On the night Tony Randall died, TVLand ran an evening of "The Odd
Couple." As soon as the boys were asleep, or at least silent in their room,
I put my bare feet on the footstool, cracked a beer, and watched the one about Felix and Oscar going on "Password," the one about ticket
scalping, and a little of the one with Monte Hall. Then I had to go to bed.
The episodes featured Felix lines such as "I'm not speaking to Allen
Ludden," and "When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and out of ME!" I
sprawled there and remembered the show's many keeper lines from other episodes:
I'd better bring my big spoon. Jump-ka! Oscar Madisoy. ... without driving each other crazy!
"The Odd Couple" has been special to me for years. When I was a grade-schooler back in Maine, my parents used to fight a lot. But they always
stopped on Friday nights at 9:30, when Oscar and Felix came on ABC. The show received my mother's highest praise for a sitcom: "Somethin' ya
can laugh at!" I remember once asking my parents why, during the opening
credits, Oscar is bothered when he's following a pretty girl down the sidewalk and accidentally steps off the curb. Don't know, my parents
answered. During "The Odd Couple," my parents answered questions civilly
while sitting in the same room.
When I started coming to New York City 22 years ago, I found "The Odd Couple" was part of a killer line-up on an independent TV station,
Channel 11, starting at 11 p.m. and followed at 11:30 by "The Honeymooners"
and at midnight by the original "Star Trek." I stayed at the West Side YMCA in those days, and every $55 room came with free TV. That line-up
was the nightcap for Manhattan's newest man-about-town from Maine, a guy beginning a big adventure, and for whom bare feet up on a footstool in a good-sized apartment was a long, long way ahead.
Channel 11 kept that line-up through the '80s. Often, while a freelance writer, I wouldn't even start the evening's work until Oscar and Felix
were off. The show always presented something for me to strive for. "I watch it for their
apartment," I told my first roommate, Sean. "I know what you mean!" he said. As the freelance writing began to wither, I admired their jobs. A few years after that, I admired their friends.
I have always admired their friendship: Felix often got Oscar into messes (once with the IRS), and Oscar, the more passive but acidic of the
two, was always ready to fire back when the mess was over. "What do you dream of, Oscar?" Felix asked. "Living alone," Oscar replied. But they liked each other, and more episodes than not it was them against the world, like when Felix helped Oscar get back into the movie in a bit role
as sportswriter, or Oscar pulled Felix's son aside to tell him all the qualities of his dad that Felix would never voice himself.
I don't connect with television as much anymore. Evening time is at a premium with
my sons Alex and Ned around (Ned, who loves medicine, once honked
like Felix, and the two of them together can quickly leave our living room looking like Oscar just passed through). "Scrubs" has bottomed out; I've lost the thread of "Enterprise."
My wife Jill pitches in extra on Monday nights to let me catch "Band of Brothers," but it's hard to keep the
characters straight, and I'm not sure I'd care about them if they were just mismatched
apartment-mates, and not paratroopers surrounded at Bastogne. Not sure I'm missing much else: On a recent business trip, I had an
unusual amount of evening time to surf the dial. One typical click-through produced two channels of news tickers, two of weather nationwide,
three of talking heads, somebody driving a nail, and a cow. When "The Odd Couple" was hot, such a collection would have been lampooned as dull
television.
Channel 11 is the WB now. TVLand is on cable, which isn't free TV. All I could watch of the Tony Randall tribute was two episodes, but from
the perspective of two decades in New York, I could suddenly see that Oscar stepped off the curb and into wet cement. Then I had to go to bed.
It was late. It was 11 p.m.
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