Birth of a Notion

Friday, February 09, 2018

Context Matters

I have enjoyed reading as long as I can remember.

My mother encouraged it, first by reading stories to my brother and me, then by urging us to read on our own as we developed that skill. As I say, it has been a lifelong passion for me, and two of my favorite books are Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." I have read them both several times.

I can't remember now, but I believe I read both books for the first time in school. I know they were required reading when I was in high school, but I can't remember if that was the first time I ever read them. It may not have been, but I know it was the first time for many of my classmates.

Unfortunately, those books — and others — are no longer required reading in Duluth, Minn., schools because they contain the N–word. This is not new. It has happened before.

What is new, I suppose, is that Duluth won't be taking these books off the shelves entirely. The schools just won't require the students to read them.

Thus I assume there will be no book burnings in Duluth.

I understand the reasoning behind this move — but I believe it is faulty and dangerous.

School districts feel they are showing sensitivity by not requiring students to read words they may find offensive.

But I think they are doing more harm than good.

You can't protect people from things that are offensive. The world is a messy place. And if kids are anything like they were when I was in high school, it's too late to protect them. They've been exposed to far worse than the N–word already.

Besides, you have to keep in mind the context in which the offensive word was used.

Twain wrote about 19th–century America. My grandparents were born in 19th–century America, and they used that word as an adjective, no different for them than describing the color of someone's hair. When I read "Huckleberry Finn" — and I have read it several times and plan to do so again soon — I can see and hear my grandparents.

Twenty–first–century readers see a racial slur, a noun, when they see the word nigger, and that is consistent with their times and conditioning. But people of the 19th century frequently used it as an adjective, a modifier — which was consistent with their times and conditioning.

And I'm certain they would have been appalled if anyone had suggested that they were racists. The N–word was simply a word that was in common use in the world in which they grew up.

I grew up in a different world. And in hindsight, by modern standards, perhaps my grandparents were racists.

But if they were, they were products of the world in which they were raised. I believe it is wrong to hold people from a different time to modern standards — and isn't that what school districts are doing when they take this kind of step?

As for Harper Lee's book — she wrote about the American South in the '30s. She told an important story that couldn't be told without that word. The people who used it in the book were, without a doubt, racists, but the book taught a valuable lesson and is regarded as perhaps the finest example of 20th–century American literature. If you scrub it clean of the N–word, you rob it of its impact.

I believe writers use words for specific purposes. In this case, the N–word provided insight into the reality of times and places the reader would never see. But I think it also was used by these writers — and others — to make readers feel a little uncomfortable. Before any significant change of any kind can come, people must feel uncomfortable.

I have heard of at least one publisher that has published an alternative version of "Huckleberry Finn" in which the N–word was replaced by the word slave. But if the issue is racism, that substitution is meaningless. Anyone can be a slave. Historically, it is not a condition that has been defined by race.

So let's stop tap dancing around the real issue. Let's have a long overdue conversation about race in this country. Let's be blunt and talk about the things that we have avoided talking about. Let's face facts, however unpleasant those facts may be. I'm not an advocate of rewriting history — and I am certainly not in favor of rewriting Twain (as if anyone could).

I love history for many reasons, but one of the most important is summed up in the words of philosopher George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Twain and Lee and similar writers help us remember our messy past so we don't have to make the same mistakes.

Wednesday, February 07, 2018

An American in Paris

Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris," a French–Italian movie that premiered across the United States on this day in 1973, caused quite a stir — such a stir that Premiere Magazine included it in its "100 Movies That Shook the World" list.

It received an X rating, which has come to be associated with pornography but was initially given to legitimate feature films (1969's "Midnight Cowboy," for example) that had content deemed too extreme for children. That applied not only to sexual content but to violent content as well.

Film critic Roger Ebert gushed about "Last Tango in Paris" after its New York premiere in late 1972: It was "one of the great emotional experiences of our time," he wrote. "It's a movie that exists so resolutely on the level of emotion, indeed, that possibly only Marlon Brando, of all living actors, could have played its lead. Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?"

And need, Ebert wrote, was what the movie was really about. It had some explicit nudity and not–quite–as–explicit sex, which got all the headlines — and that was used as the promotional hook to lure audiences to theaters — but I think Ebert was on to something when he said the movie was about need.

"There is a lot of sex in this film," Ebert wrote, "more, probably, than in any other legitimate feature film ever made — but the sex isn't the point, it's only the medium of exchange."

Brando's character, a middle–aged American widower living in Paris, certainly had needs. And Ebert was right about his vulnerability. When the movie began, Brando's wife was already dead, a suicide victim, so the viewers never saw anything of the marriage other than what was said about it on the screen, and the reason for the suicide was never revealed so the viewers never really knew why she did it. Still there were some ominous clues scattered about the story.

That isn't the best way to judge a marriage, obviously, but the union clearly left a lot to be desired — and the vulnerability of Brando's character had deep roots in that. That was clear when Brando ranted while standing at his wife's coffin at her wake.

Brando's character had been abused, and it had been a lifelong story of abuse. It started with his alcoholic parents, and it continued from there into a marriage that was abusive, if not physically then certainly emotionally.

The role had its flaws, but I thought the character suffered from arrested development from his youth that carried into his adult years. That was why Ebert observed that Brando's character was "a man whose whole existence has been reduced to a cry for help — and who has been so damaged by life that he can only express that cry in acts of crude sexuality."

The nudity and the sexuality amounted to no more than stage props for the story. "Last Tango in Paris" wasn't about those things.

Well, let me amend that.

It was about sex in the sense that some people use sex as a haven and a weapon, not as an expression of love for another person, and the lovers in "Last Tango in Paris" were like that.

The relationship between Brando and a young French woman (Maria Schneider), though, was mostly physical. At Brando's character's insistence, they knew nothing of each other, not even each other's names. But that didn't mean they didn't use sex as a haven and a weapon as well, even as a physical release — but never as an expression of genuine affection.

I have heard people call it Brando's greatest performance, and I have my issues with that. It was a nuanced performance, I will concede that, but I am far more likely to align myself with Ebert, who wrote that he didn't know if it was Brando's greatest performance, but the movie "certainly contains his most emotionally overwhelming scene" — his rant next to his wife's coffin. Ebert wrote that Brando delivered "one of the most moving speeches of love I can imagine."

In that scene, Ebert wrote, Brando "makes it absolutely clear why he is the best film actor of all time. He may be a bore, he may be a creep, he may act childish about the Academy Awards — but there is no one else who could have played that scene flat–out, no holds barred, the way he did, and make it work triumphantly."

Brando was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for Best Actor (which he lost to Jack Lemmon). Bertolucci was nominated for Best Director (and lost to George Roy Hill).

Schneider, who later said she felt raped by the experience, received no Oscar consideration.

A Flying Dutchman of the Space Age

In 1993, "Groundhog Day" was a truly clever premise for a movie.

But it wasn't truly original.

With apologies to Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, I would submit for your approval the suggestion that Twilight Zone explored the concept of re–living something repeatedly less than a week after Groundhog Day in 1963 — 55 years ago today, in fact — in the episode "Death Ship."

It wasn't as clear in "Death Ship" as it was in "Groundhog Day." But that is how Twilight Zone operated. Viewers frequently had to wait until the very end to understand what had been going on.

A three–man crew (Jack Klugman, Ross Martin and Fred Beir) was on a mission to explore space in search of planets to analyze and determine if they could be colonized. In the course of carrying out this mission, the astronauts spotted a shining light from a planet. The possibility existed that the planet might be more than merely capable of supporting life; it might actually be doing so, and the astronauts decided to land on the planet and investigate.

On the surface of the planet, they discovered a crashed spaceship had been responsible for the sparkle they had seen from space. The spaceship looked remarkably like their own. Upon closer inspection, they determined that it was a ship from Earth — and they decided to enter it and assess the damage.

When they did so, they had a revelation — the ship was theirs, and their lifeless bodies were inside.

It goes without saying that this was an unnerving experience, and the crewmen were understandably shaken by it. But the commander (Klugman) kept his head and insisted that there had to be a logical explanation for what they had seen.

The commander concluded that they had bent time in such a way as to peek into the future. He reasoned that they could escape their fate by remaining on the planet and not going back into space, thus averting the entire crash. The crewmen grudgingly accepted the commander's version of events.

At that point, Beir's character was transported to a country lane on Earth where he met up with people from his past who were known to be dead. He ran to the home in which he and his wife had lived, but he found no one there. All he found was a telegram reporting his death.

Klugman brought him back and told him he had been having an hallucination.

Martin was having an hallucination of his own. In his hallucination, he was reunited with his wife and daughter, who had been dead for some time. Klugman intervened in that one as well.

But his theory of what had happened had changed. He believed the planet was inhabited by creatures with telepathic power but little else they could use against intruders. To avoid being colonized, they were using this power to plant terrifying visions in the minds of the astronauts to discourage them from recommending the planet for colonization.

He also believed that they should return to space. That would break the spell. So that is what they did — except when they returned to the planet, they still found the wreckage of the spaceship there. The crew members were convinced that they were dead, but Klugman wasn't, and he insisted that they would repeat the procedure as many times as it took for him to figure out the truth.

Thus the similarity between "Death Ship" and "Groundhog Day." in "Groundhog Day," the audience actually saw Bill Murray re–living the same day, and the humor (and, at times, poignance) was in the variations. In "Death Ship," the repetition was not seen, only anticipated — and there was nothing funny about it.

The first time I saw this episode, I had high hopes for it when I saw in the credits that the story was written by Richard Matheson, and he didn't let me down.

Not only was Matheson the writer responsible for "Death Ship," but he also wrote more than a dozen of the Twilight Zone's top episodes. Most were from the original series although Matheson did write an episode in the mid–'80s series reboot as well as some work for the 1983 Twilight Zone movie.

Whenever I see Matheson's name in the credits — for Twilight Zone or anything else — I am always assured of the quality of what I am about to see. His stories never had wasteful filler, which was frequently a problem for the one–hour episodes of the Twilight Zone in its fourth season.

If you are a fan of the Twilight Zone, you are sure to recognize some of Matheson's episodes. Probably the most famous was "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," in which a young William Shatner played a man recovering from a nervous breakdown who believed he saw a monster tampering with the wing of the airplane in which he was traveling.

My favorite Matheson–penned episode was "A World of His Own," the finale of the first season.

Playin' Those Mind Games

"The key to this game is being able to read people."

Ben (Matthew McConaughey)

When I was a boy, I had a big crush on Goldie Hawn. She was still young and beautiful in those days, had moved on from television work and had already won an Oscar in a still–nascent acting career.

Her daughter, Kate Hudson, co–starred with Matthew McConaughey in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," which premiered on this day in 2003. I would have regarded that title as an oxymoron if Goldie Hawn had starred in such a movie when I was a boy. I couldn't possibly understand why anyone wouldn't want to be with Goldie Hawn. I just thought she was so dang cute.

And, before I saw the movie, I found it pretty hard to comprehend about Goldie's daughter, too. Hudson looks a lot like her mother. She probably looked more like her mother a few years earlier when she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (for "Almost Famous"). Unlike her mother, though, she did not win the Oscar — and she hasn't been nominated for one since.

It was hardly surprising that neither she nor McConaughey was nominated for "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," considering that it had all the elements of a screwball comedy, which are audience pleasers but seldom regarded as Oscar material.

Except it couldn't pull it off.

Hudson was a how–to writer for a women's magazine. McConaughey worked for an ad agency. They were thrown together by work–related wagers. Hudson was doing research for a how–to in reverse — all about the things that women do to drive men away. McConaughey's wager, to make a woman fall in love with him in 10 days, was tied to his pitch for a multimillion–dollar account.

Egged on by their respective bosses (Bebe Neuwirth and Robert Klein) Hudson and McConaughey pursued their hidden agendas, feeding off each other with reckless abandon — until that inevitable moment when they learned the truth — you know, the just desserts payoff that defines the screwball or romantic comedy and essentially justifies all that has come before.

From this premise, I will admit, the writers came up with some clever angles, and I do know a few young women who consider "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" the greatest romantic comedy of all time — but that's really a stretch when you consider the truly great romantic comedies of the past.

Perhaps in the realm of the modern romantic comedy (roughly, the last two decades), it might be considered the best, but that is because romantic comedies themselves have changed in that time — and not for the better, in the eyes of some. Modern romantic comedies tilt rather heavily toward stereotypes that, by their definition, exclude chunks of the audience. Classic screwball/romantic comedies relied on truly bizarre circumstances that were not exclusive.

Weird things happen. Really weird things happen in rom–coms and screwball comedies.

For instance, more people could relate to Cary Grant's conundrum in "My Favorite Wife," in which his wife, who had been missing for seven years and was presumed dead, showed up just as he was about to remarry, than to Hudson and McConaughey, two upper–class, well–paid and well–educated young people playing mind games with each other.

And when they weren't playing with each other, they were watching the NBA Finals from practically courtside seats. Sometimes they killed two birds with one stone. Pretty unrealistic.

Of course, rom–coms have always been unrealistic. It is their exaggerated circumstances that usually make them work. But there are those who believe they have taken a darker turn of late.

I have read of the unhealthy effects of modern rom–coms on real–life relationships and how they interfere with people's ability to communicate with each other. That makes sense to me.

Frankly, though, "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" wasn't good enough, by those standards, to have that kind of influence on people.

I thought it was mostly silly — and, seen in that light, it may have been a worthy successor to the Rock Hudson–Doris Day flicks. Rom–coms are nothing if not silly.

But I really didn't feel that Hudson and McConaughey had that kind of chemistry.

Consequently, when their moments of comeuppance came, I found it hard to care. Their behavior may have justified those moments but not the two hours I invested in watching the movie.

(By the way award–winning composer Marvin Hamlisch made a cameo appearance during the comeuppance. I liked Hamlisch, and I suppose someone had to play such a role, but I lost a little of my regard for him when I saw him in this movie.)

Sometimes I wonder if that isn't expecting too much from a rom–com. The romantic/screwball comedy genre is and always has been escapism, and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" delivered in that regard.

Mostly.

It had that light–hearted wink wink nudge nudge kind of humor that is so characteristic of such a movie, but, in this case, it struck me as almost sad the way these characters reeked of insincerity.

I guess the joke was that neither was sincere to begin with.

Tuesday, February 06, 2018

R.I.P., John Mahoney

It was with great sadness that I learned yesterday of John Mahoney's death at the age of 77.

He wasn't the star of the Frasier program, which was one of my favorite TV series of the last couple of decades, but he was always good in it.

It is always a sign that I really like someone or something when I can't narrow my favorite of whatever it is to merely one.

For example, I was once asked to name one thing my grandmother used to make that I really liked. I couldn't answer that because I liked everything my grandmother made. She was the best cook I ever knew, and I'll be stunned if anyone surpasses her. Picking one thing she made would seem as if I had a preference for that over everything else she made, and that simply wasn't true.

Similarly, I can't name my favorite Frasier episode. I like several for a variety of reasons. I could never narrow it down to one.

But one thing that was consistent was Mahoney's role as the anchor of the show. His sons, Niles and Frasier, were flighty sorts who were often unrealistic in their expectations. Mahoney kept them grounded as best he could.

That wasn't always possible, but he did try.

I find it hard to name my favorite episode that focused primarily on Mahoney. There were some, and as I say he was always good, but he was probably best in his supporting role, delivering germane remarks at appropriate times.

I don't want to overlook his contributions to movies, either.

I guess my favorite movie in which Mahoney appeared was "Eight Men Out," the story of the Chicago Black Sox. He was known mostly as a stage actor, but you might be surprised to see how many movies he was in.

They were always better for his participation in them.

Rest in peace, Mr. Mahoney.

Monday, February 05, 2018

The Need to Know

"To me, to kill is not the worst thing you can imagine. There is more."

Barney (Jeff Bridges)

I have never seen the original version of "The Vanishing" that premiered in 1988. I have only seen the remake that was released on this day five years later — and when I saw it, I had no idea it was a remake.

I have heard the remake was thoroughly inferior to the original — which doesn't surprise me since I have yet to see a remake of any movie that I thought was an improvement on the original.

(Speaking of the original, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that it was "one of the most intelligent thrillers I've seen.")

Nothing that I have read suggests that the '93 remake of "The Vanishing" was an exception to that rule — but since I had nothing to compare, I thought it was OK. Not the best thriller I have ever seen but certainly not the worst.

It isn't uncommon for movies to be remade, of course, but "The Vanishing" was an odd exception to the rule. Normally, a remake is done by a different director, but the same man — George Sluizer — directed both.

Weird, huh?

Apparently, the primary sticking point between the two is that the original, which was primarily shown in Europe, was uncompromising in its conclusion whereas the remake seems to have been watered down to suit American audiences' preference for happy endings.

I still haven't seen the original, although I would like to, but I have read comparisons of the movies, and I have concluded that, while I liked the acting in the version I saw, I almost certainly would prefer the original movie. That isn't surprising, either, given that the remake starred Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland, two actors whose work I admire. It co–starred Sandra Bullock and Nancy Travis. To be candid, I have long believed that Bullock is overrated, but I do like Travis' work.

Bridges played Barney, a chemistry teacher who was obsessed with the concept of free will. He was endlessly plotting to abduct and kill someone, and he conducted numerous trial runs, which always failed.

More than anything it was an intellectual pursuit, a kind of mind game. His character was driven by a memory from his childhood — when he had leaped from a balcony and injured himself. At the time, he knew that most people do not do certain things because that is how they have been conditioned, but he reasoned that there was nothing more than that to keep them from doing those things.

In other words, it was still a matter of free will, even if choosing to do something was sure to lead to an unpleasant outcome like injury or death.

The act of killing another human being, therefore, was also a matter of free will.

Then one day an opportunity just fell into his lap. Jeff (Sutherland) and Diane (Bullock), a young couple on vacation, stopped at an all–purpose roadside convenience store/gas station. Diane went in to get some cold drinks — and was never seen again.

The audience knew what had happened, of course, but Sutherland did not, and that began his personal quest to find out. It grew into an obsession that Bridges' character would one day use against him.

The audience knew that Bridges had seen the "missing" posters that Sutherland's character kept putting up around town and even expressed his admiration for Sutherland's persistence.

Ultimately he was moved to seek out Sutherland and confess that "I am the man you're looking for." He said Sutherland could learn what had happened to his girlfriend, but Bridges warned Sutherland that he would have to be willing to go through precisely what his girlfriend had gone through in order to learn what he sought.

Jeff balked at that.

"You don't care if she is alive or dead anymore," Barney asserted.

"Yes, I do," Jeff insisted.

"No, you don't," Barney replied. "You're just scared that without the search you won't know who you are. Who is Jeff Harriman if he's not the guy looking for Diane? Can you really walk away from finally knowing the answer?"

After serious deliberation, Sutherland decided he had to know what had happened — which proved the truth of what Bridges' character had told him. "Your obsession is my weapon."

I'll leave it at that — except to note a few other things.

Travis' role was an interesting one — and a big part of the reason why I would like to see the original version of the movie. Travis played Sutherland's new girlfriend.

"In the earlier film, he takes a new girlfriend, who finally leaves him because she cannot compete with the memory of the vanished woman," Ebert wrote. "In this version, his new girlfriend sticks around because she'll be needed for the ending."

Ebert's position was that the first movie made sense because it remained true to its original premise however ugly it became. The compromised conclusion made a lot of changes necessary in the remake that veered from that premise, resulting in a movie that was, in Ebert's eyes, "laughable, stupid and crude."

"The first movie was existential in its merciless unfolding," Ebert wrote. "This one turns into a slasher movie with a cheap joke at the end."

Now I am willing to concede — without even having seen both movies — that the first version was probably superior to the remake. That isn't much of a stretch for me, really. If you read back over this blog, you will find many times when I have spoken disparagingly of remakes, and I am sure this remake is no exception — although to make such a judgment it really is necessary to see both movies, isn't it?

No, I do not doubt that the original was better — and I hope to see the original someday — but I really don't see how the role of the villain could be played better than it was by Jeff Bridges, who sent a series of chills down my spine simply because he was so clinical in his approach to taking another life. It was the same to him as an experiment in one of his chemistry classes.

Bridges was very effective, even managing to be sympathetic at first. For awhile I kind of liked the guy — even though I knew that, ultimately, he would be the bad guy, which he was.

A creepier villain has seldom been seen in the movies.

Sunday, February 04, 2018

SNL and the Super Bowl

There was a time when I was a devoted fan of Saturday Night Live.

I watched it faithfully whenever it was on. Sometimes I watched the reruns if I knew a program I had enjoyed the first time was being shown again.

But in recent years I have lost interest in Saturday Night Live. I don't mind if comedy occasionally takes sides on an issue, but Saturday Night Live's comedy has shown entirely too much bias for my taste in recent years.

I don't tend to watch late–night TV much anymore. And on Saturday nights, I usually find something else to do when Saturday Night Live is on. Such was the case last night.

I really regret that now.

This morning I saw a video of a skit that ran during last night's show that was so reminiscent of SNL in its prime. It was set during the Revolutionary War with colonial leaders gathering in Philadelphia's Independence Hall to discuss things. There was a collective groan when news reached them that the British had been defeated in New England.

At that point the patriots from New England came into the room, hoisting beer steins and boasting of their victories ("We are the patriots of New England, and we are unstoppable!") — especially the latest one in which their leader, Capt. Thomas Brady, had launched a great comeback with his cannon after the British had pushed the patriots "fohty yawds" behind their line.

Then the delegation from Philadelphia came in. They used words like youse and called Boston a "college town with a fishing pier" and referred to themselves as "rowdy Quakers." They brought food like venison hoagies.

Obviously the skit was poking fun at the participants in the Super Bowl, which is slated to start in a few hours.

Maybe you have to be a lover of history like myself to appreciate some of the humor, but it really struck me as the best skit of its kind since early in SNL's existence, when the program's trailblazers like Bill Murray and Garrett Morris saluted Lord Douchebag (Buck Henry).

Anyway, the skit came to an end when the two groups agreed to take their fight outside — and the delegates who remained in Independence Hall wondered if it would be possible for both to lose.

No doubt millions of people are wondering the same thing today.

The Naked Truth

On this night in 1973, MASH revisited a theme it first explored in the Christmas season of 1972 — a letter from Hawkeye to his father updating him on the activities at the 4077th.

"Dear Dad ... Again" followed the same format as its predecessor, but it did it a little better the second time around.

Take Hawkeye's update on Klinger (Jamie Farr), for example. Klinger had taken to wearing a white wedding dress.

Hawkeye was complimentary. "It's easy to go overboard with one of those things," he told Klinger, "but that's tasteful without being gaudy."

He did have some constructive criticism for Klinger, though.

"You must wear a slip! With the sun behind you, I can see clear through to your shorts."

Hawkeye began working on a letter to his father out of sheer boredom, and he claimed he wasn't the only one in camp who was bored and complacent. He made a bet with Trapper (Wayne Rogers) that he could walk into the mess hall naked, and no one would notice.

He lost that bet, and as he was leaving, he encountered Klinger, who said, "Now that's tasteful without being gaudy!"

Frank (Larry Linville) and Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) had a falling out, and a despondent Frank returned to the Swamp with a rare request. He wanted a drink from Hawkeye and Trapper's still. Then, while under the influence, he confessed to them that his brother had called him Ferret Face when they were younger.

Late arrivals to the MASH series probably heard folks at the 4077th calling him Ferret Face in subsequent seasons, but they most likely thought it originated in the camp — unless they saw the first–season episode in syndicated reruns.

Radar (Gary Burghoff) became a high school graduate via a correspondence course. He had to verify his final grades before receiving his diploma so he tried to sneak them past Henry (McLean Stevenson) along with other documents Henry had to sign. It didn't work; Henry insisted that the grades that were reported had to be legitimate.

Sometimes Henry's conversations with Radar were worth the price of admission. In this episode, they were pure gold. When Henry asked Radar about the document, Radar told him the contents were restricted.

"You can tell me," Henry replied. "It's got my name on it."

The primary story centered on a Capt. Casey (Alex Henteloff), a new member of the medical staff who was a superb surgeon. Everyone was wowed by the things he did in the O.R. — until Hawkeye learned through Radar that Capt. Casey wasn't really a surgeon. He was an impostor.

Casey told Hawkeye he had done other things — such as practicing law and working as an engineer — that required specialized training, but he had never had the patience to do things by the numbers. Hawkeye promised to report him to the authorities if he ever caught Casey practicing medicine without the proper credentials — and insisted that Casey (whose real name turned out to be Schwartz) look him up the minute he got those credentials. "You're a damn fine surgeon," he said.

What most people probably did not know at the time the episode was first broadcast — and what most people probably still do not know — is that the character was based on a real impostor from the Korean War era — a fellow named Ferdinand Waldo Demara.

Demara pretended to be many things — among them an engineer, a prison warden, a monk, a teacher, a cancer researcher. He also masqueraded as a Canadian war ship's surgeon and operated on 16 people during the Korean War.

The character in the MASH episode was based on Demara, but it wasn't the first time his life story was fictionalized like that. In 1960 the movie "The Great Impostor" was based on Demara's exploits and starred Tony Curtis in the title role.

The Perfect Fit

Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth): I mapped out our dominant and recessive traits on a genome square, applied Mendel's laws, allowed for anomalies and concluded that you are the best biological choice.

Frasier (Kelsey Grammer): I see. Well, as enticed as I am by your honeyed words, I'm gonna need some kissin'.

In the episode of Frasier that first aired 15 years ago tonight, "Lilith Needs a Favor," Frasier's ex–wife Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) made the long flight from Boston to Seattle to ask for a special favor.

She had a delightful in–flight conversation with her seatmate in which she mentioned that she was going to Seattle to ask a favor. Her seatmate was going to Seattle in pursuit of a job. Their conversation began with a discussion of how both were unusually pale.

"My ex–wife used to say she could tell when I was embarrassed," Lilith's seatmate said, "because I'd turn off–white."

Lilith was yearning to be a mother again. Their son was almost grown, and she was overcome by a wave of nostalgia for the days when he was a baby. She craved the feeling of being wanted and needed.

So she came to Frasier hoping to get him to contribute some sperm that she could take back with her. She wanted their son to have a full sibling and, being the woman of science that she was, Lilith had subjected the matter to numerous tests and concluded Frasier was the best choice to father her child.

Frasier, though, was resistant and asked for time to think about it. Lilith agreed to let him think about it and give her the answer at dinner the next night.

He had some questions, too. Would he and Lilith have to sleep together? Lilith said no. She wanted to freeze his sperm.

That opened the door for jokes at Lilith's expense.

"Is that a yes or a no?" Frasier asked.

Frasier was inclined not to agree to Lilith's request — for some pretty valid reasons. But he allowed emotion to overcome reason when he had dinner with Lilith, and she evoked memories of their son when he was little.

So off they went to the clinic, where Frasier was to provide a sperm sample that Lilith would take home with her. But Lilith kept kibitzing, offering advice on the proper mental state for making such a contribution.

Finally, Frasier had had enough. "If there is one thing I can do by myself," he insisted from behind a closed door, "this is it!"

In the end, though, they couldn't avoid the truth. Lilith was trying to recapture the past, and, as Frasier observed, "The past can be very seductive." Nevertheless, he also observed, "You can't use the past to fill what's missing in the present." In one way or another, we all do that, don't we? It's good advice to give but not so easy to follow.

Lilith resisted, however, saying that it "it feels right to me." But it wasn't right for Frasier.

So Lilith flew back to Boston — and found herself seated next to the same seatmate she had on the flight to Seattle. It turned out both their trips had been disappointing. His job prospect wasn't a good fit.

But the seeds of a possibly productive partnership were sown on the flight home.

Saturday, February 03, 2018

The Point of No Return

"Maris and I are back on the expressway to love. Well, if not the expressway, at least the on–ramp."

Niles (David Hyde Pierce)

Love — or at least lust — was truly in the air in the episode of Frasier that first aired on this night 20 years ago.

Long before Frasier's first season was over, everyone knew that Niles (David Hyde Pierce) was infatuated with Daphne (Jane Leeves). Well, everyone knew but Daphne.

At the same time, though, Niles just as clearly wanted to save his troubled marriage to the never–seen but frequently mentioned Maris. During one of their coffees in the first season, Niles and Frasier discussed this very thing, and Frasier mused that what Niles wanted was to remain with Maris but have an affair with Daphne. Niles brightened noticeably at the thought.

The series was roughly at its midpoint in 1998, and it was probably obvious to everyone but Niles that his marriage could not be saved.

He kept trying, though, and in the episode that aired on this night in 1998, "The Maris Counselor," Niles and Maris were seeking marriage counseling under the guidance of a new therapist, Dr. Schenkman (Bob Dishy). Niles was excited and anticipated a rekindling of their love.

Since Niles had recently identified his primary problem as being too predictable, he decided to show Maris how spontaneous he could be by surprising her for an afternoon of passion.

But that wasn't quite how it worked out.

Martin Crane (John Mahoney) was experiencing a shift in his love life as well. A lady in the building in whom Martin had shown an interest gave him a call and invited him to dinner.

For once, the romantic developments did not involve Frasier (Kelsey Grammer). He was primarily a bystander in this episode.

Well, it was Niles who was surprised when he discovered that Schenkman was having an affair with Maris — and Schenkman was at the house at the time. They bumped into each other in the bedroom. Apparently the therapist had had the same inspiration for a little afternoon delight, in the words of the old song. Schenkman was wearing a pair of Niles' pajamas when he encountered the cuckolded spouse.

"Damn you, I trusted you because you were supposed to be helping us," Niles told Schenkman. "And I liked you, too, you bastard. You betrayed my confidence and my friendship, and you seduced my wife."

"Wow," Schenkman replied. "There's a lot of new issues here, aren't there? Think maybe we should kick it up to three sessions a week?

Niles and Frasier were to lead a couples workshop later that day. Niles was late getting there, what with his confrontation with Schenkman, then was morose with the group as Maris' infidelity weighed heavily on his mind. Under the guise of role playing, Frasier tried to persuade the group that Niles was empathizing. He didn't succeed.

Meanwhile, Martin had his dinner date, which didn't turn out exactly the way he planned. Turned out that his date wasn't the attractive tenant after all. It was her 86–year–old mother.

The date didn't go so well. Martin was, apparently, a perfect gentleman, but his date couldn't remember his name and kept dozing off.

Back at Frasier's apartment Frasier tried to console Niles, and the three compared their love lives.

Frasier said he deserved the crown for failed relationships — "Divorced twice, left at the altar once."

Martin differed. His relationship with Sherry fizzled and then his dinner date had been a flop. "I think maybe I deserve the booby prize."

Niles said he could top them both. "Fifteen years with Maris," he said, "I end up in bed with her lover." Niles insisted it had been an accident, that he had thought he was in bed with Maris.

"What tipped you off?" Frasier asked.

"The heat from her side of the bed!" Niles replied.

Therapists have their place, but sometimes a person is his/her own best therapist.