I propose that of all the weird and totally contrived television shows produced on the "other side" of the 1960s (that's before 1964 when the Beatles crashed through the front door of our culture) the most bazaar was The Patty Duke Show. When you really think about it, the premise is even less believable than Gilligan's Island, Mr. Ed, or even The Mickey Mouse Club. I mean, really, Mickey. "Because you like me?" You don't even know me. But let's not get distracted from TPDS (The Patty Duke Show). First of all, let's take the premise.
Sure, a talking horse or a four-hour tour that turns into a multi-year stay with complete laundry service and a transistor radio that never runs out of batteries are both stretching our suspension of disbelief to the limit. But identical cousins? How does that even work in a fantasy show?
The premise given by one of the producers years ago was that both Patty's fathers and possibly mothers were identical twins. That's a lame and greatly disturbing premise, but we need to go back to an actual (but imagined by me) production meeting at ABC's executive's boardroom. They were trying to figure out what to do with a hot property they had just acquired, Patty Duke. She was hot because she had just won an actual Academy Award for her fifth movie, "The Miracle Worker," and ABC needed to come up with a series that would fully capitalize on her acting ability, or at least mask it if it turned out that the full range of her actual acting ability was to flop around like a fish while screaming unintelligibly.
So, a couple of executives were sent into a small room with a pile of doughnuts and a pot of hot coffee and were told not to emerge until they had an idea. A good idea. A commercial idea, and no, it didn't have to make any sense at all.
Well, the guys struggled for a few hours, but couldn't come up with anything when the door opened and one of the "higherups" poked his head in and said something like, "Hey. Maybe you guys can do something with that "Parent Trap" movie idea. You know the one starring that British girl, um, what's her name? Something to do with a comet. You know, twin sisters separated so young they didn't even know each other, but then they go to this summer camp and..."
The guys cut him off with a "Sure, we'll work on it. Could you order another pot of coffee, and some more doughnuts...the pink frosted kind?" So the higherup closed the door and the two guys just looked at each other. The first one said, "I should have become an auto mechanic," and the second one said, "I could have gone to mortuary school like my cousin."
"Cousins! That's it," said the first guy. "TOTALLY IDENTICAL cousins."
Then the second guy said, "What in Hell are you talking about? There's no such thing as even identical cousins let alone TOTALLY identical cousins."
"Oh, there is now, baby. there is now," said the first guy. They used to use words like "baby" to show how hip and cool they were.
So the higherups let the two guys out of the room just in time for lunch at Sardi's, or some equally cool and expensive place where you'd go to be "seen" eating a fashionably light lunch.
Well, the higherups LOVED the concept, but the two guys weren't off the hook yet. One of the higherups looked at the two guys and said, "You know we're going to have to have a theme song that explains the whole thing."
"Great," the two guys thought. More work. But, the guys were up to it, and finished it just it time to have a stiff cocktail and catch the 5:45 train back to New Rochelle. It became, my friends, one of the most memorable yet crazyest theme songs ever written. It explains everything, and yet it contains the most bazaar line ever to reach the small screen.
Just sit back, close your eyes and remember it. It goes through a whole litany explaining how the cousins, both played by Patty, were identical, yet totally different. It's absolutely brilliant until, that is, until it gets to the following line:
"Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control"
A hot dog makes her lose control of WHAT, exactly? Sadly, none of the 104 episodes filmed during the show's three-year run featured Patty losing control because of a hot dog. Wouldn't that have been the best episode of all? Say, Patty's on the streets of Manhattan. She goes up to a hot dog vendor, one of those guys with the little cart full of steaming hot dogs, and orders a dog with mustard, onions, and maybe pickles. The vendor hands her the dog, and she totally loses control of EVERYTHING. She starts flopping around on the sidewalk. Someone calls for an ambulance, using the payphone on the corner (no cell phones back then).
The poor girl is convulsing, waving her arms around, banging her poor head on the cold, hard, unforgiving New York sidewalk. We can hear the sounds of an ambulance approaching when her identical, European cousin, Cathy, runs up yelling "Patty, Patty." Cathy tenderly cradles Patty's head as Patty's convulsions begin to cease, and poor Patty is, alas, gone. Everyone begins crying, some of them blaming the hot dog vendor, yelling things like, "You KNEW a hot dog would make her lose control. EVERYBODY knew that."
Then the crowd turns on the hot dog vendor chasing him up town and away from the sorry scene. The camera pans down to Cathy and the dead Patty. The scene goes slowly out of focus, and we abruptly cut to a cigarette commercial.
Now, I ask you, wouldn't that have been the best Patty Duke show ever filmed? I think so.
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