McHale’s Navy, Season Four

Back in the pre-streaming, pre-DVR, pre-DVD, pre-VHS, pre-Betamax days, if you wanted to see a television show, you had to be sitting in front of the television set at the appointed hour. If you missed the show, your only hope was that the missing episode would be aired as a summer re-run. The odds for that were not good. Take, for example, the comedy show McHale’s Navy, which ran from October of 1962 through April of 1966. There were 36 shows for each of the first three seasons, 30 for the last season. There are only 52 weeks in the year, meaning that only 16 of the 36 shows for seasons one through three, or 22 of the 30 shows for season four, could show up as a re-run. That assumes that the show was not replaced during the summer with some other show. Man, were those primitive days!

It was a very funny show, one of ABC’s best. It introduced me to Ernest Borgnine, who was a well-known serious actor before then (Marty, From Here to Eternity). I don’t know if he did any comedy before McHale’s Navy, but he was excellent in his role as Lt. Cmdr. Quinton McHale. (It seems that he was a funny guy even into his nineties!) The show also introduced me to Tim Conway, possibly the funniest man who ever lived. During season one of that show I saw a very young (20 or 21 years old), lovely Claudine Longet for the first time. There were several other actors who advanced their careers with that show, Gavin MacLeod being one.

The premise was simple. Set during World War II, McHale was a hale-fellow-well-met who had trouble with authority. His PT boat was stationed on a Pacific island away from the main base, where his crew members made booze and partied, usually with nurses from the base. Strictly verboten, mind you. They even had a POW, Fuji Kobiaji, who didn’t appear on any list of POWs that the navy kept. Their nemesis was played perfectly by Joe Flynn as Captain Wallace Binghamton, aka, Old Leadbottom.

The show managed to be topical, in a funny way. In one episode, McHale was up for a transfer back in the States to raise money for the war, when he lost out to another PT boat commander, LTJG John F. Kennedy. The episode was entitled “Send Us A Hero” and aired in January of 1963.

I loved the first 108 episodes of that show, but season four was a disaster. While PT boats were used in the European theater of World War II, the idea that McHale and his band of rowdies had to be transferred to the Mediterranean stretched my imagination. Why did they do that? I enjoyed the South Pacific setting (even if was only California), and if I wanted to see some European theater action, I could, and did, watch Combat! Or 12 O’Clock High. I know that PT boats were used in the European theater: the fellow who captained the PT boat that evacuated MacArthur from the Philippines to Australia did serve on a PT boat in the European theater. But this change didn’t make any sense. Because of the change in location, the plots seemed a little forced. They should have killed the show after three successful seasons, so that the show would end on an upbeat note.

To this day, we have a shorthand in our house for a show that has gone on too long: Season Four, McHale’s Navy. Recently I have seen two shows that earned the epithet of Season Four, McHale’s Navy. They are Grantchester and Call The Midwife.

When I first saw Call The Midwife I really enjoyed it. It was based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, who worked in London’s East End as a midwife with an Anglican nursing order. The actress who played her, as Jenny Lee, stayed with the show for three seasons, then called it quits. The show did not go downhill immediately thereafter, but the quality did decline, seemingly a little bit each year. Although I have not read any of Worth’s three memoirs, I had the feeling that they ran out of her material fairly quickly, and began improvising. Characters came and went, but the show soldiered on, year after year, with decreasing quality or interest on my part. The show that started in the 1950s is now in the 1970s, and I can’t take it any more.

I suffered through this year’s episode, completing season 15 begrudgingly, to learn the good news that the show is taking a break. They will do a movie (made for TV?) that is a prequel, and then pick the show back up in a couple of years. I will not be watching. Season Four, McHale’s Navy.

Kathy and I spend most of our television viewing time watching murder mysteries, so when we learned of a “new” murder mystery (2014) called Grantchester we were intrigued. The premise of the show was that an Anglican priest in the town of Grantchester (near Cambridge, UK), a deeply flawed man, teamed up with an atheist detective inspector to solve murders in the 1950s. The priest, played by James Norton, suffered from PTSD (he served in World War II), alcoholism, and terrible luck with his love life. I know that a detective priest is stretching the imagination a bit (sorry, Father Brown), but it worked, at least for almost four seasons. The fourth season became a bit preachy (why can’t we just be entertained without lecturing?) and Norton left the role for an improbable reason at the end of season four.

Did the show end then? No! We were given another priest who, defying all rules of logic, picked up where the first priest left off. How many priests are actually amateur detectives? Well, according to this show, there are at least three. By the time the third priest-turned-detective showed up, I was over it. The current season, season 11, is the final season. I say, HALLELUJAH! McHale’s Navy, Season Four.

There are other examples (Shetland is one) but you get the idea. Too many shows go on for too long.

And by now you have surely concluded that I watch too many murder mysteries. To which I say, I’m always looking for new ideas. I believe I have the perfect murder method, and have held on to that belief for years. I have yet to see it show up in any detective show, but if you ever see a drowning in an aeration basin, you will know that the idea was stolen from me.