Let me say it again: Laurel & Hardy Blogathon. Here. October 14!

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 16, 2014

MovieMovieBlogBlog is proud to announce the 1st Annual Laurel & Hardy Blogathon!

When: Sat., Oct. 4, 2014.

Where: Right here, at moviemovieblogblog.wordpress.com. (If you have never participated in a blogathon before, click here for an excellent explanation of the procedure, from a fellow movie blogger.)

How: To sign up, leave me a comment on this blog, or IM me at my Facebook page. (I don’t check my email frequently, so it is best that you contact me through one of these venues.) I will be keeping a roster of all the participants and will frequently update it at this blog. I have banners at the bottom of this post that you can put on your sites. During the blogathon itself, when your post is ready to go, simply leave me a comment with your link, or send a message. Please be sure to email me the title and URL of the blog where you will be posting your entry!

Also, I ask that you have your entry posted at least by 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 4, if not sooner. I have previously participated in a blogathon where many of the advertised blogs were not posted by the date of the blogathon, which makes things confusing for anyone who wants to stop by and read people’s entries.

What to submit:

I am looking for posts that review/critique any movie that stars or co-stars Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy. Let me make this clear. You can blog about:

* any of the Laurel & Hardy silent and sound short subjects and feature films

* any movie in which Laurel & Hardy made “guest appearances” (e.g., Hollywood Party)

* any short subject or feature film that stars or co-stars Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy solo (without their partner)

* also, there are a few documentaries about the team — Cuckoo, Laurel & Hardy: A Tribute to the Boys, and Laurel & Hardy: Their Lives and Magic. I welcome any blog about any of these as well.

What not to submit:

* Please, no general reminiscences about how you “came across” Laurel & Hardy. I would like your blog to be related to a movie that fits one of the above categories.

* Please please, no reviews of: any theatrical cartoons with L&H caricatures; any made-for-TV Laurel & Hardy cartoons; or that feature-film abomination, The New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy: For Love or Mummy.

Other rules:

* As I said, I will keep a running tally at this blog of which movies have been chosen for blogging. If you let me know what movie you want to blog, and I inform you that it’s already taken and you’ll need to choose a different movie, please don’t take it personally. The key words here are variety and fun.

* Please blog only text and/or photos. Do not include any links to online Laurel & Hardy movies, videos, or clips from YouTube or any other Internet media. I would like this blogathon to be seen by as many people as possible, and some sites will not link to blogs with L&H vids due to copyright issues.

* Keep your blog in the bounds of good taste. Stan and Babe are watching from above.

* Blogs can be positive or negative. If you want to express your love for your favorite L&H film, by all means, do so. Conversely, if you think a particular L&H film is overrated and you want to say why, go for it. All I ask is that you couch your comments in thought-out critical terms, as opposed to “Laurel and Hardy suck.”

Roster: Here is the roster of movies and bloggers as of Sept. 16.

THE LUCKY DOG – Silent-ology

FROM SOUP TO NUTS – Way Too Damn Lazy to Write a Blog

THE LAUREL-HARDY MURDER CASE – Once Upon a Screen

WAY OUT WEST – Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Let’s make this blogathon as big of an online success as the live Oliver Hardy Festival!

Disclaimer: This blogathon is not in any way related to or endorsed by The Oliver Hardy Festival of Harlem, GA.

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Charlie Chaplin in THE NEW JANITOR (1914) – Charlie cleans up

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 14, 2014

(WARNING: Spoilers abound!)

Quickie plot summary: Charlie has just been fired from the title role (!) when he manages to thwart a bank robbery.

Charlie is the janitor at a bank, and some of the business leading up to his firing is amusing, but far too much time is spent on the “straight” story of one of the bank executives trying to embezzle funds from the bank’s safe.

The pay-off, however, is terrific: Charlie, having stooped down to help a fainted bank secretary, nevertheless holds a gun between his legs to keep the bank exec at bay. The ending, too, is interesting: A policeman, having heard gunshots, rushes to the scene and impulsively takes Charlie away, assuming from his grubby demeanor that he is the bank robber. This finale is played strictly for laughs, yet it seems to look forward to Chaplin’s later, more thoughtful shorts such as Police. A flawed but intriguing short.

The Laurel & Hardy Blogathon – Here, on Sat., Oct. 4, 2014!

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 13, 2014

Every year in the first weekend of October, The Oliver Hardy Festival is held as a tribute to Mr. Hardy in Harlem, GA., Oliver Hardy’s birthplace. This year’s Festival will be held on Sat., Oct. 4.

Don’t you wish you could show your affection for Mr. Hardy and his partner, Mr. Laurel? Well, if you can’t make it to Harlem this year, here’s how you can do it from the comfort of your keyboard!

MovieMovieBlogBlog is proud to announce the 1st Annual Laurel & Hardy Blogathon!

When: Sat., Oct. 4, 2014.

What to submit:

I am looking for posts that review/critique any movie that stars or co-stars Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy. Let me make this clear. You can blog about:

* any of the Laurel & Hardy silent and sound short subjects and feature films

* any movie in which Laurel & Hardy made “guest appearances” (e.g., Hollywood Party)

* any short subject or feature film that stars or co-stars Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy solo (without their partner)

What not to submit:

* Please, no general reminiscences about how you “came across” Laurel & Hardy. I would like your blog to be related to a movie that fits one of the above categories.

Other rules:

* Keep your blog in the bounds of good taste. Stan and Babe are watching from above.

Roster: Here is the roster of movies and bloggers as of Sunday morning, Sept. 14-

THE LUCKY DOG – Silent-ology

FROM SOUP TO NUTS – Way Too Damn Lazy to Write a Blog

THE LAUREL-HARDY MURDER CASE – Once Upon a Screen

WAY OUT WEST – Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Let’s make this blogathon as big of an online success as the live Oliver Hardy Festival!

Disclaimer: This blogathon is not in any way related to or endorsed by The Oliver Hardy Festival of Harlem, GA.

Banners:

CITIZEN KANE (1941) – Orson Welles, unhappy with the world, successfully creates his own

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 10, 2014

The following is my entry in “The Great Movie Debate Blogathon,” hosted by the blogs The Cinematic Packrat and Citizen Screenings. Be sure to visit them on Sept. 13 and 14 at, respectively, thecinematicpackrat.wordpress.com and citizenscreenings.wordpress.com, and read fascinating “for” and “against” blogs related to classic movies!

(WARNING: Major spoilers ahead!)

I have trouble naming any movie the greatest of all time. But is Citizen Kane one of the greatest? No argument there. Its innovative uses of sound, photography, sets, editing, and good old American dialogue make it a movie feast to be savored over and over.

The facts: Orson Welles had made a national name for himself with radio’s Mercury Theatre, especially its infamous Mars-invasion broadcast on Halloween night in 1938. For his first movie (which he co-wrote, directed, and acted in at age 25), he was given unprecedented freedom to do what he chose — a freedom Hollywood was never foolish enough to extend to Welles again.

Welles worked with Herman Mankiewicz (who produced The Marx Brothers’ early movie comedies, among other notables) on a screenplay initially titled The American. Unfortunately, the American they chose to depict was a thinly disguised version of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who hit the roof and other skyward destinations when he got wind of the project.

Hearst

Threatening every punishment under the Hollywood sun, Hearst nearly cowed the studios into buying up all of RKO’s prints of Citizen Kane, to be burned. Fortunately for posterity, Welles sneaked the movie out to some New York critics, where some rhapsodic critics ensured Kane‘s place in cinema history. In the end, even Hollywood begrudgingly awarded Welles and Mankiewicz an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Welles’ Hearstian alter ego was Charles Foster Kane, who forever felt alienated after being separated from his well-meaning mother after she inadvertently inherited and passed on a fortune to him. Thereafter, as one of Kane’s associates put it, he “was unhappy with the world, so he tried to create his own.”

That world included Thatcher (George Coulouris), who seethes when Kane takes over a newspaper and turns into the definition of yellow journalism; Bernstein (Everett Sloane), Kane’s faithful associate; Jed Leland (Joseph Cotten), Kane’s college buddy, who eventually sees through Kane’s scheming; and Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), a modestly talented singer/ex-wife at whom Kane threw money to transform her into an opera star.

All of these people tell Kane’s story — and, besides the movie’s legendary technical wizardry, it is this fragmented version of one man’s life that make Kane so fascinating. Each segment reflects a different mood as well as a different portion of Kane’s life. Thatcher’s part of the story is snippy and officious; Leland’s segment reflects a childhood hero who is soon shown to have feet of clay; and the story of Susan’s singing career uses eerie music (by later-Hitchcock-veteran Bernard Herrmann), vocally and wordlessly, to dramatize a simple woman in the hands of a manipulative tyrant.

And of course, there’s “Rosebud” — Kane’s final utterance, that provides the mystery that these fragments try to unravel. After more than 70 years, the final revelation of “Rosebud” seems nothing less than a cosmic joke that Welles wanted to play on film posterity. But until that punchline at least, Citizen Kane is one of the finest movie concoctions ever — a multi-layered piece that makes anthills of most current Hollywood product.
(Postscript: In what is now a commonplace practice but was fairly radical in 1941, none of the movie’s credits appear until the end. Watch, and be amazed at some of the now-familiar actors and technicians whose first movie this was.)(Heck, even the movie’s trailer is pretty innovative — see below.)

Buster Keaton in COLLEGE (1927) – Gets an “A” for effort, a “D-” for execution

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 10, 2014

(WARNING: Major spoilers ahead!)

College is by far the weakest of Buster Keaton’s independent features, and for far too many reasons. After seeing his pet project The General get critically and financially pummeled, Keaton caved on all counts with his next movie.

The first strike against College is that Keaton allowed others to handle the writing and directing. Strangely enough, some of those personnel, such as director James Horne and writer Carl Harbaugh, later became associated with Laurel & Hardy’s best features. (L&H nemesis Charlie Hall can also be seen briefly, as the coxswain of the college rowing team.) For College, that unfortunately results in Buster’s usual industrious persona being turned into a Stan Laurel-like simpleton, seemingly incapable of handling menial tasks.

Then there’s the movie’s titular subject. Keaton plays Ronald, a high-school bookworm who embarrasses his girlfriend Mary (Anne Cornwall) by giving a valedictorian address on “the curse of athletics.” Mary goes off to college with her more athletic fellow graduate Jeff, informing Ronald that she will have nothing more to do with him until he gets more athletic. Predictably, Ronald follows Mary to college and fouls up in every collegiate sport at which he competes.

The second strike against the movie is – never mind the curse of athletics – the curse of movie comedians who never made it through high school trying to conjure up a credible comedy about college life. The Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy also fell victim to this malady, resulting in some of their most middling movies.

Strike Three is that the movie’s premise just doesn’t ring true for Keaton. Having seen his physical agility clearly demonstrated in all of his other movies, it’s downright painful to watch him getting outrun by two little kids on a track field, or proving himself completely ignorant in even the basics of sports. It doesn’t help matters to continually cut away from Keaton to shots of other college athletes guffawing over Ronald’s ineptitude; if everyone in the movie thinks he’s a zero, why should the viewer sympathize with him? The moment Mary tries to blow off Ronald at the high-school graduation, we’re meant to root for Ronald making the grade in college sports, but you’re more likely thinking that if all Mary wants is a dumb jock, she’s getting what she deserves.

The movie is far more “gaggy” than Keaton’s previous features, which means that instead of having a stake in Buster/Ronald’s outcome, we’re left to judge the movie on the basis of its individual gags, most of which are quite predictable.

The absolute nadir of the movie, and perhaps of Keaton’s independent movies, is a blackface scene in which Ronald, desperate for as job on campus, impersonates a “colored waiter.” This demonstrates the movie’s absolute dearth of characterization; even if the scene was funnier to segregated 1920’s audiences than it is now, it’s the kind of “comedy” that any nondescript comedian could do. And needless to say, it almost makes the racial stereotypes of Keaton’s Seven Chances look downright benign.

(Even Snitz Edwards, who provided funny support in Seven Chances and Battling Butler, has little comic material here, save one brief moment where he hilariously recalls a lost love and cries over her photograph.)

The movie’s climax shows Ronald, laboring to save Mary from the brutish athlete who has locked her in her room, suddenly has the impetus to succeed at every athletic task he had previously bollixed up. This scene, too, is lacking for a couple of reasons. Keaton, resigned to trying to do a more crowd-pleasing movie than The General, could not give himself to train for months for the shot in which Ronald pole-vaults into Mary’s room to save her. Instead, he hired Lee Barnes, an Olympic pole-vaulting champion, to double for him in long-shot. It was the only time that Keaton caved to fakery in a movie stunt; previously, it had been a matter of pride for him to do his stunts “on the level.” This alone shows how dispirited Keaton was by The General‘s failure.

Then when Ronald reaches Mary’s room, he throws objects at Mary’s bully in a fit of rage. This is obviously an attempt to reprise the dramatic climax of Battling Butler, but even in that mid-level comedy, Keaton’s milquetoast character gave us more to root for, thus the dramatic conflict was more satisfying. Here, it seems to happen in a void.

Weirdest of all is the Cops-like black-comedy ending, where Ronald and Mary go from marriage to parenthood to squabbling to separate graves in eleven seconds. Why did Keaton, who copped out at every other level of the movie, suddenly decide that such a “personal” touch was necessary for the fade-out? One imagines that it left 1927 audiences scratching their heads.

The movie’s most bittersweet touch was to have the rowboat for Ronald’s rowing team bear the name of Damfino, lifted from Keaton’s short The Boat – a movie that would be a far worthier investment of your time than College.

RENT (2005) – A pleasant surprise, despite (or because of?) its outre manner and themes

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 9, 2014

In his review of Rent, Roger Ebert claimed that the famed Broadway musical does not work as a movie because it needs, and is lacking, a live audience. Having come to the movie of Rent with no emotional stake (haven’t seen the B’way show, barely wanted to see the movie), I found it one of the most satisfying movies of 2005.

Yes, it is unquestionably melodramatic. I am told that Rent is the opera “La Boheme” (another cultural touchstone to which I claim ignorance) updated for the AIDS generation, and there are definite moments where the movie is doing little but pulling your strings. By the same token, one could claim that Goeth, the Nazi commandant in the fact-based Schindler’s List, is played by Ralph Fiennes as too conventionally evil. Doesn’t matter, though – his character gives you a chill. And Rent‘s characters are so heartfelt, and the movie so on-target (did Harry Potter‘s Chris Columbus really direct this?), that even the sappier moments are effective.

The setting is New York City in 1989, when America finally started to come to terms with AIDS. The characters are close-knit friends holing up in a tenement run by their former friend Benny (Taye Diggs), who now wants to kiss up to his wealthy father-in-law by evicting his former pals. They include Mark (Anthony Rapp), an aspiring film-maker; Roger (Adam Pascal), a musician who has grown distant since becoming HIV-positive; Tom (Jesse L. Martin), who falls in love with the drag queen (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) who aids him after he is mugged; and a stripper/heroin addict named Mimi (Rosario Dawson, in the first movie where the filmmakers seemed to know how to use her fiery talent).

If anything, the movie’s primary point is to show these people existing on their own terms, and the movie shows this admirably. When, in this movie, we see same-sex people sharing a kiss or a hug, it’s presented matter-of-factly; and because the characters actually have some dimension to them, it feels earned.

Chris Columbus, after laboring for many years in Home Alone-type movies, finally seems to know where to put his camera. Musicals, in particular, have trouble striking a balance between looking static and frantic; here, the camerawork really soars, moving gracefully and closing in just enough to let the actors finish the soaring. And unlike most modern-day Broadway musicals, Jonathan Larsen’s score is one that you can hum and that hums on its own, nicely elucidating its characters and doing so with genuinely catchy songs.

Besides the actors listed above, who are all splendid, there’s a fresh-faced powerhouse named Idina Menzel, who plays Maureen, a self-styled, unapologetic lesbian. When caught in a flirt by her Significant Other (Tracie Toms), who tries to chastize her, the two of them spar in a great number, “Take Me As I Am.” And a viewer just knows that, however flighty Maureen is, her lover will just have to come back to her, because she’s darned well worth it.

That’s the treasure of this movie – genuine, heartfelt characterization. Rent is, on all levels, emotionally devastating.

Laurel & Hardy in SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME? (1928) – Not when there’s a nearby golf course

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 9, 2014

(WARNING: Spoilers abound!)

The movie’s title is a bit of a misnomer, because in Should Married Men Go Home?, the married man — Ollie — is home. In a surprising turnaround from the usual situation, the movie opens on a blissful couple buried in the Sunday newspaper. Who’d have guessed that Ollie would or could be happily married?

It takes only the sight of Stan marching towards their house to set the surprisingly content Mrs. Hardy (L&H vet Kay Deslys) into a tizzy. In a routine later reprised in the more familiar L&H sound short Come Clean, Mr. and Mrs. H. try to pretend they’re not home — even when Stan is rapping their door so hard, you can see the indentations he makes in the wood.

Stan slips a note halfway under their door, and Ollie, never content to leave well enough alone, pulls the note all the way through while Stan is still present, leaving Stan to wonder how the door swallowed the note. (One of Beanie Walker’s greatest subtitles tells us that Stan has “a mind of his own but no great demand for it.”) Eventually, of course, the ruse is exposed, the Hardys politely invite Stan in, and Stan becomes the ’20s precursor of a generations-later, great “SNL” John Belushi sketch: The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.

Stan parked in a living room is a comedic thing of beauty. The movie spends about a minute staring at the threesome — the Hardys glaring at Stan, and Stan uncomprehendingly smiling back at them. How many comedians, even in the silent era, would have the nerve to do something like that? Then Stan starts spotting opportunities to get in the Hardys’ hair and succeeds at every one of them. He inadvertently tears up the chair he’s sitting in, then follows with a minor symphony in which he destroys one of Hardy’s curtains.

Then he spots Ollie’s phonograph player and goes to wreak havoc on it — but Ollie, at a condescending peak, tells him he’ll handle it — “You might break your other foot!” Ollie’s just as bad, though — he’s so wound up, he tries to crank up the player and turns it into an exploding jack-in-the-box. Mrs. Hardy finally gives up on domestic bliss and tells Ollie to beat it, whereupon Ollie immediately strips out of his Sunday best to expose golf togs underneath. I guess he knew the domestic bliss couldn’t last long, too.

Stan and Ollie proceed to a golf course where, conversely, the comedy becomes a little less free-wheeling. They pick up a pair of female golfers to make a foursome and, in another precursor of a later L&H sound skit (in Men ‘o War), they try to court the girls with only fifteen cents between them (and all of that was Stan’s). Ollie magnanimously tells Stan to forget buying a drink for himself and use the money only on him (Ollie) and the girls. The routine is funny but not as neatly or funnily capped as in the later movie. Here, a subtitle tells us that Stan eases out of his debt by proffering his watch (“It was that kind of watch”).

From here, the duo go on to wreak havoc on the golf course and its many inhabitants, among them a toupeed (but not for long) Edgar Kennedy. The movie’s final third is funny enough but is more fascinating for architectural reasons. As with all early L&H comedies, it’s amazing to see how much undeveloped land there was in ’20s L.A.; there seems to be nothing beyond the golf course but the Pacific Ocean. And talk about undeveloped acreage — this golf course has more mudholes than a Culver City street. The Boys even pull Kennedy out of one of the mud puddles, like a rabbit out of a hat, for the movie’s capper.

As a minor number, Should Married Men Go Home? is a pleasant enough time-killer, although you’d think with a killer golfer like Babe Hardy as an on-the-set consultant, the domestic scenes wouldn’t be funnier than the golfing ones.

The Great Movie Debate Blogathon

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 8, 2014

The Great Movie Debate Blogathon is this weekend. If you’d like to participate (or at least read the entries), read on! Yours Truly will be doing the “for” argument for the “whether-you-agree-or-not-it’s-a-” classic, CITIZEN KANE.

Citizen Screenings

In the midst of blogathons celebrating and honoring films and filmmakers we’re ready for a debate!

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Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle in THE ROUNDERS (1914) – A potent combination

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 7, 2014

Film history tells us that because of his assertive ways, Chaplin bumped heads with a lot of veterans during his first months at the Keystone Studios. It would appear that Roscoe Arbuckle was not one of them. Here and elsewhere, he and Chaplin are a delight together.

Here, they play drunks coming in separately from a night on the town. As it happens, they have rooms across the hall from each other, and both have wives waiting to nag them about their drinking. When the nagging gets out of hand, soon the wives are fighting each other instead of the husbands, while the husbands discover they go to the same lodge and find that as good as an excuse as any to continue their nightly binge together.

After seeing how well Chaplin and Arbuckle work together here, it’s a pity that Keystone’s keystone, Mack Sennett, didn’t try to pair them again. The movie’s only debit: It’s a one-reeler. Just when it starts to get really interesting, it ends.

A rethinking of “The Honeymooners” ethos: Is Alice Kramden a moax?

Posted by Movie Movie Blog Blog on September 7, 2014

I first saw reruns of “The Honeymooners” on KPHO-TV Ch. 5 in Phoenix, AZ., in 1975, when I was 14 years old. Like millions of other Jackie Gleason fans, I’ve enjoyed the show ever since.
However, as I get older, my viewpoint of the series has done a full 180. Anyone who is versed in “The Honeymooners” usually has this take on it: Ralph Kramden is the big dreamer and schemer whose wild ideas always land with a thud. Ralph’s wife Alice is the practical one, Ralph’s anchor, who does her best to keep him grounded.
But about 15 years ago, I re-watched a “Honeymooners” episode that made me rethink the show’s entire modus operandi. In the episode “A Matter of Record,” Alice tells Ralph that her mother is stopping by. Ralph, who is always at odds with Alice’s mother, vows not to say a word to her during her visit. But he also posits that Mother won’t be there for three minutes before she starts up with Ralph, and he sets the timer on a nearby alarm clock to prove it.

Sure enough, Mother spends most of her time taking digs at Ralph, which Alice does little to defend, and then concludes by giving away the ending to a Broadway play for which Ralph had just received free admission tickets from his boss. When the alarm clock goes off, so does Ralph, who loudly and repeatedly declares that Mother is “a blabbermouth!” Alice is so incensed by Ralph’s behavior that she angrily goes home with her mother…for good, it is implied.
The rest of the episode depicts how, two weeks later, Ralph is still without Alice and misses her terribly, and how Ralph’s pal Ed works out a plan for Ralph to win Alice back. But let’s back up for a minute. Ralph kept his part of the deal by not starting an argument with Mother, while she did everything she could to egg Ralph on. Then when he (rightfully) loses his temper, Alice goes running home to Mother.
At this point in the series, I believe it had been established that Ralph and Alice had been married for 15 years or so. Shouldn’t Alice have some sort of loyalty towards Ralph by now? What kind of wife still runs home to Mother after 15 years of marriage? And isn’t it just possible that Ralph is right every so often?
Once you start to view the series in this light, the presumed comedy starts to drain out of a lot of this sitcom’s situations. In “Better Living Through TV,” Ralph finds out about a warehouse filled with 2,000 unused can openers, which Ralph can have for $200. Ralph figures he could buy commercial time on local TV, hawk the can openers as “the household gadget of the future,” and make a huge profit. The only problem, of course, is that Ralph doesn’t have $200 or money to pay for a TV ad, and his only possible source for such money is that immovable object, Alice Kramden.

There follows a scene that gets to be almost painful to watch. In the dead of night, Alice and Ralph argue, with Ralph pleading for the money and Alice dismissing the idea as another of Ralph’s “hare-brained schemes.” I have a couple of major problems with this scene.
1) Alice gets off cheap shot after cheap shot at Ralph. But when an annoyed Ralph declares that his first-ever hare-brained scheme was when “I asked you to marry me and you said yes,” Alice looks him dead in the eye and orders, “Don’t you ever say anything like that to me ever again, Ralph Kramden.” So it’s okay for Alice to continually badmouth Ralph, but the other way around is forbidden?
2) Why does Alice think Ralph’s idea is so unreasonable? As has been proven for nearly 60 years since this episode first aired, countless hucksters have gotten rich hawking snake-oil products on TV with ads that were far less thought-out than Ralph’s.
The rest of the episode shows Ralph and Ed rehearsing their live TV spot (we never do find out how Ralph gets the money, it just happens), with Ralph hamming it up as a “Chef of the Future,” and then blowing the spot when the duo go on live TV and Ralph gets stage fright. We’re meant to laugh at, as Ed once put it in a different episode, “another of your well-calculated plans that went to pot.”
But is it possible that Alice might have had something to do with this plan going to pot? If the woman Ralph loves can’t be bothered to back him up (and possibly help to make the plan a success), might this be a case of self-fulfilling prophecy?

Finally, there’s “The $99,000 Answer,” where Ralph gets chosen as a quiz-show contestant, finds out that his category will be music, and spends every waking hour (and then some) of the next week boning up on every 20th-century song he can find. Again, far from encouraging Ralph to go for the big prize, Alice tells him he should settle for winning only the $600 he’ll get if he answers the first question correctly. But why?

Here is my answer to all of the “why’s” in this post: Alice is a moax. Somewhere along the line, she was taught to settle for whatever crumbs life throws her way, and that’s the only goal she has in life. For all of his craziness, Ralph does dream about breaking out of poverty, and every time he gets a small chance at doing so, he examines every corner of it for a way to make it happen. It almost makes you wonder if Alice is resentful that Ralph actually does dare to dream.
And good heavens, Alice, don’t ever do anything to defend Ralph! If it’s a choice between the man you married and your curmudgeonly, cynical old mother, why, run back home to Mother every time!
I know I will be accused of digging too deep for subtext in an old sitcom. But I think that we should consider the possibility that, at least every so often, Ralph isn’t the moax of the Kramden household. Maybe it’s the blabbermouth’s daughter.