THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #56

One of the great "guilty pleasures" of 1980s TV was the 1981-89 series DYNASTY. Having seen the first season in reruns a while back, I've the sense that even then the producers hoped to create a spin-off by postulating that the Denver-based oil barons, the Carringtons, had a rival in another super-rich family, the Colbys. The two big families were bound in part by marriages between members, but it didn't seem to make them any more friendly over time.

The 1985 DYNASTY episode "The Titans" served to introduce the cast of the spinoff to the parent show's viewers prior to COLBYS's debut in November of that year. From then on the two shows didn't share many plotlines, and some of DYNASTY's actors , notably Joan Collins, refused to appear on COLBYS for fear of "weakening the brand," as some people call it these days. COLBYS started off with some powerhouse actors, particularly cinematic icons Charlton Heston and Barbara Stanwyck, both of whom certainly were more famous than John Forsythe and Linda Evans. Yet COLBYS never caught on and only lasted two seasons. I've not seen it in many years, but all I remember about it was a running plotline about incestuous desires between a brother and sister.

The crossover episode is okay fun, if one has a great tolerance for over-the-top line-deliveries and a wealth of scenes in which enemies bare their fangs at one another over champagne and studied innuendo. One of my first crossover-listings took a similar form, in that once the series ALL IN THE FAMILY was successful, its producer used not one but two episodes of that show as "back-door pilots" for his second series MAUDE. I'm not a big fan of the latter series, but I must admit that MAUDE by far a better spin-off than COLBYS. If COLBYS has any significance in a societal sense, it's probably just that the American public could only take so much champagne and caviar.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #43

Just as I did with the comic-book BRAVE AND BOLD last post, I wanted to find a representative episode of the 2008-2011 Cartoon Network teleseries BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD.

To the lover of DC Comics esoterica, B:TBATB was a cornucopia of daffy pleasures. The writers went out of their way to stress the wild, campy elements of superhero comics, though with a very different approach to "camp" than that of the 1966 BATMAN teleseries.

But of all the series' many strong entries, it was never better-- or "campier"-- than the 2009 episode "Mayhem of the Music Meister."  The plot is fairly simple: Music Meister (cunningly voiced by Neil Patrick Harris), a criminal able to enthrall others with his singing, plots to use a special broadcasting device to gain control over everyone in the world.  But the simplicity allows Batman and his guest heroes, Black Canary and Green Arrow, the freedom to indulge in all the deliberate artificiality of musical theater. In fact, the artificiality of such musical tropes as non-diegetic tunes can be fairly compared to a superhero trope like the "villain puts the heroes into a death trap but doesn't stick around and watch them die."

The songs are all fun doggerel-style tunes, and there's a cool subplot in which Black Canary's affection for Batman finally turns to Green Arrow, which any fan worth his salt should appreciate.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #39

FLASH/ARROW may not be the ideal crossover of live-action TV superheroes, but it'll do until a better one comes along.

The crossover owes its entire aesthetic to John Byrne. In the 1980s Byrne, whose pronouncements carried enormous clout with both the fan community and professional comics-editors, stated that Superman and Batman, given their polarized outlooks, should never have been friends. much less that they would have teamed up with one another often enough to spawn a regular feature about their joined adventures. Byrne's direct influence on Superman and Batman ended when his tenure on the 1980s SUPERMAN feature concluded, but his indirect influence went on for years. Many though not all raconteurs agreed that Superman's niceness would set Batman's teeth on edge, while Batman's questionable practices would raise the Kryptonian's eyebrows.

FLASH/ARROW borrows this basic schema of light vs. dark, innocence vs. experience, and so on. In ARROW's previous season the hero and this support-cast take police scientist Barry Allen into their confidence regarding their clandestine mission. This season, Barry receives the blessing of super-speed powers for his own brand-new series, precipitating this two-way crossover.

Of the two episodes themselves, the FLASH story was a bit stronger. Arrow and his crew visit Central City on separate business, but the archer and his team can't help getting involved with Flash's new meta-villain, TV's version of the Rainbow Raider. The Raider unleashes nice-guy Barry's buried hostilities and aggressions, so that he begins to flip out in the workplace. Then the Flash goes on a super-speed rampage against the boyfriend of Barry's sort-of adoptive sister Iris-- a rage-fest that's been building for some time in the regular series.  The ensuing battle between Flash and Arrow can't hope to duplicate the kinetic antics of the comics page, but for television, it's pretty good.

The ARROW episode, naturally, had to be considerably darker, as a murderous version of Captain Boomerang comes to Starling City, intent on killing Lyla, ex-wife of Ollie Queen's buddy John Diggle.  While I 'm glad that the producers gave the loony-looking captain a grittier aspect for the purposes of this story, I think they hyped up his skill-set too much when they had him single-handedly invade an ARGUS stronghold, where his boomerangs really shouldn't have been very effective against multiple guns. This time Flash and his crew visit Arrow and his "Arrowcave," as FLASH-regular Cisco calls it: all of these scenes are a virtual treasure-trove of the embarrassing aspects of superhero gimmickery to any self-respecting "dark hero," even if he does use gimmicky arrows himself.

But, as the characters themselves say-- perhaps a little too self-reflexively-- the worlds of the Superman-type, Flash, and the Batman-type, the Arrow, don't merge very well. Arrow, who has already vowed to clean up some of the dirtier aspects of his crusade, must be made to don the hairshirt of regret once again, simply because Barry and his buddies come to visit. This forces the episode to go over old ground once more, partly with the use of flashbacks hearkening back to Oliver's service with Amanda Waller-- a plot-thread I for one am not in love with. Since Boomerang is not capable of taking on both heroes, the script is forced to find a way to employ the talents of Barry and Ollie separately. It's an efficient enough contrivance, but overall the story doesn't do much to enhance the reputations of the speedster or the archer. It's a small blessing that their friendly-but-testy relationship feels indebted less to John Byrne's simplifications tand more to the more artful meditations of Frank Miller on the subject.

Since the crossover was a ratings success, I imagine there will be another one some time in the future. I for one would rather leave the respective heroes in their own bailwicks for the foreseeable future.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #35

For the final six episodes of the 1966 SPACE GHOST teleseries, the show featured what might be called a "limited crossover"-- limited because the titular hero only interacted very briefly with his heroic guest-stars.  These interactions come very close to being cameos, and I said earlier that I wouldn't consider cameo-crossovers that fit this definition:

Also not considered here are "cameo crossovers," where characters have no interaction with a developed plot, but merely appear as "walk-ons," usually for the purpose of a quick joke. 

However, the "Council of Doom" episodes are slightly more developed than the "quick joke" example I provided in my earlier essay.

The main plot of the mini-saga goes like this: six of Space Ghost's most vicious enemies team up-- becoming the "council" of the title-- and then take turns trying to destroy the spacefaring hero. The six of them, seen blow, are (going clockwise from the well-known Zorak) are Zorak, Creature King, Metallis, Spider Woman, Brak, and Moltar.

In four of the encounters, the villains zap Space Ghost into some other cosmos. The hero is then set upon by hostile forces in that universe, only to be saved by one of four heroes native to said universe: respectively Shazzan, the Herculoids, Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor. (Note: the first two had their own shows, while the latter two shared one cartoon-berth.)

Thus, Space Ghost never interacts with any of the other heroes for more than a minute, if that. However, I find that these brief encounters-- patently intended to advertise the new cartoon-kids on the block-- are still important to the "Council of Doom" plot, at least more so than you would get with a throwaway joke.  And in at least one case, there's a good "science vs. magic" vibe. In the Shazzan segment, Space Ghost's powers are useless against the sorcery of the evil "Sultan of Flame," while the heroic genie's abilities easily trump those of the mystic evildoer.

A later 1980s cartoon had Space Ghost and the Herculoids cross paths off-and-on. But as limited as these crossovers were, they captured perfectly the pure fun of the 1960s era, whereas the 1980s show seemed a pale spectre of the originals.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #28

I just re-watched, thanks to YouTube, "Who Killed the Jackpot?," the April 1965 episode of BURKE'S LAW in which ABC's version of Honey West premiered. Though it's only been a few days, I found the episode so unmemorable that I've already forgotten the whole plot, aside from the scenes in which the show's titular star, Gene Barry's Amos Burke, encountered Anne Francis' svelte lady sleuth.  The following September, HONEY WEST received her own show, which lasted for one season of 30 episodes.

I never saw BURKE'S LAW back in The Day, but upon watching reruns on a local station, I found it meretricious, even for an escapist cop show about a millionaire police captain. In every episode Amos Burke, who usually juggled two or three girls per episode, sauntered his way through crime-scenes, interviewing assorted suspects who were usually kooks or eccentrics of some sort. Whereas a private-eye show like PETER GUNN had a way of making eccentricity charming, BURKE'S LAW treated oddballs with an air of smarmy condescension.

One good thing about Honey West's guest-shot here is that because her character was being hyped, the show spent less time ridiculing weirdos. As I'm not a big Gene Barry fan, I'm doubtlessly prejudiced in saying that Anne Francis steals every scene she's in, particularly in showing off her mastery of judo-skills.

The HONEY WEST TV series-- which had little in common with the 1950s series of paperback novels-- may well be the best thing that ever resulted from the BURKE'S LAW show.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #26

The 1967 BATMAN episode "A Piece of the Action / Batman's Satisfaction" won't go down in history as one of the series' best episodes, though it's also far from being the worst.

Obviously no one who wanted a crossover between Batman of the comics and Green Hornet of the radio show would have found "satisfaction" here: these are producer William Dozier's versions of the respective mythoi. To be sure, though, this story doesn't try to duplicate the relatively "realistic" tone of the GREEN HORNET series, but forces the Hornet and Kato to participate fully in Dozier-Batman's candy-colored effervescence.

Nothing speaks of the difference in tone better than the nature of the villain faced by Batman, the Hornet and their respective sidekicks: the "mad stamp man" Colonel Gumm. Roger C. Carmel has fun chewing the scenery with this character, particularly when he's forced to kowtow to his female boss Pinky Pinkston (Diane McBain). But his master plan is forgettable and his lame death-trap-- planning to convert the Hornet and Kato into life-sized stamps-- looks forward to a lot of the even lamer traps of the BATMAN show's final season.

Clearly the script wants to emphasize the crossover-elements above all else. Naturally, staunch crimefighters Batman and Robin don't know that the Hornet and Kato are merely posing as criminals in order to fight crime in their own way, though at episode's end Batman nurtures some suspicions in that direction.  The first encounter of the two groups is curiously low-key, with Batman refusing to arrest the Hornet for lack of evidence. This may have been done in order to set up the big fight-scene in the second half, which has an added charm in that while the Dynamic Duo are trying to beat down the Hornet, Kato, and Colonel Gumm and his men, the other duo are trying not to injure their goodguy counterparts. It's a better than average fight for the BATMAN show, even if one doesn't know about all the alleged backstage conflicts-- one of which makes Bruce Lee sound like a bit of a jerk.

The continued one-upmanship between Bruce Wayne and his college-buddy Britt Reid is consistently amusing, and for once the female guest lead in the show isn't either a villainess or a henchwoman, but an admittedly eccentric businesswoman.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #24

I'm writing this on the day after Robin Williams' death, so it seems entirely appropriate to cite here the 1978 HAPPY DAYS episode "My Favorite Orkan," which served as a de facto pilot for the 1978-82 MORK AND MINDY series.

In the episode, the naive alien Mork descends to 1950s Earth with the intent of finding a typically dull specimen of humanity. He first encounters Fonzie, telling the leather-jacketed lothario that he's famous for his lovemaking prowess throughout the galaxy.  Fonzie, though he's far from comfortable with this close encounter, is relatively friendly toward Mork until the alien gets the idea of abducting Fonzie's buddy Richie Cunningham for his specimen. This leads to an epic conflict in which Mork's magical finger is pitted against Fonzie's prodigous ('Eyyyy...) thumbs.

I can't say I was a big fan of HAPPY DAYS or of most Garry Marshall productions, but when I liked DAYS at all, it was largely when it put aside conventional sitcom humor in favor of goofball absurdity-- and even the famed "jumping the shark" episode can't compete with the first Mork episode. According to Wikipedia, the episode originally ended with the claim that Richie dreamed the whole thing; when Mork proved popular with audiences and got fast-tracked into his own series, the episode was edited to reveal that Mork himself had edited Richie's memories of the event. Mork also met Laverne of LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY, probably with the intent of further boosting the Orkan's TVQ, even though his own series would be set in the 1970s.

I did like MORK AND MINDY, principally for its strong first season.  But even the show's better episodes are less significant than its role in promoting Robin Williams as one of the premiere comic talents of the latter 20th century.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #21

"The Indian" was one of two "back-door pilots" that appeared on the successful Old West teleseries THE RIFLEMAN. This Feb 1959 episode introduced the titular hero Lucas McCain to Sam Buckheart (Michael Ansara), a federal marshal who was also a full-blood Apache Indian. This episode, and a follow-up story that aired in June 1959, pilot led to a new series from THE RIFLEMAN's production company, entitled LAW OF THE PLAINSMAN. The new series debuted in October 1959 but enjoyed only a year before cancellation.

The follow-up story is all right but the first pilot, "The Indian," excels in its dramatic presentation of the travails of the guest hero, trying to make it in the white man's world of the 1880s without losing his identity as an Indian. The episode has the distinction of being directed by Arnold Laven, one of the collaborators responsible for creating THE RIFLEMAN, and being written by Cyril Hume, scripter for both 1932's TARZAN THE APE MAN and 1956's FORBIDDEN PLANET.

Lucas McCain is initially put off by the incongruity of seeing an Indian as a federal marshal-- as is his son Mark, who remarks, "What's this world coming to?" But given that he's a pretty liberal fellow despite the general prejudice of the nearby town of North Fork, Lucas does what he can to help the marshal. He's not too happy with Buckheart's arrogance; in the scene shown above, Buckheart enters the "whites only" saloon in North Fork and allows the locals to think he's one of them. This is a dangerous version of "passing," especially since Buckheart's got his telltale "long Indian hair" bunched up under his hat.

Though this is a tale with a liberal agenda, it's not uncritical of Buckheart. He has a complex history with the white man, in that he was adopted by an older cavalry officer after Sam spared the man's life in battle. He spares the officer upon realizing that "his white flesh was weaker than my Indian flesh;" however, the Apache apparently becomes acculturated very easily, and accepts the officer's largesse in order to attend Harvard, resulting in a "savage" who can quote from THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. (One guess which famous line he quotes from it.) Lucas recognizes that Sam is baiting the white folks when he passes amongst them, and he criticizes Buckheart for his stubborness about going it alone against a town that won't stand for an Indian taking custody of a white prisoner.

Overall, it's a good drama, with a less violent conclusion than most episodes of the early RIFLEMAN show. I don't remember LAW OF THE PLAINSMAN very well, though I saw it in reruns years ago, but
Ansara and Chuck Connors play off one another very well as two western tough guys with essentially noble hearts.
 

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #18

As a kid I was an inveterate reader of the Hardy Boys novel series. I was aware of the Nancy Drew series, but as it was said to be aimed at female readers, it never occured to me to read one of the Nancy novels. I didn't read widely in the "young detective" subgenre anyway: aside from the Hardys I might have read one "Bobbsey Twins," and that was about it.  Many years later I plowed my way through a Hardy adventure and was amazed at how bad it had become.

Later I would learn that the Hardys and Nancy were linked by their publisher, the Stratemyer syndicate, and that their respective novel-series had debuted within three years of one another. All of which may have caused the characters to become linked in the public mind to some extent.

I don't know what behind-the-scenes deals were made to launch ABC's 1977 "umbrella series," THE HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES. It was certainly a relatively "hip" take on the syndicate's perpetually goody-good detectives, though as I recall the stories were just as sanitized. I thought Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy were a little overly-groomed to play the Frank and Joe I'd grown up with, though I had to admit these Hardys got more action than their prose progenitors. Pamela Sue Martin, though, made a fine Nancy Drew, perhaps because I had no preconceptions of that character.

The first (and best) crossover of the characters on this series was announced in resonantly cheesy tones: "The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula." It seems that, as happened often in the novels, the boys' investigator father went missing, and they journey to Rumania in search of him. At the same time, Nancy Drew-- who regularly worked as an investigator for her attorney father-- also went to the land of Vlad Dracul to make contact with Fenton Hardy.  The brothers initially clash with Nancy and her girl-buddy Bess, but they eventually make common cause, and their trail eventually leads them to Rumania's signature tourist attraction, Dracula's Castle.

The story works in a rock-band playing at the castle, in part so that Shaun Cassidy has an excuse to warble. On the plus side, guest-star Paul Williams does a cute Halloween-themed vocal for a costume party, though it's not actually Halloween at the time.  Lorne Greene plays Rumanian police inspector Stalvin, who initially appears to be on the side of the angels-- or is he?  A mystery about possible vampire attacks ensues, with the expected rational explanation. However, one of the guest-stars gets made up like a Dracula-type, and without disclosing his identity, he looks pretty damn good in Lugosi-garb.

There's a hint of romance between Frank Hardy and Nancy Drew that pays off in a later episode. But possibly the high point of the episode is a scene in which Williams and Greene are in the midst of a confrontation, and Williams hums something that sounds very much like part of the BONANZA theme.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #3

Given that I'm a stone fantasy fan, it's probably inevitable that I'm going to select more crossovers with fantastic, as opposed to realistic, themes. However, personal taste isn't the only reason I tend to rate the fantasy-crossovers higher than the reality-crossovers-- many examples of which are found here-- though it would take another essay to address those reasons.

However, here's one of the great reality-themed crossovers:

COUSIN MAUDE'S VISIT

Almost as soon as producer Norman Lear vaulted into major success when ALL IN THE FAMILY became a critical and commercial success, Lear capitalized on that success by creating not one but two "back door pilots" in FAMILY's second season. In December 1971 Edith Bunker's cousin Maude came to care for the Bunker family at a time when Archie, Mike and Gloria were all sick and running Edith ragged.  In March 1972 Archie and Edith visited Maude's house, giving the producers the chance to introduce FAMILY's audience to Maude's husband and daughter, and to show the actress Bea Arthur to much better effect: as the domineering diva of her household.

To be sure, neither episode is the best either show could offer, nor are the crossover elements sustained to the best effect. "Maude" is the better written of the two, precisely because Archie and Edith are barely in the story, allowing the script to introduce the ethos of ultra-liberal Maude and her unconscious lapses into chauvinism, seen in her attitude toward her daughter's prospective Jewish husband.

In contrast, "Cousin Maude's Visit" is a very thin story, but it does have some classic confrontations between Archie and Maude, as when Archie gets Maude's goat with his classic line, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt ruint this country." To be sure, Maude doesn't get a great comeback, reduced to the response, "You're fat." Still, the episode does put across a broad, quasi-mythic conception of the inherent conflict between a White Working-Class Conservative versus a White Arch-Liberal/Feminist.

I don't think the show MAUDE ever reached the heights of FAMILY at its best. Yet MAUDE did spawn a show that reached those heights on occasion, though it's arguable that the "Florida Evans" of MAUDE is not quite covalent with the materfamilias on GOOD TIMES.