Netflix & Monkees

My wife and I use netflix to rent our DVDs. I've been using them for three years now and I have let my Blockbuster membership flag. Netflix has a much greater selection in all categories. No lines. I can have the disc out as long as I wish. Yummy.

We've been taking advantage of Netfilx's television DVD collection. We went through the first season of "Soap" (the second season ain't out yet... if anyone remembers who killed Peter Campbell, I'd appreciate it). We saw the entire first season of M*A*S*H. And we just rented the "Monkees."

Ugh. As an amateur critic and part-time buff, I must fully recognize the impact the Monkees had on culture and society. Ironically, I saw the past week the new DVD version of A Hard Days Night; which happens to be a necessary foil for the Beatles' cheap American knock-off cousin.

A Hard Days Night was revolutionary because the Beatles - four young men, unremarkable in appearance, background, intelligence; unremarkable in everything but musical talent - fictionalized their lives and captured their celebrity with a clever humility and bonhomie. The Beatles were huge superstars who could make young women screech and collapse (a fascinating psychological phenomenon that deserves study) and here they were, acting like regular blokes. Whatever a bloke is.

But life in the 50s and 60s produced a certain type of establishment thief. There was he "payola" scandal in the 50s (where record producers bribed DJs to expose trash records to increase revenue) and they got cagier in the 60s with the Monkees.

Its odd to watch them now, knowing the lie. They were presented as a heartthrob band, just like the Beatles, doing zany lovable things, like the Beatles, and demonstrating song-making & playing talent, like the Beatles. The songs were high quality, because they were written by the likes of Neal Diamond. They playing was mediocre (but so was early Beatles, face it).

And the show was innovative. They invented the concept of "absurd cutaways" (at least in American TV) and that is the staple of many recent clever shows (e.g. Ally McBeal). The show, for that alone, has merit.

So, while watching it, I wondered why I should care about the lie! Who cares if they duped millions of people into thinking they were watching an even cuter Beatles.

But the show stinks. It's annoying and puerile. And you could stand that if you felt they were doing the show as a lark, killing time between song-writing and singing . But two of them were actors (the funny ones), two were bad musicians. The only reason to watch it, back then, was to see second-rate Beatles do funny schtick.

The badness of the show became unbearable when I realized the true extent of the cynicism. That's why I am writing this now.