Do you have a fondness for root beer soup? Are your eyes like cupcakes, floating in a sea of sour cream? Have you ever found your feet on backwards? Then this episode guide is for you. Welcome to Monkees A La Episode: The Ultimate Monkees Episode Guide: a fun, yet vaguely factual, episode by episode guide of the The Monkees TV show.
🎞 The Monkees Season 1 🎞 The Monkees Season 2 🎞
🎞 Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story 🎞
The Monkees TV show created the beginning of The Monkees phenomenon: a TV show about a fictitious band that halfway through the series became a band in real life, in a life imitating art miracle. Produced by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider for NBC in the late 60s, The Monkees featured the eponymous band’s four members, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, and Davy Jones, mixed up in madcap adventures, dressed in the trendiest clothes of the era, and playing songs would chart as many of the 1960s greatest pop and rock hits, thanks to the contribution of some of the greatest songwriters of that era. Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, John Stewart, Neil Diamond, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Harry Nilsson, David Gates, Diane Hildebrand, and of course Michael Nesmith, are among the songwriters who wrote the Monkees earliest music. After The Monkees became a real band, they incorporated their own song-writing in addition to these songwriter legacies, but then also played all their own instruments, and these songs were used on the television series in real time.
The Monkees first aired on NBC September 12, 1966, and ran for two seasons, the last episode airing March 25, 1968. The show won two Emmy Awards in 1967, for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy. The series was later re-aired on CBS from September 1969 to September 1972, on ABC from September 1972 to August 1973, then sold into syndication in 1975. It has since been aired on MTV, Nick At Nite, Antenna TV, and many other networks, and has been released on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, making this series accessible to multiple generations of fans.
The show portrays a fictionalized American pop and rock band living together on the beach in California, trying to carve out a life for themselves different than their parents’ generation. With their long hair, groovy clothes, a friendly, think-out-of-the-box attitude, and a communal, carefree lifestyle in their ramshackle California beach house, The Monkees portray an emerging subculture of young people who value artistic success over materialistic acquisitions. The members often find themselves in bizarre comedic situations, zany, madcap adventures, and unexpected romance, as they struggle to make it as a band, much of the plots circling around their awkward shortcomings, lack of success, and dealing with square, older adult adversaries. The morals of the episodes include valuing their fraternity over selfish agendas, maintaining one’s character in moralistically gray areas, being true to ones self, valuing authenticity over superficial image, and not being seduced by greed in the material world. The Monkees charming, down-to-earth charisma, earnest nature, and entertaining, brotherly dialogue make their often over-the-top, only-in-the-60s-is-this-normal-television plots seem relatable, everyday, and connect with a range of viewers.
It didn’t hurt that the Monkees were cute as well–their conventionally attractive features made their unconventional Beatles-style haircuts and California-style hippie clothes a little easier for older generations to digest–and a lot easier for young teeny-boppers to fall in love with. Showing off The Monkees good looks was as important as allowing their musical and acting talent to shine: clothing was carefully chosen to be both trendy and hip, as well as an NBC-safe level of sex appeal, and the Monkees hairstylists made more money per week than the Monkees themselves did. Soon The Monkees were on the cover of every 60s teen magazine, marketed as funny, non-threatening, boy-next door hearthrobs, and fans and fan-clubs proliferated everywhere.
The concept for The Monkees was heavily inspired by the trending zeitgeist of the the mid-to-late-1960s free spirited, counter-culture boy bands of California and all over America, and the mod, eccentric British Invasion bands coming to America.
Counter-culture life had previously been viewed as dangerous during the radical socials shifts of the 1960s, and The Monkees show provided an alternative portrayal of counter-culture, showing the Monkees as artistic, creative misfits who wanted to live peacefully and be happy just like everyone else. “We’re just trying to be friendly,” the Monkees theme song says, “come and watch us sing and play.”
“Which is probably the legacy, or would be one of the legacies,” as Micky Dolenz said in a recent Cheat Sheet interview, “making it OK to have long hair and bell-bottoms in 1966. Because at that time, the only time you saw long-haired kids with bell-bottoms, they were being arrested!”
In the beginning, music was created for the TV show by some of the most talented song-writers and session musicians of the era, the fictional band members adding in only their vocals to the final tracks; later, this music would be created entirely by the Monkees themselves. This ensured that each episode contained two songs, including song “romp”: a vignette of something that may have nothing to do with the episode while one of The Monkees songs played along with it, a precursor to the later created “music videos”. Many of these songs would become some of the greatest hits of the 1960s.
The Monkees series was daring and experimental for its time. Creators Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider developed The Monkees with avant garde film techniques, such as breaking the fourth wall, jump cuts, and improvisation. The Monkees also used their real names in the show, which added to the verisimilitude (a favorite word of Micky’s 😉), the confusion, and the controversy over where the lines between fantasy and reality begin and end.
Bob Rafelson was drafted into the US Army, and stationed in Japan, prior to creaing The Monkees. While in Japan he translated film from Japanese to English, worked as a disc jockey, and analyzed Japanese movies, “I’d have to watch an Ozu movie over and over again… I was hypnotized by the stillness of his frames, his sureness of composition… I suppose my own aesthetic evolved from looking at certain kinds of pictures.”[source] Bert Schnieder was working in Los Angeles at the time and joined with Bob to form RayBert Productions, which produced both The Monkees, Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, The Last Picture Show.
As Time magazine contributor James Poniewozik wrote upon reflecting on the death of Davy Jones in 2012, “Even if the show never meant to be more than entertainment and a hit-single generator, we shouldn’t sell The Monkees short. It was far better TV than it had to be; during an era of formulaic domestic sitcoms and wacky comedies, it was a stylistically ambitious show, with a distinctive visual style, absurdist sense of humor and unusual story structure. Whatever Jones and The Monkees were meant to be, they became creative artists in their own right, and Jones’ chipper Brit-pop presence was a big reason they were able to produce work that was commercial, wholesome and yet impressively weird.”
“Commercial, wholesome, and yet impressively weird”. I’ll take that.
🦋 Emily Wells