Disappearances - Friday Video Distractions

 

   Aside from pressing on with some comfort viewing, rewatching Babylon 5 and Venture Brothers, the week's been lighter on general viewing.
     I've gotten interested in watching a drama based on a 2017 murder investigation in Denmark: The Investigation. This is a 6-part series currently still rolling out on HBO, Mondays at 10pm Eastern. A Danish production, it's done in its native language and subtitled in English. That works fine for me, but I know it's a negative factor for some, so I want to put that out there up front.
     The drama revolves around the suspicious disappearance of a Swedish journalist, Kim Wall, who was on assignment for Wired magazine to interview the Danish inventor Peter Madsen aboard a submarine of his own construction. That was the last time she was seen alive.
     There's an intensity to the show because we're following it all through the course of the investigation of the facts, where the interviews with the suspect are handled by others, so it's all about the facts of the case, and some interaction with the parents of the missing woman. We never meet the victim - much as with the lead investigator on the case, we only know of her because of the disappearance - nor the suspect, nor do we have any dramatic recreation of events. In part because it's based on the facts of the investigation, we struggle through various dead ends with the police and, at points, the missing woman's parents.

     Aside from the tension arising from the disappearance and revelations, much of the drama comes from the weight on the police and those involved in the search, along with the affects on the relationship between lead investigator Jens Moller (Soren Malling) and his daughter. His absorption in his work keeps him unintentionally distant, seemingly making him unable to connect with her and celebrate some wonderful news.
     We've had four episodes out, so we'll have the final two parts on the 1st and 8th of March. If they were all available now I'd have burned through them already. That's been frustrating, but I've been coming to see the value of a paced release in allowing me to properly digest and appreciate a show.
     I've so far restrained myself from looking into the particulars of the case, as it is firmly based on a 2017 disappearance, investigation, and trial. I'll do that after seeing the final episode. Until then, I want this show to be my sole window to the case.

     On a different path, this past week's seen me hit a couple instances concerning failed shows. Shows that failed so badly that they vanished sometimes with almost no trace. Honestly, there are so many of these stories out there that it's not much of a challenge to find them, and I'm avoiding some of the high profile ones such as NBC's nearly network-bankrupting 1979 failure Supertrain, distilled in these less than three minutes:

     In both of the following instances what caught my attention was coming across Johnny Carson Tonight Show episodes that have been syndicated (Antenna TV runs them weeknights at 10pm Eastern, and Pluto TV has a channel that runs them 24/7 each just calling it Johnny Carson) and seeing the would-be stars of shows make appearances where, in part, they're plugging their upcoming show. Almost without fail, they go on about the talent involved, and there are sometimes even supportive comments about "buzz" surrounding what will surely be the hit of the season. Sometimes that ends up being the case. More often, not.
     One of these was on the February 23,1984 Tonight Show, where Suzanne Pleshette on plugged her then-upcoming CBS sitcom Suzanne Pleshette is Maggie Briggs. Pleshette plays a New York City reporter who's been demoted from doing feature stories to writing human interest pieces. Pleshette seemed enthusiastic about the series' prospects, and was likely hoping to once again be in a successful series, as the one she'd been part of - The Bob Newhart Show - had ended six years prior.
     The show debuted March 4th, with its final episode airing April 15th. Just 6 episodes aired.
     The only video I've seen of the show is of the opening credits.

     I have no recollection of the show. Checking the prime time grid for then, I see it had an 8PM Sunday airtime, which likely did it no favors. It wasn't even as if I was watching one of the other networks then -- I was just doing something else. Understandably, with just six episodes, not many saw it, and it hasn't been syndicated.

     Eight years earlier, in 1976, David Brenner pointedly waited to make the announcement on the Tonight Show about a sitcom he was set to star in, noting that it was the break and exposure Johnny's show had given him that played a huge part in his success.
     The show, inspired by the movie Shampoo, was to be called Snip (they'd reportedly thought of calling it Flip) where Brenner would play a hairdresser in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. His daughter, ex-wife and former aunt were all living with him, with his ex-wife also being a stylist, them both working at a business owned by an openly gay man. That last part became key to the story that Brenner told about the series for the rest of his life.
      See, the show was set to premiere September 30, 1976, and it was being promoted up until just a few days of that. At nearly the last minute, though, it was quietly pulled from the schedule. Only seven episodes were filmed, just five of those were edited, and the show was reportedly only ever aired in Australia. Brenner pushed the narrative that it was pulled over network fears about public reaction to an openly gay character, and otherwise referenced the show as having been quality work. Perhaps because Brenner was such a well-liked person, no one seemed to challenge him on it.

     To the contrary, while writing a brief (and generally warmly glowing) piece to note the comedian's passing back in 2014, print and tv writer Mark Evanier noted the show in a very different light:

 Only once did I see him being truly awful. I am among the few human beings who will admit to having seen episodes of Snip!, a never-aired sitcom he did for NBC in 1976. Seven were taped, none were broadcast. At the time, the excuse was that the network was antsy about putting on the series because of a gay character. That ain't what I heard, working on another show for the same producer. I heard it was because the show was terrible — and what I saw sure was — and that Brenner had gone to NBC and talked them into dumping it. He'd said something like, "You know it's going to bomb. Why put it on and devalue me as a performer you have under contract and could use in other projects?" If he really did that, he was even smarter than I thought…and I thought he was pretty smart. And pretty funny."

     Either way, there's scarcely a trace of it to be found.

     It's been another wearying week for me out away from the screens. I'm hopeful it'll end on an upbeat, but - much as last week did - it could easily turn worse right at the end and take most of my weekend with it, too. But that's my problem.
     Enjoy your weekend, and I hope we all make it back here next Friday. - Mike