Route 66 Is Too Often Pretentious and Sentimental

A local TV station is playing old episodes of Route 66 and I'm recording and watching them (well, listening while watching out of the corner of my eye; I have it in a small window in Windows Media Center to my upper left). I never watched the series as a child, began airing before I was born, so it's entirely new to me. I've heard though that George Maharris "defined" cool for a generation; I'm kind of surprised at that, because I prefer Glenn Corbett in the role.


(... which probably places me in the minority; but I haven't had enough exposure to Maharris to understand his charm. Also, I was introduced to Corbett as Dr Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek the Original Series, who everyone my age knows was the inventor of the warp drive. The Zefram Cochrane I knew was not the one portrayed by James Cromwell in Star Trek: First Contact. The franchise ruined a lot of good characters, and Zefram Cochrane was one of them. I'll be damned if I can understand why they added all the cranial crap to Klingons; it's a needless distraction that hides the Nazi-like precision of their cruelty and instead transforms them into Neanderthalian brutes[1].



Watch "Errand of Mercy" with actor John Colicos in the role of Klingon Commander Kor, who threatens to turn Kirk into a "human vej-a-ta-bull" with his mind sifter; now that was story; if you added the cranial ridge, the hair and teeth and girth, the same scene would have been laughable.)



Route 66 aired when the interstate system was being built, and the brand of auto wanderlust was a much different; a cross country trip meant many more stops, tire repairs, mom-and-pop hotels and restaurants. It was more of an adventure, and I remember that fondly, not from personal experience, but because those days were remembered fondly by the generation that preceded me, and the images and stories carried over in family photos, record albums, and home movies.

Something you don't see in dramatic TV anymore are crowds of real people hired as extras meant to lend authenticity to a scene; they stand close by, watching expressionless as the actors do their thing. They're hired to look natural and blend in, but instead they appear to be thinking "Hey, I'm on Route 66!"; in fact the beach scene at the opening of the episode "But What Do You Do in March?" is what got me thinking about this post in the first place. I'm sure at the time the directors where thinking "How can we get our extras to stop watching the actors?" but now it's part of the charm.


(Neighborhood friends from Erie, PA, The Chippolettis, who vacationed in Hawaii back when an airplane trip was a once-in-a-lifetime event for many people, showed us their Super 8 movies of Jack Lord walking down an outdoor hotel balcony during the filming of an episode of Hawaii Five-0; they said they watched many takes before the director was happy. BTW FWIW, I think the CBS attempt at the new Hawaii Five-O is abysmal. You can't reinvent that kind of success; you can build on it, but you can't repeat it; more on that later perhaps.)

Final thoughts on Route 66? It's too often pretentious and sentimental. I've only watched 10-15 episodes so far, but I can't count on one hand the number of times Martin Milner (whom I first met in Adam 12) quotes literature or makes an esoteric observation. But it was a product of its time, as are we all, and if you can get past the self-awareness, it does capture places and times that have long since faded or disappeared altogether.


[1] I still pronounce it [knee-an'-dra-thal]; I know it's wrong, but that's how everyone said it way back when.