← all The Weekly Substandard episodes
#83. Shazam! The Substandard on Jim Nabors and the Art of the Spinoff
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Micro episode (12:51). All three hosts present.
Dudes Chatting — Jim Nabors, childhood TV, and the art of the spinoff: The episode opens with Vic's tribute to Jim Nabors — Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. — who died at 87. Vic and JVL note they had vaguely suspected he was gay; Vic recalls seeing a photo of him on his farm in Hawaii. JVL mentions the longstanding (false) rumor that Nabors had been secretly married to Rock Hudson, which was actually a joke spread by their own social circle. Vic notes that Phil Hartman did a Jim Nabors impression. Sonny admits he has nothing to contribute to the Jim Nabors discussion, having grown up in England without access to those shows.
The hosts then compare their childhood TV lineups: Vic and JVL both watched UHF reruns of Gomer Pyle, McHale's Navy, Hogan's Heroes, and Gilligan's Island in the afternoons after school. JVL notes that Werner Klemperer (Colonel Klink) was the son of conductor Otto Klemperer, who fled the Nazis, and that John Banner (Sergeant Schultz) was Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust. Sonny, who lived in England from roughly ages six to nine, had three BBC channels and no cable; he mostly played NES and watched taped American cartoons. His birthday parties on the Air Force Base were held at screenings of new American films, six months before they opened in England.
The hosts then debate the art of the television spinoff, prompted by a Substandard Facebook thread. Examples discussed: Gomer Pyle from Andy Griffith, Maude and The Jeffersons from All in the Family, Fear the Walking Dead, Frasier (Sonny argues it was better than Cheers), Better Call Saul (noted as a rare prequel spinoff), and Vic's personal favorite, Time of Your Life with Jennifer Love Hewitt, a spinoff of Party of Five — which was canceled despite Vic's best efforts as a Nielsen household representative.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another micro-episode of The Substandard, sponsored by HelloFresh. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of TheSubstandard are available every Thursday at 11 a.m. So, we have a little sad news here. Last week, actor Jim Neighbors, known for his role as Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show and the eponymous Gomer Pyle USMC, died last week at the age of 87 at his home in Hawaii. News of his death was reported first by his husband, Stad Cadwellad. Wait, what? Jim Neighbors is dead?
JVL00:00:44Who knew?
Vic00:00:45Surprise, surprise, surprise. I will surprise, surprise, surprise.
Sonny00:00:50I would say...
Vic00:00:51Sonny has no reaction to me.
Sonny00:00:52So, Victorino...
JVL00:00:53Shazam! There are certain figures from the 1960s and 70s, like, for instance... Mr. French. Richard Chamberlain. Oh. What? Who were obviously gay. I never guessed that Jim Neighbors...
Vic00:01:10Oh, I kind of did for a while. Did you pick up on that? Not at the obvious... Certainly not at the time. I mean, I was five watching all those shows.
JVL00:01:16Well, no, not when you were five watching these things on Channel 29 in the afternoon. I think I...
Vic00:01:20Yes, very... 48. It was 48 for you? It was 48 that I was watching. I was watching it on. No, but at some point in time, I think I just figured it out. I saw a picture of him on his farm in Hawaii, and he was, you know, painting. He likes to paint. Wearing chaps? No, no, no. A very loose outfit, but I thought, you know what? And he looks...
JVL00:01:38I think he's gay.
Vic00:01:39But I had no idea that he'd been together.
JVL00:01:42Why is the rainbow state?
Vic00:01:44It is. And he would...
JVL00:01:45Not that there's anything wrong with it.
Vic00:01:46And they got married in Washington State when Washington had legalized gay marriage. But he had been with his longtime companions. He'd stand for, what, 38 years or something like that?
JVL00:01:56And there was a rumor that he had been previously same-sex married to...
Vic00:02:02Rock Hudson! Oh, really?
JVL00:02:04But it was not a rumor.
Vic00:02:05And, in fact, it was a rumor started as a... A vicious rumor.
JVL00:02:08No, no, not a vicious rumor. A rumor started by a bunch of their friends who just thought, like, hey, this would be a funny story to put out there. And so they put it out there. Which I'd say, Rock Hudson being kind of, you know, a handsome man, he could do better than Jim Nabors. Well, you know... Don't you think?
Vic00:02:25But Jim Nabors could sing. He could act, and he could sing. Don't forget, he had this voice that he could do... He's done... He's recorded, you know, albums of his singing various songs, like Amazing Grace and things like that. And, in fact, believe it or not, you know who used to do an impression of Jim Nabors doing the singing and the acting thing? Phil Hartman. The late Phil Hartman.
JVL00:02:43Oh, I was going to say David Brooks. But Phil Hartman also. I think David Brooks had a Jim Nabors impression.
Vic00:02:48No, but I remember... I love Jim Nabors.
JVL00:02:51Hey, Sonny, how are you? Yeah. How you doing, Sonny?
Sonny00:02:54I have literally nothing to contribute to this whole conversation, so... Question.
JVL00:02:59Before we go back to Jim Nabors, when you were an at-risk youth, so it was like third grade for you, and your parents, because they didn't love you, would just park you in front of a television and say, amuse yourself for two hours, what would you watch?
Vic00:03:14Train Spotting.
Sonny00:03:16I'm sorry. I don't know. This is actually a... Requiem for a Dream.
JVL00:03:21I actually have no idea how to answer this question. Existence. This question, I don't remember.
Sonny00:03:30I think I played NES. So you didn't have...
JVL00:03:33They're not like generation old sitcoms that you watch. This is what Vic and I did as kids. How about... Gilkin's Island and The Love Boat. These things will all be repeated on UHF channels.
Sonny00:03:45Yeah, yeah. I remember when I was a little bit older. I mean, so between the ages, you have to remember, between the ages of like six and nine or so, I lived in England. And we didn't really have TV. I would watch like old videos of like Saturday morning cartoons and stuff. And then when we moved to Florida, I guess I would watch a lot of SportsCenter. I would just like have ESPN on for hours and hours until I basically like memorized what had happened. That's impressive. In the days, the day's sporting news, I guess. I don't know.
JVL00:04:14His childhood is so radically different from ours. Yeah, it's weird. I watched Star Blazers. Same childhood.
Vic00:04:18Yeah, I watched Star Blazers on Channel 29. It's a minor difference. It's a minor difference. But Sonny, I remember...
Sonny00:04:24I played a lot of NES. I mean, like literally, when I was not like hanging out with family and stuff, I guess I would be playing video games or reading or something. I didn't really watch a ton of like old TV.
Vic00:04:34How about like when you were... Do you have any memories of England, in England, like watching Teletubbies and stuff like that?
Sonny00:04:38No, no, no. Didn't watch any of that. Fawlty Towers. Man About the House.
JVL00:04:42No, we didn't really... Thomas the Tank Engine. We just didn't really... I didn't really watch a ton of TV.
Sonny00:04:47It was, again, it was like a lot of like... I would get like videotapes of like Ghostbusters cartoons sent to me. Yeah. Or like... Because, again, in England, we had like three channels. We had BBC One, Two, and Three. We didn't pay for satellite. We didn't, you know, we didn't have like a... There was no cable then. So...
Vic00:05:04It's like the TV version of your own little PX. Kind of. So, Peace of America, but in video you would have... Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:05:12So, like all of my birthday parties when I was living in England would be taking all the British kids to see whatever the new movie was on the Air Force Base. Because we would get to see everything like six months before it came out in England. So, we saw like Batman in 1989 when it came out, you know, six months before.
JVL00:05:29So, Vic and I would watch sitcoms that had been off the air for 10 years or 15 years. Yeah, and shows that... Would it be like a kid today watching Friends?
Vic00:05:37I was going to say, it's also what you're... We're watching stuff that was recorded 20 years before that time. Yes. I guess... Like Black and White. Like there would be Black and White episodes of Gomer Pyle. Black and White, Gilligan's Island. Yes. And of course, McHale's Navy was all in Black and White.
Sonny00:05:51Yeah, the closest equivalent of that for me was watching like... Like Saved by the Bell. Wow. Saved by the Bell episodes. So different. Yeah.
Vic00:05:59I watched Saved by the Bell when I was at The Weekly Standard.
JVL00:06:02So, Victorino, your lineup would be what? It would be Gomer Pyle, McHale's Navy, Hogan's Heroes, right? And then Gilligan's Island, because that's what my recollection of... That is great memory. ...was from basically three to five, which is the time I had to get through before my uninterested single parent would like pay attention to me, was... Four shows that my sister and brother and I would watch together.
Vic00:06:26I would come back from kindergarten, because it's a half day or whatever it was, and just sit in front of the television. My sister, I guess, was in first grade, so she already has a full day. And I would watch that lineup. And I believe it was Channel 48, which is, I assume, a Philly channel, because all those
JVL00:06:39great channels were Philly channels at the time.
Vic00:06:41And I do remember... I remember watching Andy Griffith, but that might have been at a different time slot. The one that was all in a row was Gomer Pyle, McHale's Navy, maybe Beverly Hillbillies, as you mentioned that, and Hogan's Heroes. And I'd say two things, really. McHale's Navy was great. It was black and white. Two things that I thought were interesting. It was the best of those three. Yeah, I mean, Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway, Joe Flynn. But the...
JVL00:07:06Do you know who any of these people are, Sonny?
Vic00:07:07No. Ernest Borgnine. He was an airwolf. I can't think of anything beating... Oh, Rocky.
Sonny00:07:13Ernest Borgnine was on an episode of The Simpsons, I think. Yes. Oh, no doubt. He was one of the counselors for the at-risk youth, for the Boy Scouts. And maybe he was in Rocky?
Vic00:07:23Was he not in Rocky?
Sonny00:07:24No. Are you thinking of... You're thinking of... No, Ernest Borgnine. No, Ernest Borgnine, Ernest Borgnine.
Vic00:07:27And maybe he was at night at the museum, but I'm not sure, because they had a bunch of old people on that. No, we just saw that. He wasn't in that. Okay, it wasn't him. But the interesting thing about McHale's Navy, if you will, they had an Asian character. Yes. A Japanese actor whose character name was Fuji. Was he a spy? No, he was a Navy guy in the whites. He always had the whites for some reason. And so maybe he was like, instead of being... You had a choice being in the intern camp. Or serving. And a lot of people did that. You know, Daniel Inouye, Mr. Miyagi also did that.
Sonny00:08:03Mr. Miyagi, actual Mr. Miyagi, or Mr. Miyagi... Mr. Miyagi's character.
Vic00:08:06Mr. Miyagi's character, right? And then a lot of them got sent to Europe, but Fuji was there. And the funny thing is, whenever they referred to the Japanese, as I remember, they didn't call them the Japs, they called them the Nips. Is that a problem? I don't know. I mean, it's from... It's short for... It's short for Nippon. Yeah. I'm sure it's fine. What's wrong with that? Right? That's pretty good. But then the other thing I want to talk about very briefly was Hogan's Heroes. And what I loved about...
JVL00:08:34What aspect of Hogan's Heroes do you want to talk about?
Vic00:08:36Two very interesting things, actually. You'll be surprised. The two Nazi characters, Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink, and John Banner, who played Sergeant Schultz. The nicest Nazis ever. Werner Klemperer is the son of the great conductor Otto Klemperer, who fled the Nazis in the 1930s. So he was a fierce anti-Nazi. The son was Werner. And John Banner, his family was killed in the Holocaust, and he was Jewish, and he played Sergeant Schultz. Isn't that bizarre?
JVL00:09:05People were not as sensitive back then as they are today.
Vic00:09:07I guess it's a check.
JVL00:09:09Could you imagine a 30-minute sitcom based on Guantanamo Bay today? No, I mean... All of these things were simply... A comedy. It was unthinkable.
Vic00:09:19In the 60s. In the 60s. Remember, there was... Only 20 years... Yeah, only 20 years from the war.
Sonny00:09:24Remember, Amy Poehler's character in Arrested Development was a Gitmo guard. Yes. And that's like the only... That's as close as you could get.
Vic00:09:31I forgot about it. But in terms of the art of the spinoff, what is the most recent... Can you do it for the camera, please? No. Respect the Facebook. What is the most recent... Because, obviously, Gomer Pyle was the spinoff from Andy Griffith as a character, and then there were a bunch... And this was a substandard thread, obviously. People talked about Archie Bunker and Maude and the Jeffersons, blah, blah, blah. The most recent successful spinoff is what? What do you think? I think I just brought it up in the lobby, and I didn't even realize it, which was Walking Dead. Are there characters that are the same? It's the same story.
Sonny00:10:02Yeah, Fear the Walking Dead. Well, no. Apparently, Fear the Walking Dead is going to get a character from The Walking Dead somehow in the forthcoming season. But it is... I mean, it's a very popular, very successful spinoff. Spinoff, right? It's a spinoff. Do you watch it both? I watched the first season of Fear the Walking Dead, and then I stopped because it wasn't that good. But apparently, it's very good again. Apparently, it got very interesting.
Vic00:10:25What came to my mind... The only thing that came to my mind at first was Frasier, right, as a spinoff, as a successful spinoff. Oh, Frasier.
JVL00:10:32Matt, Wonder Woman Matt, is on Facebook right now saying, what about Frasier? There you go. See? Facebook is awesome.
Sonny00:10:39Frasier was actually better than Cheers, too, so... Oh. Wow. Wow. Better show. I'll let you guys know about that.
Vic00:10:48And here's one. Here's a question for you, because I don't watch it, but Sonny, and I know Jonathan doesn't watch it. But you'll be able to comment.
JVL00:10:53Is it on television?
Vic00:10:54Yes. Yeah. What a spinoff. Would this count as a spinoff? Better Call Saul.
Sonny00:10:59Yeah, of course.
Vic00:10:59But it's a... It's a prequel. It's a prequel, which I don't think that's ever been... I don't think that's ever been done. That might be the first time it's gone on television.
Sonny00:11:05I mean, I'm not a television historian, but yeah, that's definitely a spinoff.
Vic00:11:09Yeah, so that's a successful one, too. You know what my favorite spinoff is? Time of Your Life with Jennifer Love Hewitt. Why do you laugh? I brought this up before. It's not a joke.
Sonny00:11:20Was that a spinoff of Party of Five?
Vic00:11:21Party of Five. Sarah Reeves. And she was going to... You know, she left Bailey for some reason. I don't know who would leave Bailey. And, you know, had a new life.
JVL00:11:30We were so obsessed with J. Love.
Vic00:11:33Let me tell you something before we're ready hitting the fence over here. Yeah, we're really. About... I still love her, right? I did... And I did everything I... And who was the other character in that show? Jennifer Garner. Jennifer Garner, right?
JVL00:11:44Who's like a giant star. She got killed. And you could see J. Love like...
Vic00:11:48Are you thinking of Neve Campbell? She's getting too much attention. Write her off. Oh, you think she pulled a... The Matt Lauer. She's like, ah, get her out of the way. I don't know about that. I think I feel like I know Jennifer Lauer.
JVL00:11:56A Matt Lauer in the Ann Curry sense, not in the creepy harassment sense. In the Ann Curry sense.
Vic00:12:00That's correct. In the button sense.
Sonny00:12:03Thank you.
Vic00:12:04Very good. Very good. I had... Hey, Beck. I just locked the door. You can't get out. Nice. What's with those toys? What's with the toys? This is getting very weird for Hannah. I... Let me just say this. Let me just... Forget this. I want out. I owned a Nielsen Autometer. Do you remember this? Yes. You were in Nielsen then. I didn't own it. I was renting it, and I represented 300,000 households. Tremendous responsibility. Tremendous responsibilities, and I watched every single episode of Time of Your Life with Jennifer Love You, and they still canceled it.
Sonny00:12:32Did you watch every single episode, and then also say that there were five people in the room with you? In the diary. Literally. Because you have to keep the diary, right? The time diary.
Vic00:12:40Do they have to... Right.
JVL00:12:42Jennifer Love You, and if you're listening to this right now, you kind of owe Beck.
Sonny00:12:46He really did a lot of work for that show.
JVL00:12:49I'm sure it's fine.
Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →
Comments
Loading…