I'm back, but only for a shorter' n short time considering the plethora of doodies I have to be performing at this point in life. However I've got just about enough minutes to clue you in on this rather boffo if oft-forgotten television series which I gotta say, after espying a few Youtube'd episodes, really shines out as far as to what the "Golden Age" of Tee-Vee could come up with. And that's especially AMAZING considering how "backwards" and "Neanderthal-like" not only people but the entertainment they tuned into could be back during those oh-so unenlightened times --- y'know, back when toothless backwoods types were shooting motorcycle enthusiasts from their pickups while the rest of us were keeping trans-children from attending drag queen story hours in Deep South diners, or something like that.
If you think I'm being especially grumpy about it you are for once right. Just thinking about the short shrift that fifties television, and more specifically the fifties has gotten thanks to the phony intellectuals of the past few decades does tend to irritate worse than an undigested peanut in the rectum. It=f anything it takes me back a good twenty years to that major pile on I hadda endure that was instigated by a certain fellow named David Lang (and perpetrated by a rather disgusting specimen who goes by the moniker Jay Hinman, both of whom I hope are suffering untold physical and emotional trauma as I peck this 'un out), a slam against my very existence which resulted in a barrage of ill-minded critiques that were directed at my rather spotless character for reasons not only of revenge but hipster underground cred. Anyway, amongst a slew of virtue signals and righteousness masturbating that went on in these assaults there was one particularly putrid piece of sputum aimed at me which continues to stick in my craw 'n that 'un came from a certain individual whose identity escapes me at this moment. This misguided soul, probably stoked on repeated campfire chantings of "Kumbaya:" for all I know, actually had the audacity to claim that my devotion to pre-"relevance" 'n "right on" television that was prevalent from the fifties until the mid-sixties was bred from my inherent hatred of everything from blacks 'n faggots to womyn 'n other definitely anti-WASP-y forces that were bound to overturn that evil patriarchy that has been ruining our very existences ever since Adam told Eve to go take a douche! Yeah right, as if the concept of QUALITY was totally alien to this particular nimnul's mind.
Ah yeah, I still fondly recall that episode of THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE AND HARRIET where good natured Ozzie and Thorny firebomb the abode of the Negro family that moved into the neighborhood not to mention that LEAVE IT TO BEAVER where Wally, Eddie and Lumpy give that rather effeminate newcomer to Mayfield High what-for in the locker room after said sissy showed his appreciation for the builds of these fine specimens of budding manhood with a ten-hut one doesn't usually see during fall in. Sheesh, if only said commentator had WATCHED some classic fifties tee-vee to see that when people of African heritage were presented (mostly in dramas but also in AMOS 'N ANDY come to think of it) it was always in the the best possible light such as in that one RACKET SQUAD where a kindly black woman rats on a day care scam where some slimy WHITES were mistreating children or even that episode of MR. ED where former Lightnin' Nick "Nick O'Demus" Stewart played a letter carrier totally straight without one hint of slo' mo' retardation in sight. As for women well, they weren't as nauseatingly ascerbic then as they are now and we got enough fagitude with Liberace anyway But eh, you just can't let REALITY get in the way of these walking memes so hell-bent on creating lies to serve their own purpose to the point where they actually start believing the lies themselves!
Which more or less brings us to MEDIC. A pretty much forgotten series that ran on NBC in the mid-fifties, I gotta admit that I wouldn't've have even known about this series had I not read a classic Harvey Kurtzman/Will Elder MAD spoof that still resonates a good fifty years after my first laying eyes upon it. Back then MEDIC seemed like the kinda Tee-Vee series I coulda wrapped my pre-pube mind around but, alas, this series seemed destined to just rot away in old and forgotten television series limbo being aired only on one of those small Los Angeles UHF stations that nobody even in the local area could pick up until even those old syndication reels began to crack up into nothingness leaving a whole lotta tru blu viewers stranded in the current state of television pukeitude.
Tis way too bad, since MEDIC remains a show that not only holds up in its own special way but delivers on that hard and realistic true-to-life style that DRAGNET excelled in. Excelled in even to the point where I will even go out on a limb to say that MEDIC was indeed the doctor show equivalent of Jack Webb 'n company's infamous police drama even to the point where the names have been changed to protect the innocent, or at least the infirmed.
A pre-HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL/HEC RAMSEY Richard Boone plays Dr. Konrad Styner, a physician who pretty much hosts, and at times even appears in these dramas which at least gives him more air time than Dick Tracy had in those early-sixties UPA cartoons where he divvied out alla the dirty work to those then not-so-offensive ethnic characters we all loved anyway. At the opening of each episode Styner is seen setting up the drama to unfold with an "object in point" and a "case in point" usually leading up to a sometimes grisly subject at hand in which the lumpen idjits tuned in get to not only engross themselves in a good enough drama but might even learn a thing or two without getting too bowled over in the process.
Unlike the tiresome preachiness that has infested entertainment for a longer time than one can imagine MEDIC presents its case in a straightforward way that lets you make up your bean rather'n force-feed a whole load of sociopolitical relevancy to the point of nausea only matched by any episode of THE BOLD ONES you unfortunately might chance upon even this late in the television game.
'n these are good shows too, well acted by some of your favorite fifties/sixties tee-vee regulars (Charles Bronson, Claude Akins, John Larch...) and filled with a whole load of real life accuracy to the point where not only does one get some real-deal operation footage that's almost as grossout as Lyndon Johnson's gallbladder removal but actual doctors and nurses seen acting out their true-to-life roles as healers of the sick and comforters of the aged with the eye of an eagle, the heart of a lion and the hand of a woman (something which I'm sure a few of the dykeoids seen theses days will find offensive, and who can argue with a linebacker wearing a use my proper pronouns or I'll brain ya sweatshirt anyway!).
The characters found therein are portrayed to such a point where by golly you can even feel loads of empathy 'n sorrow for them 'n their afflictions. Real life sorrow too like in the one where this cleft palate seven-year-old (older bro played by doomed wonderboy Bobby Driscoll) is razzed by a buncha kids as said razzers' father stands by and says nothing (reminds me of this one kid at the local swimming pool who used to belittle me for my own girth yellin' "SHAKE THAT BLUBBER, SHAKE!" at yers truly while his mother smiled on smugly---years later the two approached me when the kid was now running for public office and boy did they get what for!). Sometimes a historical drama is re-enacted as with the one where Robert Vaughn plays a soldier trying valiantly to save the life of Abe Lincoln or the one about the noted physician who experimented with cocaine and got pretty strung out as a result. But whatever, only a cold cyborg of modern personhood would not have some pity for the deaf cellist or the woman who was struggling through that change o' life that I'm sure many of you readers and to endure thanks to an aging mother or cyster (as I have!).
Speaking of menopause some of you readers'll be surprised at the sexually-related material that pops up in these MEDICs. Remember alla those self-righteous and smug better-than-thous who used to rub their weenies and tacos over how repressed things were inna fifties because you couldn't use the work "pregnant" on I LOVE LUCY? Well you coulda used it on DRAGNET where the subject of knocked up teenagers would often come up (not to mention sexually molested youngsters) and you definitely coulda mentioned these feminine-like things on MEDIC along with periods and other tick-tock-time related sundries which used to be considered no-no subject matters in polite company. But then again who's polite these days where more'n a few Libs of Tic Toc types go out of their way to remind lugs like me as to just how evil we are lest we find the true road to enlightenment that has been bestowed upon us by alla those spiritual role models you just can't escape no matter how hard you try!
Even more astonishing is the downright fact that THERE ARE NO HAPPY ENDINGS PROMISED, OR GIVEN FOR THAT MATTER. Take the one about this rather emotinally stunted asthmatic of a seven-year-old boy whose only friend is his teddy bear. The doc sez that in order to survive the kid has to cut out a lotta food along the lines of milk and meringue as well as have his bear specially cleaned, but when put into the care of a babysitter while the folk are away he gets lemon pie and a glass of milk, is given his old doll back and ends up dying! Sheesh, you woulda thought that mother woulda told the lady in charge what the kid could or couldn't eat!!! If this happened today you could just see the lawsuits flyin' all over the place!
For those of you who think that fifties television (and the fifties in general) were that vast wasteland of conformist goop and other falsities which teachers and other objects of scorn have crammed into your skull ever since that decade came to a merry end may I recommend a nice dosage of MEDIC? Most of them are up and about for free viewing via Youtube...just click the highlighted link in the title and be taken to a sphere that the last twentysome years of "realistic" and "provocative" doctor programs never could aspire to.
