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Barbie (2023)
An uneven, yet enjoyable summer blockbuster!
Last year, I saw the popular summer blockbuster & pop cultural phenomenon, Barbie. I generally enjoyed it for the most part, but it had a few flaws: While the movie was very fun, it was also way too long! It had an overlong third act with multiple climaxes, that just wouldn't end! Also, the movie had a very conflicting tone: It couldn't decide if the film was a comedy movie, a Bollywood musical, or a message movie! Despite Barbie's overlong running time & inconsistent tone, it was still quite an enjoyable summer movie!
Even with warts and all, both actress Margot Robbie and Director Greta Gerwig performed yeoman workmanship on this film. It is a regrettable shame that the Academy Awards people didn't even bother to acknowledge their efforts with any Oscar nominations for them. Thinking ahead for the eventual sequel, Warner Bros. Should remember studio founder Jack Warner's movie making motto: "Leave the messages to Western Union!"
The Marvels (2023)
A bright, tight, and fast superhero film that really deserved to do so much better than it did at the boxoffice!
Late last year, I saw The Marvels, and, going upstream against the overwhelming tide of popular opinion,...*I LOVED IT!* It was the shortest of the Marvel films. Coming in at just under two hours, the film moved at such a rapid clip. The film was shorter, tighter, and it held my attention the entire run time! As much as I really liked the first Captain Marvel film, it was padded and a bit of a slog at times, occasionally dragging at certain points. Not so, this time! I didn't even mind when at points certain subplots frequently threatened to become a cross between a Candy Crush video game and a Bollywood musical! (This summer's monster megahit Barbie film quickly crossed that Bollywood musical line and it never came back!)
If I had any criticisms, it's that, firstly, the film far too quickly glossed over the reason why the Kree race now calls Captain Marvel "The Annihilator". That revelation was very crucial and is far too important a plot point to quickly gloss over. Secondly, speaking of "far too quickly", the finale quickly devolved into a non-stop slugfest, but then again, that's just what I want out of a superhero action movie. If I'm ever in a mood for a thinkfest, that's just what films like Watchmen and Oppenheimer are for! Does that make me an easily pleased person? Yes, it does. Am I ashamed of that? No, I am not! For better or for worse, I unconditionally enjoyed The Marvels, warts and all, but don't take my word for it, go see it and judge it for yourself! End of soapbox sermon!
Gojira -1.0 (2023)
A highly flawed, yet highly entertaining, re-imaging of the classic Godzilla legend that should should please many, if not most, fans of the film franchise!
I recently saw Godzilla Minus One and I really enjoyed it, warts & all. The first two-thirds move at a rapid clip. The final third is needlessly padded & bloated. Right after the leading character's love interest is lost, the film's third act falls into a bottomless pit of exposition & emotion and doesn't climb out until the all-too-brief final battle.
This movie is a period piece reboot that takes place between the years 1945-1947 and the leading character is a coward who is on a hero's journey to atone for his cowardice. When the lead loses his love interest, he spends the majority of the third act wallowing in a pool of angst & indecision, which slows the third act considerably. Also, the prolonged "town hall meeting" scene is an endless exposition dump that transitions the film from a rapid clip to a snail's pace. Also, at two hours & five minutes, the film is far too long. A half-hour could have been cut out, without hurting the film at all. If anything, editing the film would have strengthened it.
Yet, even with all these drawbacks, I still really enjoyed this film. The main characters & their motivations are very well defined. Also, even at it's worst, this is infinitely superior to the several insipid American reboot films that were released from 1998 to 2022. All in all, I really liked this film very much, even with warts & all. Please feel free to give it a try. Hope you enjoy it!
The Brady Kids: It's All Greek to Me (1972)
An nearly unrecognizable Wonder Woman appears in this failed Super Friends backdoor pilot episode that thankfully was never greenlighted!
This episode is such a hot mess! The behind-the-scenes story is actually much more interesting than the story of the episode itself: The year was 1972, and Filmation Associates was competing with Hanna-Barbara for the rights to make a animated TV series, based on DC Comics' Justice League of America. Both studios each made two crossover episodes/backdoor pilots: Batman & Robin guest-starred in two episodes of Hanna-Barbara's The New Scooby-Doo Movies and Superman & Wonder Woman individually guest-starred in one episode each of Filmation's The Brady Kids.
Hanna-Barbara's two New Scooby-Doo Movies episodes were faithful adaptations of the 1960's Batman & Robin TV series era and Filmation's Superman/Brady Kids crossover episode was a competent adaptation of the 1950's Adventures of Superman TV series era, but Filmation's adaptation of Wonder Woman was very far removed from the original source material!
In 1972, Wonder Woman's character was in a state of flux. She was in the final stages of a five-year failed experiment, which ended in early 1973, where Wonder Woman shed both her classic costume and her Super Powers. During this period she traded her costume for mod outfits and she traded her super powers for Martial Arts skills. In The Brady Kids' crossover episode, Filmation opted to use her classic costume, her super powers, and her Diana Prince dual identity. Instead of portraying Wonder Woman as either a classic era Army Wac & Super-heroine or as a mod era female adventurer with Martial Arts skills, Filmation re-imagined Diana Prince as Jan Brady's Math teacher, who moonlights as a super-heroine in her spare time!
The convoluted plot of this crossover episode is as follows: Marlon, the magic mynah bird accidentally sends The Brady Kids, as well as Jan Brady's Math teacher, Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman, back in time to the first Olympic games in ancient Greece and Diana attempts to train the Brady Kids to compete in the first Olympics, while trying to keep her dual-identity a secret, as well as keeping the kids from radically altering history! (*WHEW!*)
Other than that Diana Prince wears her classic costume, Filmation's interpretation of Wonder Woman bears almost no relation to either the classic or the mod era of Wonder Woman. In fact, other than the fact she doesn't either wear the classic costume or have the classic hair color, Cathy Lee Crosby's Wonder Woman much more faithfully reflects the core Wonder Woman than Filmation's version does. Also, in terms of comedy, as painfully bad as the Ellie Wood Walker pilot is, it's still much funnier than The Brady Kids' Wonder Woman crossover episode!
Ultimately, Filmation's well-intentioned, yet woefully misguided efforts were all for naught. DC Comics preferred Hanna-Barbara's efforts over Filmation and Hanna-Barbara won the bid for the TV rights to the Justice League of America. After de-empathizing the violence, empathizing pro-social values, adding Scooby-Doo style teen sidekicks, and changing the name of the Justice League of America to the more family-friendly "Super Friends", all to placate the network, the Super Friends series premiered a year later, in September 1973 and the show ran, on-and-off, for thirteen years!
Even though Filmation previously made some reasonably faithful adaptations of the DC Comics superheroes in the mid-1960s, considering the very poor quality of Filmation's The New Adventures of Batman 1970's series, as well as the two Brady Kids crossover episodes/backdoor pilots, which indicate the mindset of Filmation at the time, perhaps it was for the best that Hanna-Barbara did win the bid for the Justice League America/Super Friends TV rights!
Mission: Impossible (1966)
MI was not only the very best of the "Spy Shows" but one of the very best TV shows, period!
Mission: Impossible was one of the last of the TV shows inspired by the 1960's spy show craze, yet it outlasted all of the rest of them by many years. In fact, when one mentions spy TV shows, Mission: Impossible immediately comes to mind!
Originally imagined as a "spy caper"-style program, MI eventually evolved into a "con game"-style program. At first, MI was originally all about spy capers involving breaking in & out of prisons, safe cracking, & recovering hidden messages. It was the writing team of William Read Woodfeld & Allan Balter who defined the series by making the Impossible Missions Force (*IMF*) into con artists working for the US government & the IMF's villainous adversaries as their "marks". It was a stylishly fast-paced psychological study of these flawed villains' decline & fall. The plots of these programs were so elaborate, that there was only room for minimal characterizations of the heroes. MI's heroes were essentially cyphers, but the stories were so layered, textured, & nuanced that it didn't really matter. "The play was the thing", as it were.
The first three seasons are generally considered the series' very best seasons. However, there were very many excellent stories throughout MI's seven season run. Only during the final two seasons, where the network decreed that MI shift from spy stories to more traditional crime drama stories, does the premise of MI sometimes seem a little lackluster & worn down. For the most part, the writing of MI maintains most of its creative strength throughout it's run. MI was blessed with excellent writers. MI writers William Read Woodfeld & Allan Balter, Paul Playdon, Laurence Heath, and Stephen Kandel all contributed top notch scripts over the years.
Also, the acting on MI was always first rate: Stephen Hill, Peter Graves, Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Greg Morris, Peter Lupus, and in later seasons, Leonard Nimoy, Lesley Ann Warren, Sam Elliott, and Linda Day George all turn in stellar performances throughout the run of the series, which was not as easy as it would seem, since the the members of the IMF were portraying "people" who, even within the context of their missions, didn't really exist. These "people" existed solely for the benefit of the "mark". It was a very delicate line that the actors were treading and they all performed their parts expertly.
As I stated earlier, Mission: Impossible was one of the last TV shows spawned by the 60's spy craze, yet its the one show that ended up defining the spy genre for future generations, while the rest of the shows that came before MI are all almost completely forgotten today.
Finally, here's some recommended viewing of MI episodes for you: Choosing the best from seven seasons and 171 episodes can be overwhelming, so here's a Top 24 "Best Of" suggestion list. This list is not ranked, it is simply presented in original airdate order. So, without further ado, here's my Top 24 episodes recommended viewing list:
1) Operation Rogosh 2) Odds on Evil 3) The Ransom 4) The Train 5) The Council (Two Parts) 6) The Condemned 7) The Heir Apparent 8) The Mercenaries 9) The Execution 10) The Exchange 11) The Mind of Stephan Miklos 12) Live Bait 13) The Bunker (Two Parts) 14) Nicole 15) Numbers Game 16) Robot 17) The Submarine 18) The Falcon (Three Parts) 19) The Choice 20) The Killer 21) The Field 22) Encore 23) Invasion 24) The Question
Happy hunting, my friends & enjoy your viewing!
The Name of the Game (1968)
An ambitious and groundbreaking TV series that once seemed destined for greatness, but destiny had other plans!
It's almost completely forgotten today, but once upon a time, it was briefly one of the most popular series on television, a clever crime drama that boldly straddled the line between a "continuing series" (The same cast of characters every week.) and "anthology series" (A different cast of characters every week.) by ambitiously merging the best of both worlds, as well as being big-budget, movie-length weekly episodes, with three rotating leading characters! The name of this now long forgotten series was "The Name of the Game". If you asked an NBC network programming executive back in 1968, which of the following two NBC series would be remembered & beloved more, The Name of the Game or Star Trek? The answer would have been resoundingly The Name of the Game!
While Star Trek struggled & scraped by for three seasons, before being cancelled & rediscovered in syndication, The Name of the Game was an immediate major ratings success, that fell almost as immediately as it rose, and it remains almost forgotten today. For those who aren't familiar with this series, here's a quick thumbnail sketch: In 1966, there was a highly-rated TV movie of the week called "Fame is the Name of the Game" that was a pilot for a prospective TV series. That pilot TV movie of the week was a major ratings success and the resulting series was greenlighted to premiere in the fall of 1968. The premise was the glamorous, jet-setting world of the Howard Publications publishing empire: At the top of the publishing empire, was the globe-trotting, wealthy publisher, Glenn Howard (Gene Barry) whose jet-setting adventures alternated with his two star reporters: Dan Farrell, tough-as-nails ace investigative reporter for Crime Magazine, (Robert Stack) and Jeff Dillon, hotshot star reporter for People Magazine. (*Six years before the premiere of the real-life People Magazine!*) Jeff Dillon, the most popular character of the three leads, who was portrayed by Tony Fransciosa. (Who I'll get back to in a moment!) Finally, tying the ambitious-for-its-time 90-minute episode package together, was the plucky & resourceful Howard Publications secretary, who was the personal assistant to all three leads, Peggy Maxwell, as portrayed by an "adorkable" pre-McMillan and Wife Susan Saint James! The three leads occasionally crossed-over into each other's stories and with Susan Saint James frequently crossing-over into all three leads' stories, it gave the series a genuine feeling of a shared-universe inter-continuity and with Tony Fransciosa as Jeff Dillon as the series' white-hot breakout star, the series seemed poised to be a syndicated success, after a long and healthy network run. However, the fickle finger of fate had other plans in mind.
The series' biggest asset was also its biggest liability: Tony Fransciosa as Jeff Dillon. Fransciosa was an eccentric prima-donna, whose on-set antics made William Shatner's ego driven antics on Star Trek seem civil & benign by comparison: He would arrive to work late, leave early, suddenly taking-off unannounced during the middle of the shooting schedule day, instigate off-the-cuff improvisations & rewrites, (Partially motivated by his difficulty learning his lines!) and frequently firing producers & directors who he didn't work & play well with! Adding insult to injury for the bewildered Universal Studios & NBC network executives was the irony that loose canon Franciosa's episodes were the highest-rated episodes of the three leads! This empowered Franciosa's reign of terror over both studio and network alike for two seasons, but the tantrums and no-shows eventually came to a head in the middle of shooting a big budget two-part episode shot on location in Las Vegas early on in season three. During the middle of location shooting of the episode, Fransciosa walked-off the set, never to return. Both NBC and Universal finally had enough and Franciosa was fired. Thanks to some script doctoring & film editing, Universal finished Franscioa's final episode without him and, for the rest of the season, the studio hired several rotating guest stars to play reporters replacing Jeff Dillon in episodes originally written for Franciosa's Dillon. Unfortunately, without the show's breakout star, the series' ratings immediately plummeted and never recovered and, as a result, the show was quickly cancelled after three tulmetous seasons then just-as-quickly forgotten, while Star Trek, which was largely ignored by the network while the show was on the air, achieved legendary status in syndication and in pop culture and both network & studio executives expected the exact opposite to happen!
Why the ironic reversal of fortune? Several factors, actually. Firstly, changing trends: Back in 1968, the sleek, new novelty was the 90-minute format. Less-than-two-hours, but more than one hour, the 90-minute format was the new & unique flavor of the month. In fact, Name eventually paved the way for the even-more-successful NBC Sunday Mystery Movie, featuring Columbo, McCloud, & McMillan and Wife. But as trends change, studios & networks adjust accordingly. While in 1968, the 90-minute format was novel, by 1974, the format was by then judged unwieldy. Once the novelty of the 90-minute format wore-off, the mundane reality of day-to-day local TV station scheduling set in: While local TV stations could easily accommodate either one-hour or two-hour TV programs, 90-minute TV programs were too much of a logistical scheduling nightmare, which greatly hurt Game's syndication resale value! Eventually, even The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie transitioned from 90-minutes to two hours, sounding the death knell of the 90-minute format.
Also, Star Trek benefited from fortunate timing & better scheduling: During Star Trek's original network run, NASA hadn't landed on the moon yet, so the Apollo missions had become somewhat routine and, as a result, all things outer space had suddenly become old hat by that point. Mere weeks after Star Trek was cancelled, Apollo landed on the moon! Suddenly old hat outer space was brand new again and that was also a contributing factor in Star Trek's re-emergence on the pop cultural landscape! That, and the fact the same show that struggled at 10:00 pm on Friday nights on the network, now suddenly soared at 6:00 pm on weeknights in syndication!
Finally, the changing tides of trends & tastes: As I mentioned earlier, the 90-minute format was briefly a big deal at the time, also briefly a big deal at the time: Tony Fransciosa. Fansciosa was the new flavor of the month in 1968. By 1971, he was old hat, like Star Trek & outer space briefly was, back in 1968. However, unlike Star Trek, Tony Fransciosa never really bounced back. While he continued to act for the rest of his life and he led a long, diverse, and varied journeyman actor's career, he never regained his white-hot pop cultural super-star status. His fleeting moment in the pop cultural spotlight was over by 1971, while Star Trek's were only beginning. In fact, I'd say that far more people today know who George Takei is than know who Tony Fransciosa was. Ultimately, time is both the great equalizer and the best judge. The final score: Star Trek, 1; The Name of the Game, 0. Game over.
Even though I ultimately prefer Star Trek over The Name of the Game, there is still a lot to be said for Game. With Game's ambitious format and its elaborate shared-universe inter-continuity, it boldly predicted the shared-universe inter-continuity of the various Law and Order & Chicago Fire/PD/Med TV series, among others, that are in vogue today. Also, the episodes were very well-crafted mysteries, with occasional flashes of brilliance! While a pop cultural footnote today, The Name of the Game was, in some ways, very groundbreaking and, at the very least, very solid television!
UPDATE: Yesterday afternoon, (November 15, 2023) I was surfing on YouTube, intending to watch two of my favorite TNOTG episodes, "LA 2017" & "All The Old Familiar Faces", only to find that all but one of the TNOTG episodes posted on YouTube have been removed! Also, Shout Factory, which previously announced plans to release TNOTG on DVD way back in 2014, has long since cancelled their plans to do so. The Name of the Game is now officially a *forgotten series*. A pity.
Columbo (1971)
Columbo proves that the journey to the solution is as important and as entertaining as the solution itself!
A deceptively simple program, Columbo was an Agatha Christie-style mystery turned on its head. You knew who the murderer was. The first act was entirely devoted to depicting the killer planning and committing the murder. Columbo doesn't even show up until act two. There are no fistfights, gunfights, or car chases. So, why bother watching it? Simple, the show's creators perceptively realized that the identity of the murderer is ultimately problematical. The best part of all mysteries is the pursuit, the chase, the game of cat and mouse, and verbal chess matches between the detective and the suspects. The fact that the suspect is the murderer actually heightens the tension. How close can Columbo get? How can the murderer wiggle out of this? As television & mystery historian Mark Dawidziak, acclaimed author of "The Columbo Phile", once so aptly described the Columbo series: "Columbo isn't so much a 'whodunnit', as it is a 'howshegonnagetem?'"
Another brilliant aspect of the show was the fact that Columbo was not your typical cocky, cut, buff, and well-tailored police detective. He was apologetic, average build, and shabbily dressed. But beneath his unassuming exterior was a brilliant, intelligent mind. The murderers usually underestimated him due to his unassuming appearance and demeanor. This would be their fatal mistake.
Also, since the murderers were usually the cream of wealth and prestige, Lt. Columbo's ironic dichotomy of unassuming brilliance gave him a sort of everyman status. In a way, he represented all of us. We also had the dual pleasure of simultaneously watching Columbo putting the pieces together and solving the mystery while the murderer was slowly crumbling and deteriorating under Lt. Columbo's repeated scrutiny and verbal chess playing. It wasn't just a mystery program, it was also a psychological study of two powerful minds on opposite sides of the law colliding against each other.
Ultimately, Columbo (Both the show and the man) proved to viewers that the journey to the solution was just as important and just as satisfyingly entertaining as the solution itself.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Blood Oath (1994)
An excellent episode, as well as an affectionate love letter to the backstory of the classic Star Trek mythology!
Over the course of seven seasons, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine gave Star Trek fans some memorable & heartfelt love letters to Star Trek: The Original Series. One of the very best Star Trek love letters of all time aired on H&I tonight: "Blood Oath". This episode was so much more than a clever & witty ST salute, ala "Trials and Tribble-ations", this episode further fleshed out the already-rich & nuanced backstory of the classic Klingon culture, as well as fleshing out the backstory of Jadzia Dax! On a geeky behind-the-scenes note, this episode was written by veteran television screenwriter Peter Alan Fields, who wrote numerous episodes of ST: DS9, ST: TNG, (including the classic TNG episode: "The Inner Light".) The Six Million Dollar Man, McCloud, and, perhaps the greatest episode of The Man from U. N. C. L. E. Of all time: "The Concrete Overcoat Affair, Parts I & II". ("Look out! It's a pineapple!") Twenty-seven years later, the episode still holds up quite well. It's not just a great television episode, its great Star Trek also ! All in all, this was a most wonderful trip down memory lane tonight!
Perry Mason (2020)
HBO's darker & edgier reboot of Perry Mason is excellent!
HBO's new Perry Mason series is dark, stylish, and wonderful! Having just said that, there's a lot to unpack here. The show is both a reboot and a prequel. The Perry Mason of the classic series is the finished product, This Perry is a work in progress. When the new series begins, Perry isn't either confident or a lawyer yet. To use a comic book trope term, this is Perry's "Secret Origin" story. There have been some revisions in the backstories of Perry's universe: Both Della Street and Hamilton Burger are gay now and detective Paul Drake has been re-imagined as an African American, which leads to some timely, yet timeless, social commentary. Despite the numerous changes in Perry's supporting cast, in some ways the new series has returned to the roots of the original novels by setting the action back in the early 1930s. The classic series set the show in then-modern day (The early 1960s) to keep the budget of the series cost-effective. This new series has the financial luxury to produce the show as a lush period piece. This new series is edgier, darker, and different. However, there are moments of both change and familiarity. (One of my personal favorite moments is when, in the end credits of the season finale, you hear Fred Steiner's classic theme music from the original series!) There is joy to behold while watching the unfamiliar slowly morph into the familiar as Perry starts the season as a struggling private eye, but eventually evolves into a self-assured lawyer by the season's end. This isn't really a spoiler though, because the journey Perry makes is far more important than his ultimate destination. Is this show your father's Perry Mason? No, it isn't. However, it *is* very good television. I eagerly look forward to future seasons of this stylish new series.
Wonder Woman (1974)
A look back at a pilot for a Wonder Woman series that almost was...
This failed TV movie pilot is a pop-cultural oddity: An adaptation of Wonder Woman based partly on the brief five-year period of the comic when the character temporarily lost her super powers, as well as her classic costume and she was re-imagined as a non-super-powered, mod-dressing Emma Peel-esque adventurer. This pilot is also partly a precursor of the direction that the Lynda Carter series would eventually take in seasons two and three: Diana Prince being revamped into a James Bond-like ace operative of an UNCLE-esque top secret spy organization.
When this pilot TV movie was in pre-production development, Wonder Woman in the comic books was still in her "mod girl adventurer" phase at the time and the producers seemed unsure which direction to take with the character in the pilot, ("Classic" or "Mod"?) so they tried to split the difference and try to give us a little bit of both worlds! For the purposes of this patchwork pilot, the producers transformed & transitioned Wonder Woman from being a "Girl Adventurer" to being a "Spy Girl". A blonde-haired (!) Cathy Lee Crosby tries her level best to make this awkward composite characterization of Diana Prince seem almost plausible. (The problem is with the script, not with the actress!) She even has a couple of witty Bond-esque exchanges; one where she coolly rebuffs the smarmy sexual flirtations of the villain's chief henchman (a wonderfully oily Andrew Prine) and one where she playfully mentions in passing her invisible plane to the main villain (a masterfully silky-smooth Ricardo Montalbán) in a flirty exchange!
Instead of either her traditional classic costume or one of her mod new outfits from the current-at-the-time comic books, the producers once again decided to "split the difference" by outfitting Crosby in a re-imagined costume that looks more like a mod track suit, than a superhero costume. It's functional, plausible, and mundane. It doesn't look awful, just dull. Just imagine if Superman instead of wearing his classic costume, was wearing a blue & red sweat suit with a small red "S" shield on the side of the chest and you'll get the general idea!
In another odd & awkward blending of the "classic" and "mod" directions, there is a new character, Diana's feisty sister, Ahnjayla, (played by Anitra Ford) who seems to be loosely based upon Diana's feisty sister from the comic books, Nubia, who was then-recently introduced into the comic's continuity when Wonder Woman was re-revamped back into her classic costumed super-powered super-heroine persona in the comic books once more. The pilot tries it's best to blend both the classical and modern directions, but never entirely succeeding with either direction. The pilot producers should have chosen either one direction or the other, instead of hedging their bets and trying to blend both, ending-up in giving us neither! One year later, ABC & Warner Brothers tried again with a second Wonder Woman pilot, this time starring a super-powered & a much more traditionally-costumed Lynda Carter. This new "back-to-basics" pilot was a hit and the Lynda Carter series ran for three successful seasons.
So, perhaps this failed pilot's longest lasting legacy is the "Spy Girl" motif: When ABC later cancelled Wonder Woman after it's first season for being a far-too expensive World War Two era period piece, CBS picked-up the show for seasons two and three, with the proviso that the timeline of the show be moved-up to modern day, to keep costs down and so, Diana was re-imagined as an ace secret agent, once again! This cost-effective secret agent makeover saved the series, so at least that aspect of this failed pilot was proven to be right in retrospect. Just put Cathy Lee Crosby in a traditional Wonder Woman costume and a brunette wig, (Or simply re-cast Crosby with Lynda Carter!) and you would have a typical Wonder Woman episode from seasons two and three of the Lynda Carter series!
While this is not vintage classic Wonder Woman by a long shot, it is an interesting time capsule of Wonder Woman in a flux state of transition and of a long-forgotten failed pilot, valiantly trying and ultimately failing to capture the best of both worlds of Wonder Woman.
The Brady Kids: Cindy's Super Friend (1972)
A lost & forgotten "back door pilot" episode for the Super Friends that almost were.
In 1972, animation studios Hanna-Barbara and Fiilmation were both competing for the rights to adapt DC Comics' "Justice League of America" comic book into a TV series and both studios made several "Back Door Pilot" try-out episodes on pre-existing cartoon series: Batman & Robin made two guest-appearances on Hanna-Barbara's "The New Scooby-Doo Movies" and both Superman & Wonder Woman each made solo guest-appearances on two episodes of Filmation's "The Brady Kids". The Wonder Woman episode, "It's All Greek To Me", was just awful, the Superman episode was a little bit better. However, DC Comics didn't like Filmation's efforts and awarded the animation rights to the "Justice League of America" to Hanna-Barbara instead. ABC changed the name of the "Justice League of America" to the more family-friendly name of the "Super Friends" and approved the series to premiere in the fall of 1973 and ran on ABC for *THIRTEEN*(!) years.