On the Air
(1992)
I must have
caught the odd episode of On the Air,
although there were only ever seven distinctly
odd episodes in total, but I had very little recollection of David Lynch’s first
post-Twin Peaks TV foray. A comedy
based around the weekly production of a variety show, albeit set in the 1950s,
you might think it would bear some resemblance to, say, The Larry Sanders Show, which debuted the same year. While that was
rightly seen as ground-breaking, On the
Air is possibly even more format-busting, a convolution of weirdness that,
at its best, feels like a collection of non sequitur outtakes and quirky background
incidentals from the auteur’s movies. At its worst, the series is little more than
rather plodding, laboured, bad TV comedy. Although, you’re never entirely sure
if that’s not the entire point. The only certainty here is that you’ll be
mystified On the Air ever made it
beyond pilot stage, a sure sign of a network (ABC again) delusional enough to
think the idiosyncratic, tarnished gold of Twin
Peaks might drip from a tap when Lynch got involved.
One can
straightaway see a pattern emerge where Lynch doesn’t have full control of his
projects, either unable or unwilling to steer the tiller throughout. The
quality drop-off is precipitous. It’s just that On the Air diverges from this model (if you can call it that) far faster
than his previous show. It’s no coincidence that the best episodes are the
first (The Lester Guy Show, which he
co-wrote with Peaks cohort Mark
Frost, and also directed) and the final, seventh, which he co-wrote with Peaks veteran Robert Engels.
Mostly On the Air falls into a rhythm of
strange and whacky occurrences surrounding whatever special guest is scheduled
that week, as Miguel Ferrer’s exec Bud Budwaller (grouchy, irascible – classic
Ferrer casting) desperately tries to keep the show above water so as to
forestall the ire of network boss Mr Zoblotnick (Sydney Lassick, probably most
familiar from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest). Bud must cope and deal with preening show host Guy (Ian Buchanan –
magnificent as Dick Tremayne in the very variable second season of Twin Peaks, but alas not returning for
the 2017 run), and dim-watt (Marilyn Monroe-inspired?) fledging star Betty
Hudson (Marla Rubinoff), whose homespun virtues prove a hit with viewers and
Zoblotnick but incur the jealousy of Guy and the hatred of Head of Comedy
Nicole Thorne (Kim McGuire, formerly of John Waters’ Cry Baby and here perfecting the art of wasp chewing).
The
assortment of eccentrics and then some include Zoblotnick’s fellow countryman
and director, the incomprehensible Valdja Gochktch (David L Lander, Tim Pinkle in Peaks). This role is the very
definition of scene stealing, and hilarious, provide you find silly accents
hilarious. Gochktch is also the comedy encapsulation of the weirdly delivered
and distracted Lynch staple, On the Air’s
equivalent of The Man from Another Place, whose mangled English makes Inspector
Clouseau sound RP. Luckily on hand is unflappable assistant, Ruth Trueworthy
(Nancye Ferguson) able to interpret his every incoherent utterance.
There’s a
sense of perverse indifference to any kind of impulse to appeal to a
traditional viewing audience that is immensely winning. I mean, the show doesn’t
really work in any kind of qualitative sense, pulling out cartoon comedy sound
effects at every opportunity like it’s a dry run for The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, but that in itself has to count
for something. There’s puerile slapstick and bargain-basement laughs, but
there’s also something more.
The uncanny
and nightmarish don’t actually find tangible form, but they’re on the brink of
discovery throughout On the Air; the
show is already about the broken reality that is Hollywood and it’s ostensibly a comedy, so the grotesquery that tends to seep
through the surface veneer of existence, from wherever it may come, a consistent
attribute of all the directors’ work, isn’t quite so persuasively present.
Instead, there’s more a wash of frothy derangement. Imperfect as On the Air is, it’s transfixingly so.
OVERALL:
The
following may give you an inkling of what to expect, but more likely you’ll be
none the wiser than I am having watched it.
Pilot: The
Lester Guy Show
The most resonant
sight in not just the pilot, but all the episodes, is the opening credits of The
Lester Guy Show, in which Lester mimes some dancing, shoe shuffling, hat
adjusting business next to a lamppost, accompanied by the uncanny aural output
of Angelo Badalamenti (making no concessions for comedy).
Lynch
introduces us to regular incidentals, including Tracey Walter (who ended up on
the cutting room floor in Wild at Heart,
but is the kind of classic Lynchian actor you’d have expected to feature more) as
Binky Watts, who suffers from Boseman’s Simplex, meaning he can see 25.62 times
what we see (manifesting as a perversely rudimentary overlay of multiple
animals, objects or people, usually dancing about), and the Hurry-Up Twins
(Raymond and Raleigh Friend), who appear for no more than 30 seconds an
episode, are announced, and repeat “Hurry
Up” as they walk off studio left.
The “plot”
finds Berry plucked from obscurity and winning the hearts of viewers, in spite,
or because, of her homespun charm (“She’s
no dim bulb, she’s a blown-out fuse”). Twin
Peaks’, and Lynch’s generally, marriage of the innocent and cynical is in
full force here, a juxtaposition that meets its most archly twee-sinister as
she salvages a decimated show by singing about how “The bird in the tree is singing for me” to the strains of a dinky
music box. From anyone but Lynch it would be insipid, but it’s strange (that
word comes up a lot), odd and haunting.
Lester is
required to sell dog food in the form of a word from his sponsors, but a series
of slapstick mishaps find him ejected from a kitchen set during a preceding sketch
(“Mr Guy’s gone out the window”) and
lead to him advertising the pedigree chow suspended upside down, with the
camera already knocked on its side, as viewers struggle to adjust their sets.
Exasperated Bud (“Can it pea brain. We’re
six hours to air”), meanwhile, is resigned to receiving calls from
Zoblotnick’s hotline, which in this case is expelling flames (in others water).
That makes
it sound possibly more coherent than it is. The episode is marbled by the
director’s distinctive narrative lack of focus, such that incidentals become
the point and the plot is tangential. It’s kind of brilliant, and the show won’t
quite hit this level of relaxed absurdity again until the last episode.
1.2
Written by
Mark Frost and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, this is an exception to the
rule in straying from the confines of the studio, as Betty is summoned to
dinner with Zoblotnick, while the scheming Lester, Nicole and Bud attempt to
arrange things so she meets with disfavour. Which involves Lester posing as a
waiter (Betty, being thick, doesn’t recognise him; when she is told he will send
a car to her apartment she responds “But
I live on the seventh floor”). Bud reels off some great lines (“Betty Hudson is a mistake on every level,
including genetic”) worthy of Peaks’
Albert, there’s a very Lynchian obsession with ducks (which we’ll be seeing
more of) and Betty becomes distracted by Zoblotnick’s hairpiece, imagining it
to be a wolverine.
1.3
1.4
More Peaks veterans, director Jonathan Sanger
and writer Scott Frost, deliver an episode in which Doodles the Duck appears on
The Lester Guy Show, and some Mexican musicians, and Lester, appear in “An Almost Innocent Man” (a reference to Hitchcock’s
The Wrong Man?) with acting legend
Stan Tailings (Freddie Jones, of The
Elephant Man). The accumulation of slapstick, weird noir-ish elements, duck,
and slapstick sound effects make for a heady brew indeed, one that includes a
man with a duck’s head, Lester getting hit by injurious objects again, “Take that casserole out of the oven this instant”,
and two hippopotami.
Oh, and right near the end, that Snaps, accompanied by
flickering lights as a clock spins round of its own accord; it’s like finding
Laura Palmer in the Black Lodge.
1.5
You can’t
really go wrong with a sinister puppet (scratch sinister, Mr Peanuts is
horrifying), and here we have Mr Peanuts, being especially insulting to Bud.
And Betty’s sister Sylvia (Ann Bloom) making Mr Peanuts miserable after he
poses as her when she refuses to appear on stage with him. And Nicole being
bitten on the arse by the resident pooch. It culminates in Sylvia leading a
rendition of the Mr Peanuts Song (from the popular kids’ TV show); “He can take a frown, and turn it upside down”).
Even Bud, brought to tears, joins in.
1.6
The Great
Presidio (I M Hobson), at the behest of Zoblotnick, is booked on the show, but
he has lost his bearings and abilities. Betty Thomas directs (the same year
she’d transition to big screen comedies) and Engels writes. Engels conjures a
suitably Lynchian landscape, as the Presidio is filled with dread and Dali-esque
utterances (“My teeth are covered with
spiders”), before recognising Snaps (“I
dreamed of a dog like that, He was wearing a hat and smoking a cigar” – you
can guess where this is leading).
Snaps is
duly dressed as the Dog of Transformation (“I
will remember all, when the dog appears”), leading to the Presidio
regaining his – truly – magical abilities, and so confounding Lester and
Nicol’s plans to win plaudits through the former’s own terrible magic act. The
duo are diminished, reduced, and transported. The climax is awash with daft
effects without really being funny, to frantic without being sufficiently antic
(he’s sent to Akron, Ohio, she ends up with the head of a lizard), but the dog
business is good fun.
1.7
A
marvellous Lynch-inspired closer, directed by Jack Fisk, in which Lester, for
once rightly impressed, has demanded a guest appearance by down town beatnik The
Woman With No Name (Bellina Logan who appeared in Twin Peaks as a desk clerk and returns as same next year), and her
group The Voids. Gotchktch is instantly taken with her, possibly because her
speech is as unintelligible as his, but also because beatnik translates as
bootmaker where he comes from (“You have
such beautiful shoes. Mine are so plain… Tell me of your other boots”).
Lynch
obviously loves Gotchktch as much as I do, because this is his funniest
showing. He also includes a really
odd subplot in which Betty can’t remember her mother’s name, until, on being
prompted with it, she announces on air, in unfailingly facile but moving manner
“Everyone should always remember their
mother’s name. I think everyone in America should call their mother right now”.
The
Machiavellian machinations of Lester and Nicole see them attempt to use a voice
disintegrator on Betty (who is unable to understand the concept of miming to
her own voice – “I’ll be in two places at
once?” – leading to even Gotchktch raising his in frustration). Naturally, it
all goes wrong for the schemers, and Lester’s voice is affected instead.
Weirdly distorted, it makes the perfect accompaniment to the beat performance.
Of which, Logan is hilariously unhinged in her dance, with Gotchktch joining
in. And then so does everyone else, with shoes on their hands. The episode also
involves dogs watching TV, and one playing the bongos.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.