SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS 1.16: THE WILD WEEKEND

 

SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS 1.16: THE WILD WEEKEND

“Call me the Artful Dodger.”

 

You know until I just watched on you tube a special about Sid and Marty Kroft (after helping design sets and characters for the classic THE BANANA SPLITS, they became the makers of many Saturday Morning Kid Shows including much of that is fantasy, science fiction, and comedy, often mixed, and that classic LAND OF THE LOST-both versions, HR PUF-N-STUFF, LIDSVILLE, DR. SHRINKER, ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL, THE BUG-A-LOOS, THE FAR OUT SPACE NUTS, THE LOST SAUCER), I didn’t realize the HR PUFF-N-STUFF drug connection. Though the makers deny it, druggies and partiers on Friday nights would wake up on Sat Morn and see living mushrooms smoking and commenting on the wild smoke, surreal sets, and far out fantasy characters and a kid living in a psychedelic world. If pushed, you can see this in most of their other shows except MAYBE LAND OF THE LOST. To make matters more party oriented, shall we say, Jack Wild, later a huge partier, was the star of HR. That his episode of SIGMUND here is called THE WILD WEEKEND doesn’t help. Oh, I know it’s a play on words: Wild is his last name and he is playing himself and spending the weekend with the boys and Zelda the boys’ overbearing but kind house keeper (Mary Wickes of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO and SISTER ACT).

 

In this episode of SIGMUND, he appears as himself and older, say maybe 15 or 16 or even 17? What strikes me about this episode is that…and I saw an article on line about this…today’s audiences have lost the Teen Beat mentality of girls following BOYs’ careers. And the article, maybe unfairly but maybe correctly, supposes this is due to the preponderance of MEN in formerly boy roles in movies such as TWILIGHT film series where boys are really muscle bound men who in a non-innocent fashion know what sexuality they are flashing around, wearing their jeans or shorts far below the abs where as the slightly more innocent characters, on screen anyway, and probably NOT the stars themselves, seemed to just pass this sexuality by. Or so it seemed. Anyway, the likes of David Cassidy, Leif Garrett, Scott Baio, the Eight is Enough boys, the Karate Kid himself, and many, many others were BOYS mostly and came across as such. Girls (and gays) loved them. This seems a lost (I don’t know what to call it) genre (?) of viewing and audience ship.

 

And then there’s Jack Wild (appropriate name) who started out a big star at a VERY young age and very innocent in OLIVER, it would seem. HR and other roles followed and then he landed up here. In this, WHICH WOULD NEVER be done today (though see the TV show THE MIDDLE’s first few seasons where Charlie McDermott paraded around in JUST his underwear!)…Jack wears super tight jeans BUT mostly provocative by today’s standards, NO SHIRT with a short sleeves stylized vest with a collar on. His abs and hip flexors in seen in almost every scene he is in and when he’s captured after falling over a rock wall, his chest is seen, too. To make matters more…well…visual, he has his long hair and to make matters more auditory, a thick, wonderful British accent. To see this all is startling by today’s standards, though there are no more Sat Morning Kid Shows but if there were, they would never have a character wear this outrageous but very natural 70s clothing outfit.

 

And to be fair, it is the most interesting thing in this very ridiculous episode …is overly ridiculous, even stupid. As is, probably the entire series. To be fair, most of SID AND MARTY KROFFT’S series are very ridiculous—apart from LAND OF THE LOST and a few ideas of future planets and times in THE LOST SAUCER (make no mistake, though, SAUCER is one of the stupidest shows ever made, and a fun GILLIGAN LOST IN SPACE aspect of the silly FAR OUT SPACE NUTS).

 

 The plot is threadbare. The younger brother, Scott, goes to the dentist. It’s either Saturday Morning or…well, heck, it has to be Saturday Morning. Jack Wild, who the boys met on the beach, comes to stay for the weekend. Prince, the sea monster’s mom’s lobster runs away and spends time with Sigmund, who Jack immediately found out about and met. Jack’s wallet and passport are taken by the Sigmund family, who are not so nice (Sigmund’s Big Daddy Ooze, aka Melvin and who is a spoof of Archie Bunker threatens to beat the whereabouts of Prince out of Sigmund!).

 

Jack and the older brother (FAMILY AFFAIR’S Johnny Whittaker, himself one of those innocent boy heroes mentioned above; and btw FAMILY is a horribly boring show; this is far more fun) go into the cave to retrieve these things. Zelda fan worships Jack without saying as such and was going to cook Prince for a dinner, unaware of Prince and Sigmund and indeed, all the sea monsters. She doesn’t.

 

Mama wants to keep Jack but Prince helps Jack, Sigmund, and Johnny to escape.