December 1, 2008

• Oh brother, how could thou?

  "Mom always liked you best!" 

  That was Tom Smothers' exasperated cry to younger brother Dick.  Looking back, you can see a probable reason for Mother Smothers' dismay.  Tom Smothers may have acted dumb, but he was quite the TV troublemaker in the late sixties.  Assuming the guise of an innocent folk singer, he and his brother fearlessly (and maybe a tad naively) took on all that was sacred in America, battling tooth and guitar pic with the almighty CBS censors.  By the time their third season rolled around the old men in the suits could take it no more and the show was abruptly canceled.  The evidence of those struggles can be witnessed on the just-released DVD boxed set The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: Season 3.  

  1968 was a tinderbox year--assassinations, Vietnam, rioting in the streets--and the Smothers Brothers were doing their best to poke fun at the whole awful mess.  Back then, TV viewers were accustomed to programs with music and a little light comedy tossed in almost as an afterthought (think Johnny Cash and Tom Jones).  The Smothers had a new formula:  comedy with claws that left no one unscratched.  Put it this way:  On those Sunday nights LBJ was probably watching Bonanza instead.
  
  Which is precisely why The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour still resonates today, still makes us laugh and think.  This was not the boozy escapist fare of Dean Martin, this was in-your-face political satire fueled by a different set of chemicals. The sketches have a heady quality; Liberace plays his piano too fast and is pulled over by a motorcycle cop named Officer Judy who says, "Do you know how fast you were playing?"  The surreal tone of the gags can be attributed to a young writing staff that included Bob Einstein and an unknown Steve Martin, who appears briefly yet memorably in a few bits. 
  
  Tom and Dick Smothers helped sow the seeds of comedy to come, paving the way for Saturday Night Live and all that followed, right on up to The Daily Show.  Oh yeah, and what about the music?  It's a precious time capsule.  Joan Baez at her most passionate,  The Doors at their most hypnotic, Donovan at his most hippy-dippy. There's also an astonishing turn by Harry Belafonte singing the calypso number "Don't Stop The Carnival" in front of footage of the '68 Democratic Convention riots.  CBS cut it from the original airing, but it's restored here.  Forty years later it still holds its power.

                                                                                   ---- Ed Kaz
  
  
  

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