Virgil Sims [played
by Jim Varney]: “Well, I’m as concerned as the next fella about
this energy crisis and, uh, I believe clean air is everybody's business.”
Barth: “Absolutely.”
Virgil: “And I've been
working on, uh, developing me a low-cost, high-efficiency, battery-powered car.”
Barth: “Battery-powered.”
Virgil: “Yeah and I—there it is. I finally finished it and I copyrighted this sucker. Okay, and besides catting me around town real good, this little baby might make quite a few big bucks!”
[Gimble second banana Jerry Hubbard gets into the
car.]
Barth: “Well, that’s
great.” [Noticing Jerry in the driver’s seat, getting ready to turn on the
ignition.] “Jerry, no, and don’t touch anything!” [Opening the
door, impatiently.] “Jerry, out of the car! It's patented, Jerry, and you
don't have a license.” [Jerry gets out of the car. To Virgil, as Garth moves
toward the driver seat]: “You know, he loves to ride in the car, though.
You should see: you have to roll the window down like with the dogs [sticking
his neck there in imitation]. He’s crazy.”
Jerry Hubbard [played
by Fred Willard] [indicating the window over the driver’s seat]: “You can stick
your head right up through there.”
Barth: “Yeah, you can
save yourself a lot of trouble. Why don't you stick it up there and I'll try to
roll it shut?”
Jerry [obliviously]:
“Like you’re going over a bridge.”
Barth: “Yeah, it looks
like a police car there with hair on it.”— Fernwood 2Night,
Season 1, Episode 59, “Battery-Powered Car,” original air date Sept. 22,
1977, teleplay by Bob Illes, Wayne Kline, Norman Lear, Tom Moore, James R.
Stein, Jeremy Stevens, and Alan Thicke
The actor-comedian Martin Mull, who died at age 80 in
Los Angeles, was a familiar presence on film (e.g., Clue) and even more
on TV, with guest appearances in such series as Sabrina the Teenage Witch,
Roseanne, Two and a Half Men, His and Hers, and The
Ellen Show.
But for me, nothing could top where I saw him first, as talk-show host Barth Gimble in the Seventies talk-show parody Fernwood 2Night.
The show ended all too soon—after three months and 65 episodes, before morphing into America 2 Night for a similarly short run the following year.
But it
managed to mercilessly mock late-night television by reducing it to an absolute
absurdity: offering the kind of broadcasting fare one might find in the
fictional Middle America small town of Fernwood, Ohio.
Central to the show’s hilarity was the dialogue between Gimble and Hubbard, which spotlighted the relationship between a dim-witted, phony talk-show host and his stooge of a second banana.
It
foreshadowed the same dynamic between Larry Sanders and Hank Kingsley in Garry
Shandling’s longer-lasting acclaimed Nineties satire, The Larry Sanders Show.
(Indeed, Shandling recognized this connection—and paid
tribute to his friend—by having him appear on the latter show.)
As soon as I discovered this scene on YouTube, I felt
its irresistible tug. It’s not only a perfect example of the Gimble-Hubbard
relationship, but made me chuckle at the thought of Virgil Sims as a
small-town—but far less successful—forerunner of Elon Musk.
Some of the TV shows most worth remembering last the
shortest. That was the case with Fernwood 2Night. Fortunately, Mull’s
career lasted considerably longer, and later generations will be able to
rediscover his talent repeatedly.
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