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Speaking of downloading, you can download the original short or watch it as streaming video over at archive.org.
Thanks to Michele for the interview and the link!
(76 votes, average: 3.8 out of 5)
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• The movie is so silly and yet drab that it might be one of those episodes where the movie overwhelms the riffers, but somehow J&tB bring in a winner. Another great ep as we get deeper into season four.
• Joel mentions Crow’s Billy doll, last seen the last time “Undersea Kingdom” was featured.
• I assume Trace was running Tom and Kevin was running Crow in the opening segment. I wonder if that was the only time that has ever happened…
• A little biting literary commentary as Tom refers to the “controversial-yet-all-but-forgotten” novel “American Psycho.”
• This episode contains a notorious goof by the Brains: Dr. F says that the movie features “Casey Adams of ‘Catalina Caper’ fame.” In fact, Adams does not appear in “Catalina Caper.” The Brains are confusing him with “Catalina Caper” star Del Moore, whom Adams somewhat looks and sounds like… but not that much, really. Throughout the movie, when J&tB do Casey Adams, they’re really imitating Moore’s campy portrayal in “Catalina Caper.” They don’t really sound like Adams at all.
• How could they make such a dumb mistake? Not to sound too much like an old “I walked uphill in the snow to school” fogie, but it’s important to remember that this episode was done before the World Wide Web—and the ability to just pop on to the IMDB and get your cast information straight—existed. My sense is that Best Brains’s entire movie research department, at that time, consisted of a dog-eared copy of the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide—which would have given them the correct name of the “Catalina Caper” actor, had they bothered to consult it.
• Several times during the short, when a character refers to the “strange prisoners” or “strange captives” J&tB respond with “…weeeeird prisoners…” and “…weeeeird captives…”. For those wondering what that’s about, it’s reference to the early Marx Brothers movie “Animal Crackers.” In it, Groucho briefly parodies the trance-like intonations used in the monologues that are the gimmick in Eugene O’Neill’s play “Strange Interlude” (which was playing down the street when “Animal Crackers” was a Broadway musical). Aren’t you sorry you asked?
• Whoa! A somewhat startling reference to future Vice President Dick Cheney. I forgot he was SecDef when this episode was made.
• This installment of Undersea Kingdom is largely people running and riding around. It doesn’t really advance the plot very much…
• In segment 1, Crow’s little commercial for pepper sounds like a lot like the ones Garrison Keillor does (used to do? I haven’t listened in a while…) on his St. Paul-based radio show “A Prairie Home Companion.” I wonder if it’s an homage or just a coincidence.
• Props to Jef Maynard and the rest of the props team for the parade in segment 1. Very cool.
• As segment 1 ends, Crow says “I’m just going to step into this doorway,” a reference to Les Nessman in the famous “Turkey Drop” episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati.”
• J&tB get mighty cranky during the incredibly static car conversation. Maybe I’m just hardened off to boring movie scenes, but it doesn’t seem that bad to me.
• They still make Old Smuggler. From one who knows.
• The cop-donut thing is funny, but by my count there were only three of them in this episode. Doesn’t seem like Joel overdid it to me…
• Another overtly religious remark from Joel: “…only millions of Christians…”
• This movie offers extensive footage of the Angels Flight trolley, a popular (and, in 2001, deadly) L.A. tourist attraction.
• Lon must have loved this role—there were hardly any lines to learn.
• Try to not blink as long as the witness lady goes without blinking. It’s tough!
• Fans of Joel got about as close as they’re ever going to get to their hero in segment 3. You can count the pores!
• As the bots try to distract Joel, Crow makes licking noises and Joel exclaims “Somebody’s licking me!” Who knew Crow had a tongue?
• The routine Tom and Crow fall into at the end of segment 3 is from “Sidehackers.” That they are still going on about it a season and a half later is amazing.
• Obscure ref: “I’m Dickens, he’s Fenster” – the name of a very short-lived 60s TV series. Also, Tom refers to “that Crazy Glue demonstration,” a reference to an all-but-forgotten TV commercial in which an actor playing a construction worker Crazy Glues his hardhat to the bottom of a girder and then hangs from it.
• Gypsy’s a notary?
• Mike and Kevin are great as the cops in the final segment—that scene also provided a wonderful poopie moment, with Mike and Frank cracking each other up.
• This week’s mysterious credit: Additional Contributing Writer–David Sussman.
• Fave riffs: “Alright, gather round everybody, lots to see, show’s just startin’” and Detective in movie: “You wanted me?” Joel: “For years!!” There’s also something incredibly silly about “Pollixfen, for your den-fen-tures….” That’s about three levels away from an actual joke, but it’s still funny.
Actor, producer and voice actor Jim Begg died Friday, Feb. 15. He was 69. MSTies will remember him as baseball-obsessed henchman Larry in episode 204- CATALINA CAPER and as helpful townie Fatso in episode 523- VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS.
Born William James Begg in Battle Creek, Mich., he began his career as an actor in New York before moving to Los Angeles, where he worked steadily throughout the 1960s and ’70s. In addition to the two roles above, he appeard in movies including “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “The Cool Ones,” “It’s a Bikini World,” “The Love God?” “Inside O.U.T.” and “An Enemy of the People.”
He also appeared on the small screen many times, including guest-starring roles in “Gunsmoke,” “Bewitched,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “Petticoat Junction,” “Love, American Style,” “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Happy Days.” Begg also did animation voice work: he was the voice of Scoots in the 1969 Hanna-Barbera series “Cattanooga Cats” and the voice of Wheelie in several 1973 episodes of “Bailey’s Comets.”
He gave up acting in the early 1980s to become a producer, mostly of TV-movies such as “The Kid with the 200 I.Q.,” “The Kid with the Broken Halo, “The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins,” “Her Life as a Man,” “Thompson’s Last Run” and “Johnnie Mae Gibson: FBI”.
He is survived by wife Judith and son Andrew James.
