NETWORK: NBC
For one season, there was a series on television that was both ahead of its time and came too late. That series was My World... and Welcome to It. This was a series a decade in the making and yet when it was finally picked up by the network, it was doing such strange and innovative things that I am not sure audiences knew what to make of it. And yet with hindsight, one can see how forward-thinking it was and how elements at play here would become major stylistic choices of successful series over 20 years later. The series is unique and strangely out of sync with its time, and perhaps that's why it initially struggled to find an audience. Yet it's a shame that now it hasn't gained more of a cult following because it was an innovative series with a lot to recommend about it.
My World... and Welcome to It was inspired by the writings and drawings of American humorist James Thurber; the title taken from one of his books. Thurber was a columnist and cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine from the late 1920s through the 1950s. It's no surprise that his popular work would eventually be sought for television adaptation. The series revolves around a Thurber analog, John Monroe, who works as a cartoonist for a magazine called The Manhattanite (get it?). And yet, as mentioned, this project took a decade to get right.
Series creator Melville Shavelson (who also created Make Room For Daddy) initially created a sort of backdoor pilot for a potential series with an episode of NBC's Alcoa Theatre anthology series called "Cristabel". This script would later be revived for the 1969 series, and it's interesting to compare how two completely different casts approach the material, and how differently it is directed. That full episode is available on YouTube for those curious. However, no series was spawned from that initial burst and it wouldn't be until 1969 when NBC would give Shavelson another go at putting John Monroe back on the air. Thurber died in 1961, and I wonder too if this distance from the originator of a lot of these ideas left the audience on unsteady footing.
The series is unique in that it incorporated drawings and animations in Thurber's style. Many of the exteriors are done as black and white line drawings with series star William Windom superimposed. Just the technical effort alone of including these kinds of gags, with Windom interacting with an elevator full of cartoon people, for example, or walking out of his house that then turns to keep his wife's watchful eye on him are surprising for a weekly television series. In some episodes, we are treated to fantasy sequences also heavily influenced by drawings. In the first episode, Monroe helps his daughter, Lydia, understand her history lesson and the show transforms to a set modeled on line drawings. It's very clever production design, and there's a lot of variety in the series. Sometimes Monroe will have a full conversation with a cartoon. Other times we are treated to fantasies that don't involve drawings at all. What's central to the show is the family dynamic and the character of John Monroe. The series experiments a lot with different ways to approach this, and doesn't ever settle too long on any one gag or pattern to make the show stale. Some episodes are very light on the fanciful, and others have whole plots built around it.
For example, when a sexy woman moves in next door, John finds himself fantasizing about a world without his wife. The series constantly breaks the fourth wall, and John invites us to imagine with him. Amusingly, he turns his fantasy on and off with a snap of his fingers, but loses track of when it's on or off and we the audience, if we've been keeping track, watch him stumble into hilarious misunderstandings. Every episode opens with Monroe addressing the audience, often before inviting us into the house as he opens his front door. This sort of storytelling is commonplace now, but was much more innovative for weekly television back then.
One can see some of the new cultural attitudes creeping in as we approach the 1970s. Despite the fact that the series is incorporating a number of stories and ideas from Thurber's old writings, there are some subtle changes in how the show approaches its characters. Little details crop up that are more true to life and that we haven't really seen in television comedies before, like the fact that Lydia has to wear dental headgear at night (her animated counterpart does as well). Lydia is ten, and the shifting attitudes of the time are more shockingly apparent when she is invited to a party and is excited to wear "her first miniskirt", and later worries that she's not sexy. No series before this would ever have a ten- or eleven-year-old girl referring to herself as "sexy", and no series nowadays would dare for fear of giving the wrong idea. Another quaint element of the show is her mother undressing her for bed at night. This is a bit of familiar domesticity that you might not have seen on television before now, but at the same time it is also very unlikely you would ever see a show today where a child actress is stripped to her underpants, even briefly. The show has a kind of innocence to it, even when pushing the envelope into stories about marital jealousy and such. I grew up with two sisters, so seeing a little girl dressed for bed is familiar, and yet was a little shocking to see in a television show with that kind of frankness. Today there's so much concern for child exploitation (and rightly so) that it really took me back and reminded me times were different.
William Windom is very engaging here, as he has to carry a lot of the series by himself, talking directly to camera and interacting with bare sets. I only knew him from his guest spot on Star Trek, where he played a very different character, so his sardonic persona here was a delight. The show is at its best when using him fully. Some stories revolve around his work life and others around his home life; many intersect. There's a similarity to prior series like The Dick Van Dyke Show in that respect, and yet this show is totally unique in its approach. It's very cleverly written and the key is that sometimes John is an audience surrogate while others he's clearly wrong and trying to justify himself. He's not an idiot, and yet he often thinks he's the smartest guy in the room which sets himself up for a fall. He's a kind of perfect medium between the "father knows best" archetype and the bumbling oaf that would typify later comedies. He's a good father, but struggles.
My favorite example of this is the Christmas episode, which starts with a basic sitcom premise before going in a completely unexpected direction. It's Christmas Eve and John has neglected to purchase a gift for Lydia. So he is sent to the mall for a specific toy, and of course there's only one left. This could all seem very familiar. But what happens next? He stumbles into another store before the mall closes, and Christmas morning Lydia is gifted with a huge American flag. Now we're playing with the sitcom trope of the somewhat clueless dad who makes a crazy decision, but it's such an out there thing for a Christmas episode it's immediately funny. And John is insistent that he chose this on purpose, to instill national pride in his daughter. It's bizarre, but there's merit to it. And this is all just the first half of the episode! The story goes on to show how the neighbors in town try to shame the Monroe family for flying the flag because it's so out of the ordinary. A historical society even shows up to discourage it, because it makes them look bad! Rumors fly that they must be doing something suspicious and that they are flying the flag to cover it up. There is so much fascinating sociology packed into this story and it is one that modern audiences should really stop and take a look at. It explores national pride and societal peer pressure in an engaging but meaningful way. And all this in a Christmas episode! This is not a typical sitcom.
And yet perhaps its creativity was eventually the series' downfall. Despite the fact that ratings were actually pretty solid and picking up by the end of the season, NBC decided to end the show after one year. This would only embarrass them when the Emmy award ceremony honored the now-cancelled series as the best comedy series of the 1969-1970 season, and William Windom as best lead actor in a comedy series. Windom went on to tour the country in a one-man stage show where he portrayed James Thurber. The unique elements of the show like a lead addressing the camera, making cartoons, and getting lost in fantasy worlds, would eventually find their way into other innovative successful series in the 1990s such as Dream On, Doug, and Ally McBeal.
Though the series did appear in syndication for awhile, it has never been released on DVD. Surprisingly, it hasn't even garnered a large cult following. And yet, I'm sure many people are out there thinking, "I remember that show!" I had to watch it all on bootleg home recordings. Most, if not all, episodes are now viewable in some form on YouTube. But considering the pedigree and that it was an award-winning series, it's shameful that these fuzzy bootlegs are currently the only way to watch it. My World... and Welcome to It really deserves better, and a broader audience because it was doing a lot of interesting things before they were cool.
FAVORITE EPISODE: Rally Round the Flag
UP NEXT: All in the Family
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