This annual repeat here is a great treat, most especially if your lovers of Kukla, Fran & Ollie.  But not limited to that.  It’s their April Fools' Day program from 1950 -- 75 years ago today, sort of.  (I say “sort of,” because oddly the date of the broadcast is not April 1, but March 31.  I have to assume that April Fools' Day that year fell on a weekend, and so they were weren’t on the air that day.
 
This is a particular treat for me because it not only features my favorite Kuklapolitan who is rarely on the show, Cecil Bill, but it’s one of the longest appearances I’ve ever seen for him.  He comes on about the 11:00 mark, in costume for April Fools Day.  And he even gets to sing a song!  Now, that might not sound like much, but you have to realize that Cecil Bill only speaks with the words “Toi-te-toi-toi…”   And that holds for the lyrics of a song he sings.
 
Cecil Bill is quite nuts.  And when I visited the 50th anniversary tribute to Kukla, Fran & Ollie about 20 years ago at the Chicago Historical Museum, I discovered something that Burr Tillstrom did to reinforce that, which was quite clever – something I never noticed before, but finally saw close up.  That’s because they had all the Kuklapolitan puppets on display.  And looking at Cecil Bill (which was a joy for me…), I noticed that Tillstrom hadn’t painted his mouth on where a person’s mouth would normally be.  Instead, he made it a crescent that was angled a bit and ever-so-slightly off to the side, askew, not centered directly under his nose.  So, without exactly knowing why, unless you paid close attention, Cecil Bill would seem somehow…off.  And if you look closely in the video, you’ll see what I mean.  He jumps around a lot in his song, and is covered with a big coat, so you can’t always see his mouth clearly, but you’ll notice what I’m talking about.

Or you can just check out the good fellow here below, second from the left --

​Fun, too, in this episode is Fran gets a chance to impersonate Ollie in a song, and clearly is enjoying herself with it.
 
But then, the whole show is fun.
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On this week’s Naked Lunch podcast, hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild write “What are the greatest TV situation comedies of all time? Phil (who created the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond") and David (who watched it religiously) discuss their own favorite shows, and take your calls about yours.
 
If you grew up in the era where sitcoms of the ‘’80s and ‘90s were what you watched, you’ll particularly enjoy the conversation.  If shows of more recent vintage or before then live high in your appreciation, you might find it a bit frustrating.  For example, and most egregiously, neither The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show even get mentioned!  And that’s not a case of them being before when callers (or Phil and David) were born – since, after all, they have been on the air continually for 60 years, including multiple times every single day today.  And to not even mention them.??  As for recent series, Phil (who I admire deeply, and had the opportunity to meet and interview) notes that he really doesn’t watch sitcoms anymore.  So, he was only barely aware of Ghosts, when it gets brought up.
 
By the way, after this episode initially aired a while ago (sorry, it takes me a while to catch up, I have a nice backlog...), I noted on Twitter the huge lapse of not even just referencing Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith – and got a reply from co-host David Wild.  He wrote back: “We apologize -- we were not being comprehensive, but reacting to calls. But I know Phil ranks the first at the top of his list, and we both love ‘Andy Griffith’ -- which is the favorite of Brad Paisley who wrote our theme.”
 
It was an extremely thoughtful reply, and of course the podcast wasn’t being comprehensive.  But given that one of those shows was at the top of Phil’s list, and the other was loved by both and “the favorite” of Paisley makes such a glaring omission all the more surprising.  I wrote back a thanks, and added that perhaps the oversight could be “updated” on a later podcast. While I doubt that would happen, I did think his reply was thoroughly gracious.  Though almost more gracious was his follow-up reply – “You call it a ‘HUGE lapse,’ I call it a follow-up episode idea.”

I've enjoyed the Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil even before it was on Netflix and was instead on PBS as I'll Have What Phil is Having.  Whether others like it or not, I think their trailer for the new Season 7 (which began on March 1) is very entertaining -- but most of all, it's worth for the wonderful punch line at the end. And I mean the very, very end.  When you think it's over -- no, it's at the end.

(Side Note:  I met Phil only once briefly, in a 1988 Writers Guild picket line, and asked if he'd do an Email Interview with me for my WGA website column.  Which he immediately said "yes" to.  And my sense at the time -- and this was long before his food show was even a thought -- is that what we see now on Somebody Feel Phil is who he has always been.  Very nice, thoughtful and exuberant.)

[UPDATE:  Sorry, the newsletter email I received referred to the season starting on March 1.  It did.  But that was March 1, 2024.  Still, the point of this here is not about the series, but about the trailer, and how funny the punchline is.  So, that holds valid.]

Anyway, the trailer is only 1:26.  So, stick around for the very end.

As the show writes, “We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live this week! This special episode changes things up a bit as Executive Producer Peter Ogburn asks Al about his history with the show. We pull the curtain back on what a typical week looks like building up to the live show on Saturday and learn about how Al and his writing partner, Tom Davis, found themselves writing on the first season of the show. We also chat about some iconic sketches and the birth of Al’s legendary Stuart Smalley character.”

This is a wonderful hour-long documentary, Nichols and May: Take Two,  on the years Mike Nichols and Elaine May were the top comedy team in the country.  It’s filled with not only clips of some of their most-famous sketches, but even some little-seen (virtually never seen since it aired…) material.  If you know Nichols and May, this will be filled with great treats.  And if you don't know Nichols and May, it's a gem of a primer.  With big thanks to the inveterate Chris Dunn for passing the link on to me. 

One note:  there is a voice-over later in the documentary when Steve Allen comments that it’s a shame they didn’t work together after they split up their partnership.  Because of when the documentary was made, what he says here turns out not to be true.  They not only made very successful movies together, which he directed and she wrote (The Birdcage and Primary Colors), but also periodically teamed up again as comedy partners for special occasion reunion sketches.

The other day, when writing here about the tremendous South Korean series, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, I mentioned that its star, Park Eun-bin, was a wonderful singer, which she got to show off in another of her series, the also-excellent Castaway Diva.  I thought it only proper to given an example of what I meant.  This is a music video of sorts with her singing one of the songs she performs in the series, “Someday.”

(Though the song is a standalone number in the series, one of many sung as part of a music competition, more than most of the others it has a resonance to the underlying plot.)
 
I won’t go into detail about Castaway Diva here for two reasons.  One, it’s best to deal with one series at a time, and if you do watch Extraordinary Attorney Woo and like it and her performance, it’s worth keeping Castaway Diva in mind.  Maybe I’ll write about it later.  And the second reason is that Castway Diva is a very difficult series to do justice to in short.  On the surface, one part of the show is light, fluffy, silly-unbelievable but a lot of fun – though another part of the show takes a lot of very surprising twists and turns, and at times gets extremely serious and even dark and very emotional.  And all together, it's a mix of themes that conflict with one another, yet in the end work together wonderfully.  And notable, too, as much as Park Eun-bin is the main character, and is terrific in it, for a good part of the series others take the lead, driving the story, and she moves to a back seat as a supporting character.  That’s rare and helps make the show rich, for all its overlapping sensibilities.
 
All that aside, here she is singing “Someday.”  As you’ll see, it’s not that she’s a wonderful singer for such an accomplished actress – but she’s a superb singer, period.
 
(NOTE:  The song is in Korean, of course, but if you click the “CC” button on the bottom of the screen, you’ll get a reasonable closed-caption translation.)
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