Victor gets these sullen periods. He’s upset because the crowds would rather read a review of Monkees at the Circus. By the way, what do you do?
There are several episodes of this series that just look
like they were done on the cheap. This
one, for example, has a decent script, but looks as though it were shot in a
hurry on one corner of a soundstage, with a shoestring budget. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it were one of
those episodes that takes place in and around the pad, or in an everyday indoor
location like a restaurant or an office.
But this episode is about a circus,
for heaven’s sake—you know, “It’s great, it’s terrific, it’s the best show on
earth!” Of course they didn’t have the
money or the time to do it right—on location, with an actual circus—but they should
have at least taken extra care to apply the tools of illusion to make it look right.
I could go on for several paragraphs about how cheap it all looks, but instead I’ll use the Nitpicks section of the review to mention some of the more egregious signs. For now, I’ll focus on other things.
What this episode has going for it is a moderately compelling
story. Like Captain Crocodile, which follows right behind it in broadcast
order, Monkees at the Circus focuses
its attention on the changing face of entertainment, in particular rock and
roll’s growing share of the cultural landscape.
Unlike the vain TV host Captain
Crocodile, the circus performers are already on the down-and-out and are preparing
to give up completely. There’s no fight
left in them—so in this case, the Monkees have to supply the energy and the
impetus to continue. In an intriguing
twist, the underlying “villains” of the piece are those long-haired musicians entertaining
the crowds in the discotheques. The
Monkees need to convince the dispirited and resentful circus performers that
they’re all together on the side of good entertainment, wherever it can be
found.
Okay, that’s the good part. And if the bad part is the cheesy, underfunded production values, what we’re left with is a brave, earnest effort to deliver a good show without a net. Richard Devon delivers a strong performance as the hard-hearted knife thrower Victor; other performances range from forgettable to downright stilted. The nearly constant flow of Monkee Magic provides a bit of flash-bang distraction until the episode finally sputters to a close.
Quotables
- Susan: He’s upset because the crowds would rather watch the rock and rollers than him.
- Monkees: Oh, that’s terrible.
- Susan: By the way, what do you do?
- Monkees: We’re brain surgeons!
- Mike: Except in the summertime, I’m a cotton picker. It’s a carry over of skills.
- Micky: Say a few words to the folks.
- Mike: This is Mike Nesmith with the farm report. How are you. Pigs is up twelve, hogs is down five and cows is fine like they are.
- Susan: Well, I guess you can’t be all bad, or else
you’d be out frooging in a discotheque.
- Victor: Who are these people?
- Davy Who are we? Would you say ‘who are these people’ to the Budapest String Quartet?
- Victor: I still say, who are you?
- Peter: We are the Budapest String Quartet.
- Victor: You’ve come all the way from France?
- Davy: It was on the way.
- Peter: We were headed for Belgium.
- Victor: What exactly is it that you do?
- Peter: That is rich! What do we— We cross a tight wire at five hundred feet above the ground.
- Victor: Do you use a net?
- Peter: No, just a little spray.
Clunkers
Peter pretending the ringmaster’s megaphone is a machine
gun. There’s material enough for
half-a-dozen little-boy fantasies, why bring violence into it?
- Micky: Hey, we better look this place over. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be here too long.
- Peter: Yeah, you’re right.
- Davy: You’re right.
Isn’t that exactly what they’re striving to prevent? This cynical evaluation is diametrically
opposed to the episode’s hopeful theme.
- Susan: Victor—if you just give my father some more time.
- Mike: Boy, you really know how to pick the emotional types.
- Susan: Please, Victor. These people really don’t want to go. This is their life!
Susan may have been a fountain of tears in other scenes, but
at this moment she is perfectly calm and reasonable. I don’t know whether Mike’s line was edited
in from some other part of the script, or if the director and actors weren’t
paying attention, but the emotions are all mismatched here.
- Victor: This circus is at the bottom of the junk heap.
- Pop: But we’ll soon be back on top.
Of the junk heap?
- Strong Man: Hey, they’re not too bad.
- Sword Swallower: You know, they are like—I think they are show folks.
- Juggler: You know, let’s do a show.
- Sword Swallower: You know, you folks—you look like real show folks to me.
- Strong Man: Yeah. Let’s all do a show.
The sentiment is worthy, but the dialogue is plastic and the
acting is wooden.
Runner-Up Physical Comedy Highlight
The Mozzarella Brothers’ high-wire act. (Their clown act, on the other hand, was awful.)
Physical Comedy Highlight
Micky making himself right at home at the circus. If only they could have brought an elephant
into the story.
Sight Gag Highlight
Brain surgeons!
Runner-Up Breaking the Fourth Wall
Micky whispering Mike’s lines to him in the first Mozzarella
Brothers scene.
Breaking the Fourth Wall
- Mike: What is that?
- Micky: It’s a theme song, from an old TV series.
Third Runner-Up Nitpick
Victor was quite incensed that the Mozzarella Brothers were
not real trapeze artists. So much so, in
fact, that he used the word “trapeze” three times in just a couple of sentences. Mike had said that they were aerialists, but
they never described their routine as anything other than a tightrope act.
Second Runner-Up Nitpick
If one can believe the stock footage shown during the musical number She, the circus does indeed have a trapeze act.
Runner-Up Nitpick
Various circus performers spoke to Davy, Mike, Micky and
Peter about the Mozzarella Brothers as though they did not know that Davy,
Mike, Micky and Peter ARE the Mozzarella Brothers. But later, when Victor overheard the guys
admitting to being a rock and roll band, he exposed them to the other circus
performers as though they were all aware of the aerialists’ dual
identities.
Nitpick
Davy actually threw a knife at Susan and Peter. He managed to stick it just a few inches away from Susan’s left ear. (Victor’s first throw, by contrast, was about a foot away from Susan’s head.) I don’t know whether to be impressed that Davy did such a good job, or furious that he would even try.
Third Runner-Up Production Nitpick
Susan sits in daylight as she watches the Mozzarella
Brothers rehearse their act, but they are shown against a solid black
backdrop.
Second Runner-Up Production Nitpick
The stock footage of a real circus used in the second act did not match the footage shot on a soundstage in 1967. The lighting was different, the sets didn’t look anything alike, and the crowd shots showed fashions from the 1950’s. (The parking lot was full of 1950’s cars, too.)
Runner-Up Production Nitpick
The least they could have done was have the actor who played
Pop record a new voiceover for the stock footage of the real circus. Instead, we had two completely different
ringmasters’ voices.
Production Nitpick
The two musical numbers (I’m not going to call them romps) are recycled from other episodes and are painfully out-of-continuity with the episode. They both were clearly shot in other physical locations, at the wrong times of day, with the band wearing the wrong costumes. And the songs don’t fit in well with the show’s theme.
We’re the young generation, and we have something to recycle.
- Recurring gag: A Monkee jumps into another character’s arms. (See also: The Monkees Blow Their Minds and I Was a Teenage Monster.)
- Recycled music videos: Sometime in the Morning (from Monkee Mother) and She (Monkees a la Carte).
Monkee Magic (Special Report)
In the rarified atmosphere of the circus, the line between
reality, imagination and magic is easily blurred. The circus is a Monkee Magic playground! The guys leap from one Shared Imagination
fantasy to another, conjuring props and costumes, teleporting, and playing fast and loose with
the laws of gravity.
Perhaps it’s Susan’s innocence, or her nature as a child of the circus, but she is neither fooled nor shocked by any of the strange and magical things these four young men can do. Nor do the Monkees seem at all concerned that she is in on their secrets. Pop and Victor are easily deceived by the Mozzarella Brothers’ well-intentioned scam, but Susan recognizes them from the start—and is not the least bit surprised when they change back into their normal identities in the blink of an eye. Later, she frets as she watches them attempt a Monkee Magic approximation of a high-wire act, and yet is not startled when the exercise ends and the guys are instantly sitting beside her in their normal clothes.
Speaking of clothes, it does seem that the Mozzarella
Brothers’ outfits were simply sparkly gold tunics over top of the Monkeemen
costumes. Which leads me to speculate
that the guys’ unusual high-wire skills were simply an extension of the
Monkeemen power of flight. That might
explain why Davy floated away from the high wire when he lost his
balance, while Peter—who has had trouble with flying before—just fell.
What I can’t quite figure out is how Peter was able to hold the 1,000 lb. weights with ease in one scene, and later is unable to lift them at all. Is super-strength one of his on-again, off-again magical abilities? Or was the circus strongman just goofing around with a phony prop in the earlier scene?
Snack to enjoy while watching Monkees at the Circus
We can’t even afford to feed the animals. You could swallow a sword….
Music
- Sometime in the Morning: plot-related performance (from Monkee Mother) interspersed with a clown act.
- She: plot-related performance (from Monkees a la Carte).
Grading:
- The story A-
- The characters B
- The circus C-
- Overall Grade B-

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