commandant Mosely. And why do the gnarly veterans do the whole elaborate tying-up thing? Because it was established that they were POW-camp-guard wicked sadists, I mean, from the beginning. So it's all good! Cut to the tag in the Wanderer: Carrie Alert! Carrie Alert! Colonel Richmond gets to strut his stuff. See, Richmond (reminding us subconsciously of Paul Lynde somehow) is congratulating the boys on their success. He goes on to say how the government is going to turn the old Susquehanna prison camp into a playground or theme park or something. Jim proposes a "modest victory toast", and Artie gloats, "you know me." They play the stupid anti-grav table trick on poor old Richmond. And drink. Show ends with a little square pic of Artie eying Jim. Hey, guess what happens after the show is over! Artie lives up to his leer and says, well, James my boy, since the mission is over, isn't it about time to introduce Dean here to our Uranian Circle? "Oh, yeah, right, Artie. Good idea." "Remember that foxy gal in New Orleans who suggested you could suck me off while Dean massages my balls with his mouth." "Oh, yeah, right, Artie. I remember now." "No time like the present, eh, gents" and a general three-way orgy ensues. Yay! |
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