Hmm.

I was terribly amused by yesterday's prompt: "either someone gets eaten or something blows up." It sounds like someone complaining about weird viewing choices on television or in the movies.

Naturally, that is hence what the prompt turned into. But since both Ecks and Wye clearly have some sadistic streaks, the way they were giggling about what they brought about on Mr. Raymond, it was interesting trying to determine how and why they would react as they do in the prompt.

I've developed an idea in past prompts that Zed was the really sadistic one above either of them, the way he was canonically watching that nuclear explosion film and laughing about it. (He sits around watching disasters in his free time? That is pretty unsettling, albeit I was slightly amused by how Ronald Long played the character in that scene. It was hard to completely take him seriously.) Wye, while sadistic too, is more that way because of his "laugh at the idiocy of people" outlook. So I expanded on that for the prompt and had Wye complaining because he doesn't like unrealistic things like Godzilla and gets bored of disaster movies. ("There's only so many ways you can show a flood or an explosion.") But he likes black comedy. And reality TV, since that definitely displays a lot of people being stupid for him to laugh at.

I throw in more references to the time period being the present day, and it slipped in like a glove and looked natural. They comment on Zed wearing out both his disc and a film copy of The Towering Inferno, mock Jurassic Park a bit, and Wye finally settles in to watch Fear Factor. I am amused.

Ecks ... isn't sure what he likes to watch, because I'm not sure what he likes to watch. He thinks maybe adventure films. Possibly spy movies, since that's the life he's familiar with, but he often finds them hokey, being the real deal and all.

I'm wondering how I'm going to work the final prompt, "Time to say goodbye again", because I don't want them to say goodbye again. I'm toying with the "goodbye" just being while each goes to work on a separate case for the day (if I use the idea of them becoming private eyes or some such thing). I've used the prompts as a continuing storyline starting during the episode and following them afterwards as they escape to New York, so that might be a nice way to wrap up the theme set, happy and hopeful.

Awww.

So I decided out of curiosity to get out my Route 66 boxset and watch the episode with Hedley Mattingly. I figured he probably wouldn't get much screentime since it sounded like the main plot was Tod and Linc (yeah, Linc; it was a season 4 episode) trying to help five girls. And it started out with Hedley's character being a helicopter pilot taking them around the city. I figured that would be it.

But he was very prominent in the plot. He kept coming around because he was hoping to get in with one of the girls. LOL. (Yes, his character had no concept of age differences.) He even brought a group of young guys with him to start a dance party in the hotel suite. But then he just embarrassed himself by trying to present himself as a brave fighter pilot from the war and inadvertently revealed himself as a fraud when he didn't know what the plane was like that he was talking about. The girl showed him up with her knowledge of the plane and was annoyed with him for his pretense, as her father had been a real fighter pilot.

The girls were a jazz band out of money and had been forced to hock their instruments. They needed over $700 to be able to get to where they needed to go. Hedley's character had originally talked to Tod about how they could pretend to have the money to keep the girls interested in them for the weekend, to which Tod justifiably reacted in disgust. But after the party incident, the guy actually started feeling guilty about how he'd acted and he anonymously arranged with a newspaperman friend of his to get the girls' story out in the paper. I need to watch a little more of the ending portion to fully understand the rest of what was happening (I had skipped over most of the scenes with Tod and Linc interacting with the girls); they were playing their instruments at the end, and I'm not sure whether he also arranged to get their instruments out of hock or if the news story brought a lot of people forward to help them. But either way, everything had definitely come about because he tried to do the right thing for once, and he was telling that to Tod and Linc while watching the girls from a distance. (They had thought he was chasing the girls again when they saw him and were trying to drag him off, but he was just observing how things had turned out and told them the story.)

Okay, from reviewing it over, the newspaper story was about them being added as an act in this show. Hedley's character felt that it would be bad for the girls' pride to instead run a story about them being stranded, and instead they should be given some good publicity. So I don't know if the instruments were really theirs from hock, probably not, but in any case, very cute and squeeable.

Overall, the episode was very nice and satisfying. Normally I don't like the humor episodes of Route 66; their brand of humor is usually just stupid. And I was rolling my eyes at some of this episode, granted. But in the end, this one was pretty cute.

Hedley Mattingly really is one of those amazing character actors who just completely steps into whatever part he's given. Mr. Wye couldn't be more different than Cosmo, a butler on Perry Mason. And both of them are entirely different from the role of my ancestor on Death Valley Days. And this guy on Route 66. Last night, I also saw him play a guy absolutely flipping out from medicine not agreeing with something he ate on Emergency! He just brings every role to life flawlessly and makes people believe in each character.

Also, I have to wonder again, as have others, what made Tod so extremely cynical in the latter part of the Route 66 series. He started getting that way in season 3, before Buz mysteriously disappeared, and he got that way all the more during his solo episodes. To some extent I know why it happened, as a lot of those solo episodes were really dark and put Tod through more garbage than he went through in most of the Buz episodes. But since it didn't start with those, I still wonder. Some people have theorized that Buz died and that's what has Tod so uptight. It's certainly possible, but I don't know if I really want to accept that theory or not. It's too sad to think that Buz died (even though I like Tod best). But it's also sad seeing Tod like that. He used to be the more cheerful one while Buz was the cynic.

(Of course, if one takes the little-known sequel into consideration, Buz definitely did not die, as the sequel has him giving the car to his son. But it doesn't fit with the original show canon, as Tod gave the car to Linc in the final episode.)