Episode 35: The Coneheads (1983)

M Weird. We welcome to Rankin on Bass, an offhand joke that became a very long running podcast. I'm your host, Mike White, and joining me is a Remulac all star mister Christashu Narvel the Guarda also with us. This is a true parental unit. Mister Richard HadAM, I just wanta groove.

On this podcast, we discussed the works of Arthur Renkins Junior at Jules Bass, specifically some of their stop motion and animated work. And this week we are talking about some animation and we are talking about a couple things from nineteen seventy two. There were a lot of TV shows going on then, as you know if you've listened to the last few episodes, and first and foremost we're talking about the nineteen eighty three pilot for the Coneheads animated show, written by Franken and Davis, two of the original writers from Saturday Night Live and Sorry, and featuring the voice cast of the one and only Dan Aykroyd, Wooho, Jane Pertin and even scooching in there, Lorraine Newton, sorry Newman. And then we've got Tom Davis doing a voice in here as well, sounding like he's fifty years old, but dating Connie that was uncomfortable anyway.

Chris, what did you think of The Conehead's animated pilot show? Did I say, I'm glad I live in a universe where this isn't a thing we had to watch more of than one episode of. Because this was in a way that the Coneheads movie, which I am a huge fan of, and I said it before, I'll say it again, I think it's actually a pretty funny movie and a good dan Ackroyd performance all in all the ways that that's good. This is really bad from the I would say the ghoulish design of Beldar Conehead. He looks like a pig for no reason.

Dan Ackroyd never looked like that at all. To just it being pretty much, I guess it's just the background of the Coneheads, which was kind of told in their sketches but then is expounded upon more in the movie, so it's kind of weird. They're like doing the movie before the movie comes out. And again, if you compare the two things, this is a massive failure because I mean, ultimately it's literally not much of anything. It's just kind of a disappointment and ultimately a lot of the decisions, including the voice Dan Akroyd does is beyond grading.

Okay, let's go through the chronology. So the Conehead sketch is on Saturday Night Live, and that's in the late seventies, right, seventy seven January of seventies. That's the first one, okay, And it's created is that sketches written by Frankin and Davis. I assume it's a dan Akroyd thing. That's so funny, because that's what I just I'm like, it's got to be Akroyd, of course.

I mean, yeah, dan Akrid sitting smoking those cigarettes in that room, going ladies and gentlemen. Do you know about aliens? Yeah, it's gotta be dan Akrd. It feels like Akroyd. Okay.

So then so that's the first iteration. Then this animated version was eighty three, and then the movie was ten years later in ninety three. Have I got that right correct? Okay? So this was the first, like, okay, outside of Saturday Night Live.

Let's let's give this a try. Clearly it I don't know if it was supposed to light the world on fire and end up having one hundred episodes, or if it was just a special Unfortunately, my ranking and bass book is over there on the shelf and I can't reach it. But anyway that happens the Conehead movie happens ten years later, which I didn't see. Then three years after the Conehead's movie, Third Rock from the Sun premieres, created by the two people who wrote the Conehead's movie. So this is the trajectory of aliens trying to get along with humans and act all normal, even though they're here to study us and they have their own strange anti human ways.

I'll say this, I was never a big fan of the Coneheads as a concept. I never felt like it was an extremely robust comedic beyond them having coneheads and and sort of the you know, you know, first thought theater joke of they're they're somewhat robotic and non emotional and they don't understand how we behave. The joke never went beyond that. Now, maybe it did in the movie, and I didn't see the movie, but for me, it was sort of like, you know, the joke takes a half a step and never goes any further. I make the immigrant crack because that is what the Codeheads always feels like to me, is it's like kind of poking fun at like the immigrant experience through the lens of whenever we're telling the story and the night and in the nineties, Like I will say, the nineties movie is a lot better than any other Coneheads thing, primarily because of the point that you mentioned, which is the thing that doesn't again doesn't take a whole lot of research.

Bonnie and Terry Turner half of the script. I mean, their names are on half of that script. So and then they go on to make I would say, a show that's more successful with the same premise. But right, it's only because of their involvement that the movie isn't exactly what the show that we watched is, which is just isn't it weird that they don't get it? The movie's actually kind of a little bit more endearing than that, and there's actually somewhat of a character arc with the characters, which again I don't think comes from people other than the people who worked on a show where that was the expectation, that's what they wanted to do.

Anyways, Well, okay, so let's jump back to Saturday Night Live for a second and kind of talk about that. Now, there was another famous sketch that got repeated A bunch that was about there was also sort of an immigrant thing, but it was it was more pointed, and it was way funnier, and it was the fest Trunk Brothers, the Czechoslovakian Brothers do Wild and Crazy Guys exactly, but that was all based on We're from Eastern Europe, where our sort of our culture is is pretty you know, walled off, literally, and we're picking up little stray signals from America culture, which feels exciting and colorful and sexy, and we're young men and of course we want some of that. So we come to America and now we're we're dressing and acting and talking the way we think cool Americans are talking.

But we're getting it wrong because we didn't get all the information that you get. And it's like, oh, okay, they're trying to be cool, but it's not working. And of course you've got Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd doing it and they're absolutely hilarious, and tons of catchphrases wild and crazy guys, but all I mean, all kinds of stuff. Anyway that felt like, Okay, I get what the joke is. Now, I would put cone Heads, alongside another Saturday Night Live semi staple, a series of of sketches called The White Debts.

Do you remember this? You don't have to give me more than that. The White Debts were a family with really big asses. Oh okay, God, that's the joke. Yeah, the white Heads.

Hey, let's go visit the White Adds and they all walk around and they just have these giant butts and that's it. So it's like, Okay, the Coneheads have big heads, the Whitetts have giant asses, and that's that's kind of where the joke ends. So for me, Coneheads were always a bit more like the White Debts, like we have cones for heads, get it. But they're aliens, okay, so again we barely scratch the surface. They have no assumptions about how humans act.

They they don't necessarily have a ton of expectations for their own agenda. They're just sort of here the one thing and I'll say, and I know this is something I don't say a lot. Lorraine Newman was the best part of this. She never got to do anything on Saturday Night Live. She was the most underserved performer there.

She was hilarious, but just didn't get a bunch of material here, because her character is the one whose try. She's more of the Festrunk brothers. She's the one who's like, I want to be I want to go to the disco and be groovy with the other kids. You're a drag mom and dad. And then at least you get it.

It's like, Okay, she's learning how to be American human and the parents don't understand it. And now we've got a family drama comedy, and now at least there's a concept. Rebuttal, Chris, you have three minutes for Rebuttal. I want to hear from Mike Well. I grew up on the Coneheads, watching them on Saturday Night Live.

It was one of those before they really started to take characters for me anyway, take characters and just beat them until they were a dead horse. Just this idea of we're going to do it over and over and over again. But then I look at the appearances on SNL and it was almost every single month they were doing a Coneheads thing. January, yeah, yeah, May, and then we go October. Then January said eighth March May okay, so the space in them out a little bit October and then February twenty four, seventy nine, so they weren't overdoing it, thank goodness, because I remember the years of like the Church Lady where it was like, oh my god, another freaking Church Lady skit.

Yeah. I enjoyed them when I was a kid. I mean I was five when they first actually four when they first came on the air. That's about right. That, that's I think that's about right though, you know.

And seeing Saturday and At Live when I was four or five six years old was ooh, that was forbidden fruit, right. I remember seeing parts of the Conehead movie in probably ninety five ninety six when I was working at a cable company, and I just remember mostly when they go back to Remulac. And then I watched it for this show The Ultimate Sacrifice, and I enjoyed it. I thought it was pretty good. This animated special really do too much for me.

I'm curious, though I wanted to go back. I was looking for a compilation of all the Conehead skits skits from SNL because I was curious how much came from those versus this eighty three pilot to inform the ninety three movie. Because there were times where I was just thinking, Okay, is the whole thing of him being a repair man was that in SNL? Or is that going to lend itself in this one to the movie? Or her with the vacuum cleaner.

I feel like the vacuum cleaner must have been on SNL. I think it was. Yeah, I feel like it was as well. And you know, the thing about the movie is obviously take the fact that they're characters from SNL out of it, and I think it's still like it's a good movie. It's a good nineties movie.

Like that's it's a good nineties family comedy. Would you like to qualify this any further? I don't know. I mean, there's like a very specific kind of mid nineties family comedy that was really based on July twenty first night. You didn't even watch it, Richard, to be fair, To be fair, friend, I mean the thing that the problem, I think the problem with the cartoon is the charm of Jane Curtin and dan Ackrod is really lost when it's not actually them on the screen.

And that's the problem. I mean, the two of them have some pretty great interactions in the movie, and again, you have to use the movie as the only other thing because it's the most long form version of these characters. And I'm assuming the cartoon was going to be a thing like this was an opportunity to like do more and look, it's effectively the fucking Jetsons, Like, it's just the Jetsons, it's the Jetsons in the now times. I mean again, you know, we're my favorite Martian, but a family instead of just one person. So it's a my f you know, my favorite Martian family type thing.

I mean again, The story is rooted in so many other pop culture things that you can look at that were just as successful. So I don't know why it's not successful other than the fact that they really didn't understand the appeal of the source material because it's so boring and not funny. It's not funny, I mean ultimately, it's not even funny. There's not even a joke that lands in the What's weird is every other time they do anything, any other time ranking in Bass as a cartoon, they just jam in an animal, jam in a talking thing. Oh we'll get there, we'll get there.

Now, we're doing aliens, no animals, no weird space pet. They don't have any powers. It's like, if you're gonna do animation, why do you just give them something that's kind of crazy and fun. You're doing a cartoon. It's sort of for kids, isn't it.

And yet this one plays it as straight as anything they've ever done. It's a sitcom, it's an animated sitcom, but it's so strange. It's like the one time they rein in their desire to have a fucking talking gecko or something, and it's the it's like, no, you've got aliens, have them, have them have weapons or a thing that does a crazy thing that gets everyone in trouble, or i mean even live action alien shows do that. This one was pretty much them going mep mep at each other and then waiting for Lorraine Newman to go on a date. You know, it was not They didn't again, they did not take the material another step forward to humor or even adventure.

Can we point out also and look at works in the movie, but it doesn't work in the cartoon. In the movie, they kind of get away with abbreviating a lot of the stuff. The cone Heads are here, then they come to Earth. Then he gets a job, then they have a baby. Now it's an adult, like a teenage kid, and so like the majority of the narrative takes place during you have a teenager, and so they had to get to that point because that's the expectation of the show or the characters, as they were on SNL quote un it's a cartoon.

They could have done something else. They could have done, like, I mean, again, if this is the pilot for something, I don't know why they didn't tell a longer story about the Coneheads getting to Earth or again, like it just feels like they didn't try very hard for whatever reason, Like they're they're treading old ground that isn't particularly interesting because what they're talking about is just like, okay, so now it's just to the point where instead of talking about any of the interesting alien stuff, we just want to focus on it being a sitcom and although they're gonna sometimes have alien problems, but not really. Now they're just aliens part of a society and it doesn't even seem to be that big of a deal to anybody.

And I know that in the Coneheads movie, nobody comments on the fact that they've got fucking coneheads either. Sort of they kind of do, but they kind of don't. But I don't know, Like the cartoon feels really lazy in a way that Rankin and Bassis stuff, even the stuff that's not great, doesn't feel this lazy. This just feels like they were like, well, this is what they did on SNL, so we're not even going to try. All right, who the hell was going to watch this?

People that hadn't already seen it, Like if they had already seen it on SNL, this isn't going to make them want to stick around because then they're like, oh, you're just gonna do everything else you already did? You have an opportunity with a licensed property to do something else, and they just went, nah, not really okay. So from the Rankin and Bass book, The Enchanted World of Rank and Bass, here's what it says about The Coneheads. The Coneheads is a Cell animated half hour special. There was originally meant to be a series, but the series never materialized.

Quote Tom Davis and Al Frankin developed the show with Arthur and Jules, but there was some creative friction between the teams. Gee you think that was the show's continuity artist Don Duga quote Dan Ackroyd was very helpful to me. He showed me that the characters when they spoke, moved in very close and spoke in your face. The recording session for the show was quite memorable. Jane Curtin brought in her new baby and it was a family type atmosphere with the reunion of the cast of Saturday Night Live.

So okay, we're getting a little bit of information. I think what happened is this is not a Romeo Muller joint. This is a Franken and Davis joint. So we're seeing creatively, script wise something that is much more Franken and Davis than it is the typical ranking and Bess Fair. But at least with the Franken and Davis, you would think that they bring some of this subversive of subversiveness of Saturday Night Live with them.

But it just to Chris's point and to your point, where chard just not a lot of stuff happens. We don't go beyond anything, you know, as you're talking about like having a space deck or something. I'm like, Okay, if they made an animated version of the Monsters, they would probably show spot right. You want to take the things that you couldn't do in the live action version and blow them out and make them bigger and crazier in the animated version because you're not bound by any sort of laws of reality much less budget, So go nuts. Well, I was saying, like, why wasn't this the cone Heads on Remulac?

Right, like really, like, I mean, I understand why the movie wasn't because that would have been super expensive. And we do get to see Remulac in the movie, and you know, it's it's fun. I mean, it's a fun part of the movie. The narfl the Garthok thing is from that I don't know. I mean, again, the movie's charming in its own way.

And again, Richard, I think if you had watched the movie, you would realize that the cartoon is actually worse than it seems now. It's because it's ultimately a bigger missed opportunity, because I don't know what the hell they were thinking about saying, well, let's have them back on Earth, because, like you said, Mike, if we could do anything, why would we set it back on Earth in a trailer part? Why wouldn't we set it on the planet where they're from? And Gab, you know this is before they came to Earth. Who cares.

I mean, Lorraine Newman maybe wouldn't have had a voice to voice, but you could have brought her back anyways, whatever, just because who cares there. I mean again, this is not in a time where anyone hewes closely to the missos anyways, So do whatever the hell you want. But just to just do the thing you've already done but in a cartoon is astoundingly lazy. I mean that's well, the joke you mentioned about how no one notices their heads, I mean, that's another that that could have been the joke of the show, that in the town where they land or in the city where they're living, everyone is sort of bending over backwards to make them feel welcome and don't mention their coneheads, and everyone, oh you're from friend, it's okay.

And and the joke could be about Americans being uncomfortable with foreigners and and that that instinct to accept any sort of behavior. So then that allows them to be totally outrageous, borderline offensive while we are all sitting around going, oh, this is delicious. What do you call this food? Oh it's you know, cat vomit or whatever. They're fucking joke, you know, the joke is that they say the joke is that they eat a lot, but nobody ever even comments on that.

There's just no point of view to the humor. No, there isn't any joke. It's just they have cone heads. They're here and they're not us. End.

There's a moment in the cartoon where dan Ekroyd has a giant plate of hot dogs served to him and he starts eating them, and by eating, I mean swallowing, and then he dips a brush in a bucket of orange paint, paints the hot dog with the paint and eats it. Why was that scene not in front of another character for laughs? Right, like for them to react to like, oh my god, he's putting paint on a hot dog. Oh again, because because the people who are writing this don't understand comedy, that's not it. I don't know what it is, Chris, it was.

It clearly was done for someone, because didn't you hear all that laughter during the show? Yeah? I did? You Know what the problem is? This is an adult property being written by two people that do not write these kinds, don't handle these kinds of property, and frankly clearly should never have been the ones to approach.

And you know what, there's a reason Ranking and mass never did another one of these because they were probably I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say Al Franken and Tom Davis probably told everybody that they knew, don't fucking work with those assholes again, because guess what happened. Then we have all the Robert Smigel stuff on SNL in the nineties and that's done. I don't know who's doing that, but it ain't ranking in Mass so and that's my point, Like ranking Abass pissed away a pretty good opportunity. Here is what this feels like for me. But I also think ranking Abass was the worst fit for this level of humor because this is adult humor now.

When we talk about what we're going to talk about here in a little bit, I think that's more their area of expertise. But even there they can't figure it out. It's just this is too adult for Rankin and Bass. Frankly, like SNL and Rankin and Bass is that that's not peanut butter and jelly. That's like peanut butter and American cheese, Like maybe somebody likes it, but not everything.

Well, I want to ask the question, but I know we're not really here to talk about the movie, But did the movie Did the movie feel more adult? Did it sort of sort of you know, capitalize on the Saturday Night Live sort of edgy humor. It's about as edgy as a nineties SNL movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think it was super edgy. You know, Chris called it a family movie, and it did feel a lot like a family movie.

Having the younger Connie I think helped, and it's just like a teenager in the movie. Yeah. Just the cast is amazing because it's both old school SNL people, people that were on shortly before the movie came out, and then people that were on the show when the movie came out. So you're getting like, you're John Lovetts and Kevin Nielan's and then you're also getting Chris Furlough and Sandler, so you get this whole wide range of people all at the same time. Then it was kind of nice seeing like Dave Thomas from STV and Laurie Newman shows up at one of the big events, and then Garrett Morris was there as well, so it was kind of nice, Wow, you're making me want to see this movie, Phil Harmon and Michael McKeon is the villain of the movie, and then David Spade, is this a little lackey?

Yeah, they're so. It is the thing, Like, it's a really fun movie, and I think it's kind of had its moment recently because a couple of years ago, on Record Store Day, which ends up being my birthday every year, they repressed the soundtrack for Coney on vinyl, and I was like, I don't think people are doing this. If people are, some people aren't remembering this fondly somewhere. So No. To your point, Mike, Like, what it reminds me of is like a lot of the other kind of random nineties comedies that have a shitload of SNL people in them, like Rest in Peace on Norm MacDonald Dirty Work another movie that I love that has tons of including someone we just talked about recently on the Culture guest Chevy Chase, Like I kind of think of Coneheads and that movie in the same breath, or even like some of the early Adam Sandler movies, they are all very of a nineties piece.

I think Coneheads is a little softer in the humor because again it is kind of like a family alien family movie, as much as that's a thing that's ever been a thing. So it sounds like we're we're of a mind that the that the Franken and Davis, Rankin and Bass, you know, sort of you know, hideous scientific experiment trying to join their creative sensibilities did not succeed wildly, say at all. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that this does this make the case for one of the worst things that we've seen. Oh, I don't think it's nearly to that point for me. Yeah, that Red Bar Ending was pretty bad.

Yeah, it was disappointing because of its potential, right, I mean, and like you said, Chris, now that I've heard how interesting the movie sounds, I'm even more disappointed that some of that wasn't explored in this special. But okay, just just to just to watch something that says executive produced by Rankin and Bass and Lorne Michaels, I'm telling you you don't see that every day. That was odd. Yeah, as a match made in in hell is what that is. Frankly, all right, let's uh, let's talk to Jackson five.

Speaking of matches made in hell, Jesus Age Guys, I'm jumping out front here and going to say I think it is very successful. I think this, I liked it, and I actually think it is a successful approach to the material. I'm just gonna I'm laying it down, guys. Yeah, big wow, you want to? You want to back that up now and tell us why you think that?

Yeah? You want to? You want to continue to? They're string yourself up. Bro, Hey, did you do you ask want to cash the chick?

Did your mouth just wrote? Yeah? Okay, let me let me say this. We just sat through something called Willie Mays and the say hey kid. That was a special that seemed to have nothing to do with Willie Mays.

Didn't seem to understand his appeal to anyone or even what he did for a living. Okay, no, that's not true. They moved. I would agree with you. I think they knew he did baseball might be the best way to put it.

What he does baseball means they do not know. They didn't exactly honor it. Okay. What we have here is the Jackson five. Now it has their music.

Unfortunately, they are not voicing their own characters because they were busy being the Jackson five. But that and that's a disappointment, but it is so clearly, like even down to the character design, they're bold enough to go, here's a picture of the actual human being. We're illustrated, and now we're gonna morph it into that care so you can sort of get oh that, okay, that character looks different from this character, just as that Jackson looks different than that Jackson. I will accept that you have the Jackson five music. You have almost a legit, actual origin story that reflects reality about how they started.

There was no pink snake, but you know, well maybe later in life, the pink snake comes later. Yeah, the pink snake is part of the downfall portion of the story. You walked right into that one. The elapse time from this cartoon to the Neverland ranch, it may not seem like a long time, but it was just a zero point three seconds. Many the characters come off as as you know what, I'll say this.

If you've got Help and Hard Day's Night and the Monkeys, you understand that when music groups are fictionalized, there's sort of a wild and crazy you know, we operate by our own rules sort of tone, which this captured. They are they're people who are talented, they have skills. They are behaving in a semi rational way. They sing. Diana Ross hears them, thinks they're great, says, come on back when you get a little older.

They decide, hey, you know what, let's give it a shot. Their enthusiasm gets the better of them. They mess up. Okay, that's fine, that's just story structure. And then Diana Ross goes, oh wait, you are those kids who are really good singers, you know what, sing another song?

Do it quick, I think I can save your ass. They do it. Their own talent saves them, but Diana Ross helps because she forces her her boss Barry Gordy or whoever that's supposed to be. I think it's based on Barry Gordy, but since Paul Freese is doing the voice, you know, it's anyone's guess. And then they become the Jackson Five.

And then they'd go for two seasons. I mean, look of all the shows they did, this one actually went for a while, you know, and it had actual Jackson five music in it, and the Jackson's actually supported it. They did not distance themselves from it. They were like, yes, this is our cartoon. We like it and we will answer your questions.

When I was a kid, I knew who the Jackson five were. I remember watching the show. I remember not hating it, and that's pretty much how I felt now. I think it's just difficult with a show like this where you've got five main characters and nobody's personality really comes through. Maybe Michael's comes through, but yeah, a little bit.

The rest of them are just interchangeable. And I say the exact same thing about the Ozmas, which we'll talk about a little bit. But you know, you've got your usually on your cartoons, You've got your four or five main characters, you know. I'm thinking specifically of like Scooby Doo, and each one of those characters has a very particular personality type except for like Shaggy and Scooby are basically the same people. They both are scarty casts, they both love to eat.

But in here, it's like we don't really get like, oh, Jermaine's the this one and Tito's the this one. It's just they just seem like all the same person Just Jackie Heights almost Jackie comes across as the good looking older brother, you know, and he's the one who's gonna go talk to the receptionist and maybe ask her out on a date and distract her while the others sneak into the recording booth. So I did, at least with his character, get the feeling that, oh, he might emerge as sort of the romantic lead. Michael, of course, is the youngest, and he's the crazy kid with the snake and the two rats named Ray and Charles. Okay, so he's the little kid that we're all supposed to love because we're little kids watching the show.

But I think you're right, and I didn't go deep enough into the show to see if we ever got to the point where it's like, like you said, Tito's the scaredy cat, or you know, Jermaine is the one who's always you know, cracking wise or whatever, which would have been the way to go. And it doesn't help that so many of the other characters are all voiced by Bob McFadden and Paul Freese to the point where it's like this guy sounds exactly like this other guy that we just saw two scenes ago. Yeah. Yeah, they're not really mixing it up too much. I mean, it was it was what it was for me.

The most painful part of it was that damn laugh track and the clause that was going on. Every time they would do a song, you would get this swell of applause as if there was a live audience watching them perform, and that's kind of impossible. It was a little weird, and I think they did it because Hannah Barbara did it with Scooby Doo. There was a laugh track on Scooby Doo, and I think they looked at it and said, well, maybe this is the way to go to the point where they developed their own laugh track. They did not use the pre recorded one that was that was used by Hannah Barbara, and they were like, well, that's too expensive.

Well, just we can hire a group of people to come into a room and laugh in various ways and then we'll own it. We'll own their laugh forever. So this just existed to sell records, right, because that's what this felt like for me watching it now, like it felt it felt like the barest minimum of effort being put into everything but the part with the music. And that's a sad thing because at the end when they do the music video at the end of every single one of these episodes, because that is what this is about. It's so damn appearent where all the effort went into the last five minutes of every episode, which is again I kind of didn't expect anything less, only because again, like you just mentioned Richard, like you said, Mike, the Jackson five was such a big thing and everybody knew who they were, that the expectation wasn't what do you do when you watch the cartoon?

What do you do? You go buy the music. That's the expectation. It's you watch the cartoon and then you buy the music. And so that's what this feels like, is just a really prolonged cartoon to get you to buy Jackson fe five music, merchandise, whatever the hell they're selling at the time, which, again, if that's all it needed to be, that's kind of the way I'm taking it.

That's all the way it is. And you mentioned Richard, they're like, oh, you know, it's supposed to look like Michael Jackson. Only time looks like Michael Jackson is at the beginning when they superimpose his face and in those music parts. Every time else when it's the cartoon varying degrees of success, it sometimes just looked they all look the same at some points because they're just not putting in a lot of effort, which is fine. It's the same thing with the character voices like that, you know, the Paul Freeze just doing the same voice four times, like hello, it's me another character like no, that's that's all right, that's all I wanted to wait to talk to himself.

Yeah, like hey, okay from the book. From the book, Jack Davis did the character designs for the show. The character designs closely resemble the Jackson's as they looked. Then quote, I never did meet the Jacksons, nor did I ever see the finished product. I just did the designs from the photographs as I thought they should look, and that was that, says Davis.

In fact, Davis was flown to California to work on the project, but never left his hotel room. He did all his work from production photos and videos of the Jackson's performances. Okay, So that that is the degree of effort, some effort, but not a laboriously, you know, overwrought attempt to render them as realistically as possible, because it's superstylized. And we get that, yes, it was for teams. Get those you get those animation cycles where it's just the silhouettes of them and they spin around and they clap and then they spin around again, and it's like they use that so many times throughout this entire show.

It was it was a signature move. It's something that you you associated with them. And I think I I think because they were at at least they started out kind of like The Osmonds as a bit of a teeny bopper band, like this is a band for like kids, like pre teens. There were children in the band. I mean, Michael Jackson was a child in the Osmonds, which we're going to talk about in a second.

You know, Jimmy Osmond was a child. Donnie was barely a teenager. So and they were aiming toward the bubblegum crowd. The monkeys were the same way the monkeys were being consumed by grammar school kids. It was you know, teenagers listened also, but they were aiming super young.

So again the fact that a cartoon it made sense. I will say that this is not a head scratcher. Oh, in a way, the Coneheads is a head scratcher. This was like, yeah, of course, that's the other thing about all of this, it's like, you know, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head, Like, sure, it is the Jackson five, but uh, it's the Michael Jackson show. Like the first episode has him going off on his own adventure, like and you know what, the person who it's noticeable that it's not the person voicing it is the Michael Jackson character.

It is so apparent that he's not the one doing the voice, and it is beyond distracting because you know what, I don't know what the rest of the Jackson five sound like, but I sure as hell know what Michael Jackson sounds like. He's kind of like Frankie Valley. He's kind of always sound No, Michael Jackson has kind of always sounded in the samee like, oh, the same way, like just the way Frankie Valley has, Like he has a very distinct voice, and like Michael Jackson had a very distinct voice singing. I mean, he's friend center on ABC for a reason. I mean he's friend center on all their songs for a reason.

I mean there's a reason he had a solo career. Everything else that came after it is a problem. But again, that's what we get for having people that are human beings that make things that we like. Unfortunately, I just I wish it had just been the Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson and the Jackson five just just get it out of the way, like just do it, because like it's gonna happen eventually, and they kind of do it anyways by not saying well, and you know, and we can talk about both simultaneously.

But to move us on for a second to the Osmonds. It's funny how Jimmy Osmond is pushed so front and center right in a way that's like, well, you know, Michael Jackson is the you know, lightning rod for the Jackson five, Jimmy is the little kid. So and you know, just like the Partridge Family where the you know, the almost the younger of the kid, the more the center. It's not even Donnie, like now we think, oh, well, the Osmonds were Donnie and Marie. Well, Marie's not in this show.

It was the Osmonds, and Donnie was sort of the teeny bopper girl dream. But the cartoon is pushing Jimmy because he's the youngest, and they're like, look, we'll give him a talking pet, which we'll talk about and then the kids will have someone to connect to because they'll be like, oh, that's sort of me. And then if I was in that group, that'd be me, and I'd have a dog named Fuji who speaks in any Asian accent. Shall we say question? I mean he sounded so boris Benenov to me, but it was so clear that it was supposed to be Asian.

I mean he even says it. He's like, wait, are we going to Japan? Is that oriental? Because my dog is Oriental and I'm not getting along with him, so I don't want to go. So it's like, okay, decision number one.

His dog's going to talk to the audience. I guess, I don't know if it's talking to him like son of Sam, and he's going to talk in a Far East accent that I would say is pure ranking and pass. And then the show is based on and again this sounds like a good idea, but I can only imagine they are hired to be sort of ambassadors of music around the world from America and they get to try so every episode. This will be China, this will be India, this will be you know, the Netherlands or Italy, or Australia. So we're gonna go and then we're gonna feast upon the racial stereotypes offered up by those cultures.

Fish is out of water, bro, That's the entire show. It's like, ah yea yi, it should have been the the Jackson five show. Should have been this. It should have been the Jackson five traveling the world. But then but see, well yeah it could have been.

It could have been. They did travel the world. They were you know, then I but then I guess you can't mine as much racist bullshit, right, Well, but there's also you know, Donnie gets to ooh he's dating an Italian girl this week. Oh, next week it's a London light day, thank you, this whole thing like, and so I started off with the Transylvania episode and I just knew, like, okay, we're gonna have lots of monster jokes, and it basically basically became Mad Monster Party featuring the Osmans. And then I was like, should I do another one?

I said, you know, I've got the one from Spain all right before I even watch it. Let me see if I can predict there's gonna be a lot of bullfighting, maybe some paea and I'm just like thinking of as many as many Spanish stereotypes as that possibly can football, oh boy, and they didn't disappoint man Donny becomes a bullfighter and that some of the brothers get into a bull costume, and I was like, Okay, well should I watch the Australia version so I can see them hop around with like some fucking kangaroos and use a boomerang. I mean, it's just every stereotype that you can think of. It's like a five year old's impression of the rest of the world. And I love the India.

The India episode's great. In the first five minutes, they're riding on elephants. It's great. Oh my god, I love it. I'm glad they didn't eat monkey brains at one point.

That's a low blow to a movie, I like, but a low blow. Nonetheless, I'll go there. I mean, this is worse. This. I mean, this is like, I don't know, it's like that like White Eyes of the seventy racism, where it's like it's I mean, it's racism and it's intolerance, and the characters of other cultures always look real bad.

They're they're stereotypes. Yah, bones through noses at all. I mean when they remember what what was it where they showed Africa. What's remember one of those things was the Emperor's new clothes and they showed people in Africa and they literally had bones their notes like come on show, like you don't have to go there. Well, this is very much early seventies and very much rank in Bass.

This sort of like hey, let's you know, like we're not we're not coming at it with hatred, but we are coming at it and celebrating stereotypes, preconceived notions and and sort of unimplied otherness and sub humanity, which which doesn't age well barely was I'm sure barely tolerable then unless you were, you know, the the white kids sitting at home watching it, going oh cool. You know they were wooden shoes in Danish lamp, but don't you know in India they used genie lamps. That's part of the India episode. It's like, what that's nice there, that's not even that's the like, that's that that stereotype is meant to be is somewhere in the Middle East, I'm assuming India with the genie lamps, Like hey, yeah, that should have been my people when they that should have been when they went to Lebanon.

Oh right, they never would have gone to Lebanon. And then all the characters in India looked, all of the Indian characters in India look like al Jaffy drawings, which if you know what I mean, you know what I mean, it's real bad. Were they were they wearing turbans and then and diapers basically, and like giant noses too. It's great, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's it's you know, I mean, the least the Jackson five show. Again, the problem with the Jackson five is it's Michael Jackson and everything that comes with that, and that's the kind of point of horribleness.

The Osmond's thing is just like, I just don't the premise is so problem like not problematic, but the premise is just not really a good one. Frankly, Yeah, I mean again doesn't age well. But but you know, go back, excuse me, going back to your earlier observation, Chris. This was obviously an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of a teeny bopper band that Saturday morning viewers would totally recognize and totally love seeing. And these were both really popular shows.

I mean, people loved this show and and and the you know, the Osmond's were they actually voiced their own characters. They weren't too busy, which I think for me is the other thing that sets I mean, you know, as much as I don't like the premise of the Osmond Show, at least it had them, like the Jackson One feels a flatter than it may have felt otherwise if they had just gotten their goddamn voices. At least Michael Jackson. Again, I stand by what I said, Like his voice is so noticeable, and it's such a notice that he doesn't he's not part of it. Like again, I don't know what Tito and Jermaine sound like.

That is of the age I am. I never know Michael Jackson. Really, I'm not even a Jackson five fan. So, okay, you want to hear something, you want to hear Donnie Osmond talk about the show. Sure.

Donnie Osmond says the Osmond's cartoon series was really quite a fascinating experience for me as a young teenager. I always watched cartoons, but I never really knew how they were done. I remember going into the studio, not completely understanding what I was about to do to record all of our vocal tracks, and then later on watching this character speaking with my voice on television. I vividly remember the presence of Paul Freese in the recording studio with us. In fact, I think he took the seat next to me when he stepped up to the microphone and did his voice for Fuji the Dog, and then a minute later did the voice for Hortense Bird, two completely different characters.

I was completely in awe of the talents of this man. So there you go. It's fun. It was fun for Donnie. He seems pretty happy about the whole thing.

Donnie says, I actually own the rights to the series and will one day like to put it out on home video. As far as I'm concerned, I think Rank and Bass did a lot for the Osmonds, particularly for people remembering us from the seventies. Okay, well, I kind of wash she would put it out on home video because the versions that we were watching were just off of YouTube and they looked terrible, and yeah, clearly someone was recording off their TV. Yeah. The Jackson five stuff, on the other hand, was was gorgeous.

You know that was all on Blu Ray and then you know the Osman's. I don't even know if that ever came out on VHS. Yeah, I don't know. If you watch them back to back. Obviously, stylistically, they they are totally from the same world.

I mean it's just psychedelic, you know, influenced by Yellow Submarine. I think The Osmonds is a better show because I think it actually has more fun than the Jackson Show. I think it's in more. I think there's an intent behind it of yes, it's premis hasn't aged well, but they kind of just go off and do whatever the fuck they want, and there's there's something that can be said for that being just like they're gonna go do whatever and get into I mean, like Scooby it is like Scooby Doo. It's more Scooby Doo than the Jackson five show it.

I'll say this. I saw more of The Osmond's, which is why I like it less. I only saw one episode of The Jackson's and I'm giving it my highest rating. I just didn't like the animation styles for either one of these, especially that you would get a close up of a character head on and they would look pretty decent, and then you would get a side view of them or even a three quarters view, and they just looked awful. Did you guys give that person the day off or have somebody else animate this character, because like the one I watched in Spain, it was like the father of the pretty girl that Donnie of course falls for.

He looks great and close up, and then when you see him from a medium shot or a long shot, he looks like a monster. And I'm like, what is called on the rank and advice is QC? What? Their animation has never been that good, and man production level like this where they have to have a lot of episodes, it's like, oh my god, yeah, if you look too look too long in the place they don't want your attention to be, and it's like, oh Jesus Christ, look at the thing that's moving, not at the background to the cell where everything is just like fucking sticks and sticks and circles, because they're like, I just just get it out there. We don't even care.

They're not going to pay attention anyways. I'm sorry ranking Embassa's animation like this is just their animation has never been that good. I'm sorry. Well, okay, I mean again, I find myself in the weird position of defending some of this, but I will I'll defend it on these grounds. This was a creative choice.

It was a bold creative choice. So this wasn't like, well, we don't really know what to do, so it looks like this. This was no, here's how we're going to make it look. And they made it look that way. So I totally get it.

Chris. If you don't like it, I mean, that's a flavor you don't like. Again. I just the effort that they put in certain spots is not commiserate with the effort they put elsewhere. You know, the effort.

Yeah, it's fucking cheap, but but it's it's a cheap execution of a bold creative vision. When I say bold creative vision, I mean in the world of Rank and Bass, what are their bold visions? Roodolph okay, anything and the magic that was bold, that that was something we hadn't seen, and that's something that we still love fifty sixty years later. That that is still appealing to the eye and to the heart. Much of their other animation feels kind of reductive, almost like lowest common denominator.

Here's what everything else looks like, so just do it that way. Okay, this at least felt like we're ripping off the Beatles. And if you're gonna rip someone off, rip off the Beatles, and so they did. They're like, we're gonna make this. It's not gonna be Yellow Submarine, but it's gonna feel like that.

It's gonna feel psychedelic. They're gonna fly around and there'll be weird you know, stripes and colors and ever changing backgrounds from magenta and yellow and green, and it's like, okay, you know, I mean, sit back and watch it. It looks like a Breakfast Cereal come to life. We don't forget that The Beatles had their own animated series, which was really not good if memory serves. Yeah, no, no, no, because they didn't.

They didn't even sound like them. And it's not that hard to find people to sound like the Beatles. But you know, Paul McCartney was talking like, hey, im not anybody, Joel Lennon, what the hell GoF not? You know, I coulda hell, I'm George Anderson in it. As far as bringing and Bess's animated works, I will still defend things like The Last Unicorn or their versions of the Return of the King and the Hobbit, those their long form No, yeah, well I like that, but still, I mean, even like prior to The Snowman, the animated version, I think that those look decent.

But yeah, you get into this. I mean again, nineteen seventy one nineteen seventy two was a freaking crazy time for these guys, I'd say, even going back to like sixty nine, because they just had so many things all coming out that Yeah, the QC just was not there. I did not find Kid Power, which was the other show that they had coming out in seventy two, along with Festival Family Classics, and Festival Family Classics kind of put the end to all of this stuff. As far as I know, they wouldn't do another animated thing until well animated TV show I should say, until nineteen eighty five with ThunderCats. But yeah, these like Jackson five Osmond's what I've seen of stills of Kid Power, they all seem very similar animation style and not really one that I care for.

I think Kid Power looked better, but that was because of his top craft doing this rather than Alice and Batchelor which was They also did the Tom Foolery Show, which I wasn't able to find either, but they also they did both The Jackson Five and the Asmans. To your point, the Festival of Family Classics, I actually don't mind the animation style in that. I actually think it really works in that and I can't figure out, for the life of mean why other than it's I think the framing device helps the show out immensely, because I did watch a couple of those and I was like, Okay, this is like, uh, what are those books called, like, uh, animated classics or not, like you know what I'm talking about books?

Yeah, but like that for like Frankenstein and stuff where it's like a comic book retelling of Frankensteiner, it's like that where it's like, Okay, here's the push in Boots, fairy Tale or Cinderella, it's like, okay, you know what, it's like twenty five minutes, fine, and it I don't know, like I don't expect as much from that as I do I guess the Jackson thing. But I mean again, I think it's still kind of reductive to just say, well, this shit's free and we can make it for free. So let's just do it because somebody's gonna watch it. Some little kid is gonna watch us do twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea, Like oh okay, like of all the things that really don't like again, Like it's weird because like they had a twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea part of the that show, and it's like it's like an hour long it's a there.

Again, it's very weird because that in and of itself, you could do a whole show on those on those But I actually didn't mind those as much as one might have thought, compared to the the lack of a talking animal in the Jackson five cartoon. Chris, let's just be real careful when we start throwing around. You could do a whole show, do a whole podcast on that show. Yeah, haven't we learned our lesson? Where we're in?

The mess we're in? Why I did it? Just for you, Richard, Dare you I remember kid Power? I'm looking at this like, but it's the way you remember a dream. It's like, yeah, it's super familiar looking.

I have a feeling, but I don't remember anything about it other than it's a group of kids. They must be powerful, but I'm not saying we need to watch it. I don't where we are with all of this. Are we was this or our last show? Now you would you would know if it was our last episode?

Will we be have three more episodes to go? So yeah, we will be back next month, back in Christmas, Phil. We're going to be covering three things here, going to be covering the Stingiest Man in Town, the First Christmas. Oh, I'm sorry, it's only two things because the second one has a subtitle, the Stingiest Man in Town and the First Christmas The Story of the First Christmas Snow that title, well, wait for that second one. It's great, it's just about snow.

Well, thank you everybody for tuning in. I want to thank Abby Stabby for our artwork as well as the Great Octopus for our theme music. And before we go, I want to ask Chris, what are you working on these days? Sir? Nothing that nothing that can't be found anywhere other than weirdingwaymedia dot com, which is where you can go to find all the things that I work on.

It's like a real hard double negative. I put myself into there, I go myself. I thought he was going to say nothing that concerns you. That's what I thought he was going to say as well, Richard, how about you or are you going to be secretive? Well, I'm really not doing anything.

I'm on strike. The rule is when you're on strike, you're not supposed to work for the studios that are being struck. So that's easy because I was out of a job when the strike began, So all right, I was already on strike. That's how you dedicated I am to the union. Then there's this other question of well, can you write your own stuff?

And then it's like, well, of course you can write your own stuff, because you don't you know, you'll write something, but you don't know if you're going to sell it, and you know people it's pencils down. But still, well, I'm not doing that either, So I am doing nothing, which makes me again big union supporter and also very very lazy, and uh, you know what, when it's time to go back to work, I hopefully will return refreshed about you, Mike, Oh, just doing my usual like you, Chris. Everything's available at wheredoimedia dot com, including the show that I put the most work into, the projection Booth, which is the weekly movie podcast. So come back here once the month for rinking Bass. Come back to the projection booth every week for more fun discussions of movies and no weird animated thing.

Well, I guess we have done a couple of weird animated things. We just talked about wizards recently, so that was ge back. She backs a little bit different than this stuff, a little bit harder edged. I would say the fact that Ralph Bakshi and Rankin and Bass worked together and didn't kill one another is more surprising given that they couldn't hack it with Hal Frankin and Tom Davis. Well, you know, Frankin just had his mind on the White House and just couldn't get it into remulac motive, I suppose.

Well, until we come back to talk about the Stingious Man in Town and the First Christmas colon the story of the First Christmas Snow. Be sure to rate and review the podcast where you get it, Tell your friends, tell your family, and please staying weird.