MEMORY LANE: REMEMBERING "MATT HOUSTON"

Better cock your pistols. -- C.J. Parsons

Way back in the 1980s, there was a tall, handsome, mustachioe'd private eye with a flashy lifestyle, a taste for danger, a tendency to bumble, and a way with women. This Vietnam vet was was tough, but tender: occasionally immature, but also deeply committed. A terrific friend, but a terrifying enemy. He sleuthed, fist-fought, romanced, cheesed off the cops, sped down highways in a vintage auto to bombastic music, and generally reminded us how lame we were in comparison with him...somehow without ever once making us dislike him. His more Mary Sue characteristics were offset by enough flaws, foibles and quirks to be relatable, even as he dodged shotgun blasts and got thrown off cars. He gave the ladies something to look at and the men something to admire.

Am I talking about Thomas Magnum? Oh no. No no no. I'm talking about Matt Houston. You know, Matt Houston? Surely you remember Matlock Houston! In 1982 he was as inescapable as American flags on the Fourth of July, and nearly as American. Just the sort of rough-and-tumble (yet suave) hero this nation required during those shaky first years of the Reagan presidency, when we were all desperate for a distraction from seemingly imminent nuclear destruction.

When HOUSTON made its debut in 1982, MAGNUM, P.I. was already a worldwide phenomenon, the show every other action-adventure-cop-private-eye show wanted to be. In Hollywood, imitation is the highest form of flattery, and other networks (and even the same network) did their level best to try and imitate what the legendary Donald P. Bellisario had created: but none were so brazen in their imitation as the equally legendary Aaron Spelling. His intention from the start seemed to be to out-Magnum MAGNUM in every possible way. What he came up with was this:

Matlock Houston (Lee Horsley) was the only son of a famous Texas oil baron. An outstanding collegiate athlete who served in Vietnam as an intelligence officer, Matt -- "Houston" to his friends -- was supposed to follow in his dad's footsteps in the Lone Star State. Instead, he decamped to Los Angeles, ostensibly to supervise the family's offshore drilling assets, but in reality to indulge his true passion: working as a private detective. Houston flew his own helicopter from his West Side ranch to his penthouse office in downtown L.A.: drove his open-topped Sparks Roadster around town; and wore Western suits with cowboy boots and a gold belt buckle, and was accompanied at all times by his best friend and lawyer, the lovely C.J. Parsons (Pamela Hensley). For background information, Houston relied on "Baby," his sophisticated Apple III computer, which was basically just a modern internet connection as it was imagined in 1982. For help with the cops, he had his friend Lt. Vince Novelli (John Aprea). For financial dope, he had his anxiety-riddled accountant Murray (George Wydner). There were a number of other ancillary characters as well, and thereby we come to what initially made MATT HOUSTON interesting to potential viewers.

Noise.

As concieved and initially executed, MATT HOUSTON never attempted subtlety. It never attempted nuance. It never attempted depth. From its relentlessly bombastic score to the utter improbability of its central concept, from its tongue-in-cheek humor to its equally cheeky departure from any sense of realism, this show was a fifty-piece marching band complete with elephants and fireworks, advertising what amounted to a new flavor of gum. It was boldly ridiculous: garishly, cheesily up in your face, like a harmless but demented rodeo clown. It was a ton of energy circling not a helluva lot of substance. Even at the time, it was considered to be vulgar in a literal sense.

HOUSTON's early structure went like this. Some friend or former flame of Houston, accused of murder or threatened by evildoers, would reach out to him for help. Houston would investigate the suspects, usually composed at least in part of faded stars of yesteryear such as Alan Hale, Janet Leigh, Cesar Romero, Chuck Connors, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Wilhem Klemperer, etc., as well as various reliable character actors (think Bradford Dillman and Vic Tayback) and hot bikini-babes. Houston would quickly become targeted by the unknown bad guy, leading to chases on foot and chases by car, fisticuffs, and inevitable scene where Houston gets thrown off a moving car. Finally, after a drawing-room confrontation in which Houston exposed the killer or bad guy, there would be a final chase & fistfight, followed by a last snort of humor before the credits rolled.

You will note I said "fistfight." One of the peculiar qualities of early HOUSTON is that he never, or almost never, carried a gun. Nor, for a single, handsome, virile young man worth millions, did he make a fetish of bedding his damsels in distress. Houston existed as a man out of time, an idealized Old West hero, occasionally with the horse, but always minus the six guns. Like the Duke Boys, he'd sock you on the jaw if you had it coming, but he'd never kick you when you were down. The show even referenced "The Cowboy Code," an actual code of behavior sometimes referred to as The Code of the West, which was Houston's guiding moral star.

The series was also notable for its sense of humor. A running gag which took center stage in the credits was Houston's inability to knock down a door with his shoulder, but the fact is Houston was the butt of at least three-quarters of the shows physical comedy, one-liners and comebacks. In this regard Lee Horsely, a real-life Texan who really does embody the Cowboy Code, was the perfect choice for the role. He could play tough and dramatic when the role called for it, but seemed to be at his best when playing for laughs. HOUSTON was often absurd (radio-controlled sharks, killer robots, little green men) but it wasn't the sort of absurd show that cringe-inducingly takes itself seriously. There was a wink-wink quality to (most of) its early episodes, a clear understanding that the viewer had voluntarily entered the theater of the ridiculous.

All shows undergo refinements and changes as they progress: MATT HOUSTON suffered massive overalls, probably as the result of critical attacks and wobbly ratings. The changes started subtly, by getting rid of C.J.'s horrible Texas accent and the equally dumb expositive narration, which only served to slop words into plot holes best left to the audience's indifferent shrugs (who watches shit like this for the plots?). Then the side-character massacre began: two pointless, painfully stupid cowboy sidekicks were dispatched without ceremony, followed eventually by Novelli's annoying Italian sterotype of a mother, who ran (of course) an Italian restaurant and was forever cartoonishly berating her son in Italian. Murray, the one side guy who really worked well, was reduced to recurring status. And a few episodes -- "Get Houston" and "The Hunted" -- jaggedly changed the tone from lighthearted and comedic to dark-as-death in an eyeblink.

HOUSTON's second season permanently changed the tone of the series. Gone was the sense of humor. Gone too, were the Western suits, gold buckles, cowboy boots and Sparks Roadster. The parade of faded guest stars ended, and so too did the big, set-piece drawing-room confrontations. Houston wore a Member's Only jacket, carried a Walther PPK (later upgraded to a big old .45) which used frequently, and drove a contemporary sportscar. He was also quick to bed with his hot female co-stars. In short, the quirky, noisy, over-the-top, G-rated ridiculousness had been thrown out in favor of a grimly generic TV detective show, indistinguishable from most others. This didn't particularly suit the modest audience, so its third season tried to revive a little of the razzamatazz and humor of the first, and brought in Buddy Ebsen (famous for BARNABY JONES) as a series regular, to no avail. MATT HOUSTON crossed its finish line with 69 episodes beneath its (no longer) Western-buckled belt, and was promptly forgotten, except by a small core of devotees and, of course, the mostly female fans of Lee Horsley. It is now a footnote in television history.

So where does MATT HOUSTON stand in retrospect? Why am I even bothering to talk about a poorly-written, derivative knock-off of a much more successful series? Why write about a show which limped through three seasons before it was canceled with absolutely no fanfare? Why spill ink over what one IMDB commentator referred to as "the show you flipped to when the show you were watching was on a commercial"?

One word: fun

The first season -- only the first, really, but with the occasional lark in seasons two and three -- was just plain old silly fun, of the sort I so rarely encounter nowadays that it seems to me completely extinct. Houston's banter with C.J. was not exactly Shakespearian, but they had a wonderful comedic chemistry, and as I said above, Houston himself was often a source of humor simply through his outre facial expressions and bullet-induced pratfalls. Even in the 1980s, there was a place for prime-time detective dramas which were thoughtfully written and skillfully acted, like SIMON & SIMON, and there is also a place for entertaining nonsense. Even as a boy of ten, I grasped that sometimes you want prime rib, and sometimes a McDonald's hamburger. It's a question of mood, of what level of engagement feels right for you in the moment. An episode like MAGNUM, P.I.'s "Did You See The Sunrise?" demanded the maximum from its viewer: it was a brutally violent, intricately plotted, tragic and finally shocking story that changed the course of television history. (The first time I saw it, I felt as if I'd aged a year overnight.) The average episode of MATT HOUSTON, in comparison, was about as demanding as putting a quarter in the slot of a bubblegum machine. But who doesn't like a fistfull of brightly-colored bubblegum?

There is a second word I'd like to employ: hero.

Yesterday I saw a preview for Fast X, the tenth and, I hope, last installment of the FAST AND FURIOUS franchise. Watching this slickly produced trailer consecrated to the monstrous ego of Vin Diesel just served to remind me of how the very idea of heroism is dead, buried and mummified in the mind of modern Hollywood. And while I understand the difference between a protagonist and a hero, I also grasp what the near-complete lack of heroes in film and television today says about us as a society. A country that regards traditional heroes as unrealistic, saccharine, hokey, dumb, dated, fake, unbearable -- that is a country which is on its last legs, has already filed for emotional bankruptcy and is just awaiting liquidation. Matlock Houston, in his Season 1.0 form, was a dyed-in-the-wool hero, falling short of Mary Sue status only because of his eccentricities and foibles, and his tendency to get knocked unconscious. He felt fear, but always overcame it: the quality we call courage. He lusted after beautiful women but did not take advantage of them: the quality we call character. He'd beat the hell out of a bad guy but wouldn't kill him: the quality we call morality. He'd stick by a friend come hell or high water: the quality we call loyalty, and he'd also stick by the little guy, treating the janitor with the same respect as a CEO, the quality we call decency. In short, he had a code, the cowboy code, and he stuck to it unfailingly no matter how badly he wanted to shoot the evildoer or get double-teamed by the bikini babes who came onto him in the middle of a foot chase. It wasn't exactly realistic (the babes were far more appealing than the foot chase), but it was refreshing, and in any case, who the hell watches television for realism?

What we want -- what we ought to want -- in our entertainment is a broad variety of central characters. There is absolutely a place for Vic Mackie, Walter White and Frank Underwood in our pantheon of protagonists, but there is also a place for Matt Houston, for the Matt Houstons of the celluloid world. People who treat their word as bond, who won't shoot a man in the back or cheat at cards, and who will tip their hats to a lady. Even as a child I understood the need for this sort of thing, and I have always viewed people who lack that need as weak, malformed, and sickly. People who are repulsed by light because, like mushrooms, they are more comfortable sitting in the dark and eating shit.

As I have said, MATT HOUSTON is largely forgotten today, and after rewatching the series, I can't say that I entirely blame audiences, even audiences who grew up in the 80s, for forgetting it. In terms of objective quality, it hovered somewhere at the level of T.J. HOOKER...but like T.J. HOOKER, it also took (at least initially) a firm moral stance, which, even when weighed against all of its silliness and shortcomings, seems to count more in this age of moral terpitude than it ought to.