The Jack Kelly Facebook page has posted links to an endlessly entertaining blog called "Inner Toob - A Look at TV as An Alternate Reality". This clever blog puts forth the notion that our favorite TV characters all live in one big universe and makes whimsical (but logical) connections between them.
The most recent postings focus on Maverick. One posting is about the most mysterious Maverick, Brent, the never-before-mentioned sibling who suddenly materialized in season four.
And, speaking of Brent:
Here's a picture of him and his brother, Bart. Bart seems to be thinking, "Who is the tall dark stranger there...and why is he wearing Bret's clothes?!"
Here's a close-up of Brother Bart, which is dedicated to JK fans everywhere, and one very special fan (and lady) in particular:
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The whole thing about constructing an interwoven television reality always intrigued me (as long as nobody gets too carried away) and I've always gotten a mysteriously huge kick out of any kind of crossovers for some reason, which was built into "Maverick" starting with the 8th episode. When I was a child I'd watch "Leave It to Beaver," "Father Knows Best," and other sitcoms while picturing them as being in the same neighborhood. I was kind of stunned to finally visit L.A. as an adult, take the Universal tour, and learn that those houses were indeed right around the corner from each other, almost exactly as I'd imagined as a toddler.
ReplyDeleteThe Brent character on "Maverick" never had a chance, only doing two episodes. It even took Garner, a stunningly great light comedian, a couple of episodes before he really took off with "According to Hoyle," one of the real classics that stand as one of the best films ever shot, period (along with "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres," "Stampede," "The Saga of Waco Williams," and "The Jail at Junction Flats"). It could be that Colbert might have made something of Brent, we'll obviously never know, but I always thought the studio made a mistake by not returning him for the fifth season, if only to turn some of them into hopefully popular 2-brother shows. By then Warner had obviously more or less given up on the series, though. The drop in the series' quality after Huggins' departure is subtle but devastating, although I'm glad that the subsequent three seasons exist even if most of them do dilute the reputation of the show. How do you explain to someone how great "Maverick" was when they've been watching post-Huggins episodes? You can't, you have to conduct a history seminar for the series in order to do it and watch their eyes glaze over.
Amusingly, Garner either pretended in his occasionally loony interview for the Archive of American Television that he didn't even realize that Huggins ever left or was slyly running a scam out of the animosity he always voiced toward Huggins after forcing him out of "The Rockford Files" (another Huggins creation) in support of alternate producer Meta Rosenberg. As sometimes happens in life, when the "Bret Maverick" series foundered (comparatively speaking), Garner wanted Huggins to return to straighten it out. Huggins insisted that Maverick had to always be traveling and refused to produce the show. Scripts were then written for the abortive second season in which Bret would mainly travel (even though Huggins wouldn't be producing) and Bart would run the saloon in Arizona, taking a break from traveling himself. Kelly spoke of a stack of scripts being presented to him when he showed up to shoot his cameo last scene for the final episode of the first season but the network unexpectedly canceled the series, eliminating what would have been a 1980s Bart Maverick renaissance.