SHAZAM-Goodbye, Packy, Speak No Evil, Bitter Herbs, The Contest, The Sound of A Different Drummer, Finder's Keepers, Ripcord, Out of Focus

 

SHAZAM! season two: GOODBYE, PACKY             

Bob Rose has allowed his daughter Kathy to keep a wolf from a pup, named Packy. Packy, it is said broke into a neighbor’s coop, Mr. Jansen’s chicken coop and “destroyed” some chickens. He also runs afoul of a cougar on the loose (which seems to have a leash on it!). Packy is saved from a fight when Capt Marvel shows up. Marvel is also needed when Kathy on the run with Packy hides in a hot air balloon on the premises of Jansen, who has a hobby of hot air balloon racing. Marvel brings it down. One shot implies the balloon was headed for a high tension wires but nothing is said or made of this. The action sequences here, are awkward, which for this show isn’t always the case. While Marvel is pulling Kathy down in the hot air balloon, saving her life, she smiles like a loon. In the end, it is really BORN FREE as Kathy must give up Packy to a zoo that will retrain Packy to live in the wild where he will truly be free. While a warm story, this episode seems sort of cheap and on the fly, a sort of poor man’s BORN FREE and not one of the better stories. That said, it is not terrible. Billy and Mentor have some humorous moments, again, based around food, a hero and some kind of fancy meal Mentor is making. Mentor also tells Kathy that Billy can tell her all about heights and flight. Kathy claims she’s afraid of heights but one would never know it from her lack of fear when the balloon goes up. Not a terrible episode but not one of the better ones. This episode has scenes to the first THE MIGHTY ISIS episode that followed it on that Sat Morning. Another series might have blamed the chicken attacks on the cougar but this one seems to take the stand that it WAS Packy, and for that it deserves credit. The lesson here is that nature does not break its own laws and some animals are meant to run and live free. Others are that owning a pet is a big responsibility. In the end, Kathy gets a new and very cute puppy after claiming she will never love another animal…but of course she does.

SHAZAM!-season 2: ep 6 : SPEAK NO EVIL

The Partridge Family’s Danny Bonaduce plays Paul Jerome who owns a dog called Rex (though just before Act one ends, he seemed to also call him Scruffy?) and who was with two mischievous and trouble seeking friends Sam and Vic when they want to break into the school on Saturday. Sam gets Paul to join by calling him chicken about breaking into the school on Saturday.

 

Goofing around, Sam and Vic break some lab equipment and inadvertently start a fire. Unknown to the fleeing boys, Rex was in the room, too and thanks to Billy and Mentor passing by, Capt Marvel is able to break the chain around the gate (why he didn’t just fly or jump over the fence is beyond me), get inside, gently drop Rex out the first floor window so the dog can escape unharmed and use a fire extinguisher to put the fire out! Sam, also justifies stealing a typewriter by claiming they will not miss just one.

 

Officer Dave Isbeck later tells Mentor and Billy that a foreign fella who was hired last week as a custodian, Mr. Atropolis, is being held because the typewriter is missing AND books from the library (dictionaries and encyclopedias) were found in his locker. When he tells them this, the sound seems to fade out a bit as they take a longer shot of the sheriff.

 

Of note: I haven’t been taking notes but I think that this might be the first episode where, when talking about something he did as Capt. Marvel, Billy refers to those actions as if it were HIM doing those actions—in other words Billy said, “When I put out that fire,” but he wasn’t in his Billy form but in his Capt. Marvel form.

 

Paul’s father is John Jerome. Although Paul tells him part of the story, it is Mentor who tells him that he himself used to talk to his father when he had something bothering him, who convinced him to do that. By explaining, after Paul talks to John and doesn’t settle much, that sometimes the right thing to do is often the hardest and that helping friends sometimes means leading them to do the right thing, Billy and Mentor convince Paul to go the Sheriff to tell all he knows.

 

In what seems to be a cost saving technique, the sheriff stops by the camper again to tell Mentor and Billy that the custodian has an alibi for both the time of the fire and the books: an English teacher is teaching him English and loaned him the books.

 

The dispatcher Jenny calls the sheriff at his car, which is near the camper. Oddly, a horse walks by!

 

In any case, Vic and Sam chase Paul, who jumps a fence and goes into the power plant grounds Vic and Sam, not making great choices either, jump the fence and follow, then knocks over something that starts electricity flying around. Marvel saves them. Later, Vic tells the police that Capt Marvel told them they’d feel better about it when they talked about it but we never saw him say this to them.

 

When Marvel takes off after saving the boys, there seems to be a small bit of new music.

 

Judge Mandrill will make the final decision about the boys.

 

During this episode Billy attempts to do a jigsaw of Mona Lisa.

 

Billy continues to do the end lesson wrap up, this time talking about words like chicken and fink, made up by someone who was trying to get away with doing something that is wrong.

 

A sound episode that brings up some valuable lessons and just fine but somehow it feels a bit on the cheap this time out. Vic and Sam are just kids but the actors…are…not the best this time out.

 

 

 

 SHAZAM! season 3: ep 2: BITTER HERBS

Not sure what the title means but this is a rather standard episode of racism and prejudice against a boy who is Jewish who wants to join the Overlanders Club. The club is a club of teenage boys but they are being used by a smuggler of Mexican artifacts. The smuggler is Orin Clyde played by Linden Chiles (LAND OF THE GIANTS-The Flight Plan and JAMES AT 15/16). Jimmy Van Patten plays Harry who makes it tough for Yale Michaels just because he is Jewish. His pal may or may not be named as Joe Oliveira, oddly a Mr. Oliveira is named as the man who fixes bikes at the bike store but is not seen. It’s possible Joe is his son or his part was cut. The long haired blond pal of Harry’s may or may not be Joe!? What’s one thing to notice is there are about three transformations of Billy into Marvel and all of them DO NOT feature the usual music and the long transformation sequence. They take just moments, which I guess…is a good thing but it sure feels odd for this to happen. The teens in the show are actually rather good and the scene of Marvel vs a bob cat are interesting enough, though I think when it attacked Clyde, he would have been badly hurt of wounded. Here, he’s just knocked down. Marvel’s flying sequences are okay, more looking like the standard THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN flying stunts done in the late 50s! Rather less effective is Marvel’s putting Clyde’s truck between two high rocks so the criminal cannot escape. Earlier he helped stop Clyde’s truck when he blew a tire and after that helped stop Yale’s bike when Harry released the chain. Both sequences are better than the truck on the rocks scene. I would have liked to have seen Billy transform at the same time or just before jumping from the moving motor home but I guess that was beyond the show’s effects. Mentor has to stop the truck each time. Capt Marvel does the recap of the lesson learned: it is basically if a person is a good person it does not matter how different they are within religion or race. 

 SHAZAM! THE CONTEST is the first ep of the third season and bike shop Bob Rose has his office broke into and the only thing stolen is the answer to a contest that will win Fred’s friend Greg a new motorcycle. Greg goes along with it but doesn’t take into consideration that Fred wants the keys to a van belonging to the Space company Greg works for…a stretch I know but go with it. Inside is a piece of machinery they are testing (for shuttles?) that has a few quirks…it will blow up if shaken. Fred gets it onto a boat for a meeting with a guy that will pay him for it. Of course, Captain Marvel stops this, throwing the device into air to explode harmlessly AND stopping Fred, who’s an idiot and gets his foot caught between the device and the back of his boat, from being killed…the boat would have crashed if Marvel didn’t grab a rope and pull it away from crashing into a land mass. Earlier, when Fred chases Greg up some kind of industrial tower and a hot steam pipe blew, Marvel flew up, saved Greg and put the pipe back together. This second actor playing Marvel looks even fitter now and much more like a super hero than he did in season two (he’s no longer overweight). He even does the lesson recap at the end: sometimes winning isn’t everything, sometimes winning is losing, and sometimes you need to look at gift horse in the mouth. Working for something gives meaning to it. In addition, for what seems like the first time, Marvel has a flashback to something the Elders say rather than Billy having the flashback. The trailer seems to run out of propane for the first time. Sheriff Ken Taylor is on hand…to round up Fred…and possibly Greg, too!

 

The episode also feels fresh because it uses NEW music and very rarely uses the music from the past and/or uses new versions of it.

 SHAZAM! season 3: ep 5: THE SOUND OF A

DIFFERENT DRUMMER

 

Billy sees and saves, as Captain Marvel, a small cat climbing up an electric pole. He names him Polecat. Earlier, he couldn’t sleep and so…takes a blanket and tries to sleep on the ground outside the trailer! There are many lessons in this one: don’t run away from yourself, you can’t. To thine own self be true. People should be free to be themselves. You can never run away from yourself. Respect others and do unto them as you would have them do unto you and more. Mentor is allergic to cats at first and wants Billy to find a home for Polecat.

 

Curtis is a great shortstop who doesn’t want to play baseball any longer but wants to play the violin and try out for the Inter City Orchestra. His former friends Dennis (a kid who claims, “Whoever heard of a black violinist!) and Jerry want him to play on their baseball team. He doesn’t and they lose.

 

Earlier, they try to steal his violin to get him to play and he tries to get in the back window of their van but can’t. This leads Marvel to have to save him. Later, baseball shortstop for the LA Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, stops by the game to set the boys straight.

 

They help look for Curtis when their teacher Adele Sauber tells them he did not show up and sounded upset. The boys accidentally scare Curtis, who doesn’t read a sign and runs onto a missile testing field prompting Billy to change again and save him again by turning the missile into the sky.

 

In the end it seems Mentor isn’t sneezing and doesn’t want to give PoleCat away to Curtis: he wants to keep Polecat. Billy says the cat is now allergic to Mentor. Do they keep him?

 

A good episode with good lessons. One thing I really miss is the DANGER MUSIC that is absent from almost every one of the six third season episodes. Also it might just be me but the front of the camper looks VERY different to me. In addition, it looks shorter and smaller than the original camper. ? We also learn Mentor played the Ukulele and was good at it in Hawaii. Billy offers to jam with Curtis, Mentor and he (he playing the guitar). BTW the episode looks like they filmed it yesterday, curtesy of the restoration.

 SHAZAM! season 3: ep 4: FINDER’S KEEPERS

 

Jasper and McSween are looking for money that they stole and one of them, stupidly, hid buried on a beach. Kate and Laura are two girls who usually “tag along?” or lag behind a group of girls from a Catholic school (presumably, but they have a nun named Sister Mary Catherine---more on that later---who is wheelchair bound, looking after them). Somehow Andrea Thomas is connected with the group because Tut, her bird, is with them. The girls find and take the money to use for Mary’s operation to make her walk again or something. They escape the men by taking a raft out to the water but encounter a shark that Marvel has to save them from. Later, they return to where they hid the money but the criminals are there, too. What is silly is that the men found the money…why take the girls, too? I guess they didn’t want them identifying them? The men take Mentor, too but not before Mentor can get word to Tut, who brings Isis. Isis is needed for Marvel to rescue them all. She turns back time in her mind’s eye to see what happened. She flies Mentor up over the criminals so he escapes. She floods their lair at some kind of old animal farm and dilapidated, decaying, abandoned farmhouse with smoke to make everyone leave it. She also loosens the Earth so that Marvel can pull the ground out from under the criminals who ran into a cave that Isis didn’t want Marvel going into. I mean whose show is this?

 

On the plus side, the show looks better than ever. The beach sequences look like a million dollars, especially in the restored visuals. The show’s been at the beach before but here it looks even better. Marvel brings the girls’ raft in by pushing it back to shore. The lesson was that even though you lie for good intentions, it can only lead to more lies and more trouble. And it’s not good. Marvel does the lesson at the end.

 

On the negative side, I had stopped watching or trying to find SHAZAM when this aired. They only had a few episodes and at the time, there were more important things to do. Another reason I stopped was the music changed. I know that sounds crazy but part of this show and its universe was the great music and for the most part, it’s pretty lackluster at this time in the series, though the opening of the girls looking around on the beach has some nice themes.

 

Another thing is that…while the visual effects do not hold up today (Marvel flying with Isis looks pretty bad), they were okay then but the ending of Marvel pulling the earth (what looks like a carpet or a tarp) is pretty lame. Isis even causes rocks to fall from the mountain for some reason. I guess she had to shake the cave to do what she did. Tut is an interesting addition to the canon but honestly, this ending with the cave is pretty lame. It’s also lame that the criminals on Saturday mornings didn’t have guns. I know they probably weren’t allowed to show that but almost EVERY show at night did, even shows aimed at kids (SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, CHARLIE’S ANGELS, THE BIONIC WOMAN, WONDER WOMAN, etc). That sense of urgency, lacking the iconic first and second season music and a sense of the bad guys being really bad or the situation being unstoppable, was GONE.

 

This isn’t a bad episode but it isn’t as good as most of the others. It’s nice to look at though. Anyone who knows anything about the 70s will recognize the name Sister Mary (in the 70s it was an unfunny skit called Sister Mary Elephant) Catherine but I don’t think this character is related to that one! In the 90s on the unfunny SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE show, a Sister yelled at Mary Catherine a lot under the assumption audiences would find it funny. Maybe they did. I didn’t. In any case, I doubt any of that is related to this but hearing that name brings up an association. Sad.

 

SHAZAM! season 3: RIPCORD

 

BTW as a side note, taking a look at the Shazam! Capt Marvel stints on THE SECRETS OF ISIS (three episodes) on Prime, I much appreciate the restored color and picture of these SHAZAM episodes as well as the restoration of all the end “lessons” which previously it didn’t have and which THE SECRETS OF ISIS still does not have! I mean SHAZAM looks great on DC UNIVERSE.

 

Well this has Matthew Laborteaux’s (THE RED HAND GANG, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE, DEADLY FRIEND, WHIZ KIDS, HERE’S BOOMER, PAPA AND ME, and dozens of other things) brother Patrick as Bill Sherwood, a 12 year old with a cute dog named Geronimo (in a time before Matt Smith’s Doctor Who made that term embarrassing and goofy), who wants to do all the things his older brother Larry does but now! Patrick was also in LITTLE HOUSE and he gets to cry later in this episode as he does in some of LITTLE HOUSE’s episodes. He also has a slight lisp here.

 

The brothers are also involved in wanting to sky dive (hence the title RIPCORD). It all looks great btw.

 

In a semi funny and almost odd scene, Mentor is fake-conducting Tchaikovsky’S 1812 overture while it plays on a VERY old fashioned stereo record player (even for the early 70s! maybe?). To Billy, it never seems to end as he wants to clap for its ending and then turn on some rock music which he can fake-air guitar on a tree branch.

 

Bill slips off a rock that looks like a famous Hollywood setting (I’m sure I saw this in STAR TREK, probably in ARENA). The SHAZAM sequence of transformation is not the same but at least it has some familiar music, a version of the theme song. I do miss Billy or Capt Marvel or someone saying, “Holy Moley!” when someone’s danger becomes evident.

 

Davey, as Marvel, giving advice to Bill warmly and with confidence, assertively, proves, once again, how good he is as Capt Marvel. He also has a great rapport with the actor who plays Mentor.

 

As two asides: one : a garbage can in the background after Marvel saves Bill looks like  a TARDIS and two: the copy on DC Universe has the commercial logo and narration of “We’ll return to SHAZAM after these messages!” as a lightning bolt hits.

 

When Harry Miller never shows in the episode by its middle, Bill packs Larry’s parachute while his smart dog (earlier the dog had Mentor and Billy Batson follow him in order to save the cliffhanging boy) watches. Bill thinks he can do everything grown ups can do. Harry does show up and informs that, after Larry’s plane takes off that the chute is defective and won’t open, the ripcord is broken. I must say that the sky diving sequences look fantastic and fit in seamlessly. And the effects of Marvel saving Larry look pretty good, too.

 

A word about some of the music in this and the last episode: there’s this weird whistling sort of sound it makes not unlike the music used in the opening to the NBC MYSTERY MOVIE of the 70s and 80s. It’s odd and yet refreshing to this show.

 

In the lesson at the end, Marvel adds to it by telling us that one should listen to one’s parents when they tell us that if they think you’re not old enough to do something right now, then be patient and listen.

 

A good episode! Again.

 

James Daughton as Larry looks familiar. 

 

 

 A sunny street. A sunny, lazy Saturday morning. Lots of cars that look ancient and no seat belts being used. Lots of trees blowing in the wind and an iconic 1970s TV star Andrew Stevens (also in the weird and insane movie THE FURY). Bright colors. Two criminals without guns robbing boxes. And it includes the phrase, “In glorious living color!” And even some of THAT classic season one music: this must be the LAST EPISODE of SHAZAM! which features CAPTAIN MARVEL and they ain’t afraid to say it!

 

The finale! Sad.

 

If all of that’s not enough, a red sports car and a green van! Can this get any more 70s?

 

In a strange sequence of events Kathy and Jim are making a film to win the 1000 dollar scholarship (though now that wouldn’t even pay for half a credit!) Film Festival when they seem to maybe have filmed a break in at the local hi fi store (Radio Shack anyone?). To help Jim, Marvel uses steel rods to block a van of the supposed criminal teens. Jim doesn’t tell the truth. The Elders already told Billy that sometimes to some winning is everything. Mentor tells Billy that the criminal teens Marty and Len is circumstantial evidence.

 

Andrea Thompson shows up (Isis) to make arrangements to enter films from student in her school.

 

Jim gives Billy and Mentor a blank film and takes the film for himself but when the two hoodlums chase him again, he flees up a rock mountain. It all looks really impressive and Andrew seems to have gone up the rock side of the cliff himself! He causes a cave in that traps the two teens.

 

The second part is dedicated to Isis and Marvel teaming up to save the two hoodlums trapped in the cave. Marvel makes a glass magnifying circle out of silt and sand and Isis makes the sun come out to burn the boys out of the cavern they are stuck in. Davey looks great in this and has for some time. Cameron is as special as ever though her Isis reliance on Egyptian “gods” never sat well with me.

 

Marvel does the last lesson about temptation and not giving in to doing something wrong just to win.

 

All in all, the show was well worth watching again and evokes a time long gone and a seemingly more innocent time just post Watergate. At the time it seemed to set a precedent for Saturday Morning both live action (of course) and even the animated stuff (use of the music seemed to be big in both). 

 

 

I still have to cover the two part ISIS episode that has Billy and Mentor in it.

 

Honestly, while I think the later episodes are more polished, it does seem a bit repetitive and maybe even at a loss for money (?) but the older episodes seem more “dangerous” and even risky at times and the effects of the older episodes and stunts seem a bit…more inspired even though episodes like this one could not have been that easy to make.

 

All in all a really fun evocative series. Iconic. Entertaining and with character.