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Date Posted: 10:49:14 05/06/03 Tue
Author: Commander Adam Benson, USN
Author Host/IP: cache-rl02.proxy.aol.com / 152.163.189.98
Subject: Re: Continuity
In reply to: TKM 's message, "Re: Continuity" on 00:40:44 05/02/03 Fri

TKM,

In the interests of accuracy, I have to state that, after reading Georff Brown's incredibly accurate and comprehensive episode guide, I discover I was wrong about Mike not being mentioned after the sixth season. In the second episode of the seventh season--"Fly Away Home"--Steve takes his family to his birthplace of Bedford Springs. While there, he looks up his old fiancée. During their small talk, Steve tells her that Mike has gotten married and moved away. This is the last direct mention of Mike in the series.

However, the sixth-season's "A Hunk of Hardware" was kind of a watershed for me. This was the episode in which I realised that "the line had been crossed" in terms of the show continuing to treat Mike as an absent member of the family. When Ernie is introduced to the Douglas family tradition of the family trophy shelf, he is shown awards earned by every other family member--except Mike, when it would have been most natural and expected to include something that he had won. By not making a reference to Mike in a situation like this, which would have naturally included every member of the family, I concluded that the show would now begin to ignore the fact that there had ever been a fourth son.

Even though Mike was mentioned one more time--in the episode I just cited--it's obvious the handwriting was on the wall for Mike's continued existence as an absent member of the family. Early in the sixth season, Mike was mentioned just often enough to remind viewers that he had been part of the family. However, the absence of any mention of him in "A Hunk of Hardware" is a significant lapse.

Interestingly, even though the show was reasonably faithful to its past, such as reintroducing old family friend Ray Wong (played by Benson Fong) in later Los Angeles episodes, and other incidentals, on the matter of two former key players--Mike and Bub--after a brief period, they were never mentioned again. Bub got the same treatment as Mike. When William Demarest joined the family as Uncle Charley, he occasionally referred to his brother in later episodes of that fifth season. But after that, it was as if Bub had never existed. Even in later L.A. episodes when Charley talked to Barbara or Katie about when he joined the family, there was no mention of Bub (which would have been a natural thing to do).

Another occasion when it would have been natural to mention Bub and Mike was in the eleventh-season episode "You Can't Go Home Again", in which Robbie takes Katie back to Bryant Park. Actually, "You Can't Go Home Again" was slightly disappointing. Not only is there no mention of Bub or Mike, but nothing occurs in the episode to really tie the viewer into the show's past, except for the reappearance of the old Douglas house and the mention of the town's founder, Seth Douglas (which was a minor running point made throughout the Bryant Park years of the show).

I remember feeling let down when I saw the episode when it first aired. I had made a point of being sure to watch it after reading its listing in TV Guide. I had expected to see and hear many more references to the show's Bryant Park days. I mean, it would have been natural for Robbie to show Katie the church where Mike and Sally were married or to include a scene with them in front of the town moviehouse, so Robbie could casually mention that his grandfather, Bub, used to manage a theatre in Plainview.

Granted, scenes like those would have been a sop to long-time viewers, but they wouldn't have hurt the episode's plot in the least.


Commander Benson

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