MEMORY LANE: REMEMBERING "TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY"

I think you would agree that Memory Lane is a place full of wonderful old mansions, of vast villas and rambling estates, in which it is easy to get lost and even easier to remain so. Pop culture nostalgia is a powerful thing, and sometimes, if we are not careful, or if we are feeling a little too keenly a yearning for a particular part of our youth, we can lose ourselves in these spaces, which remain intact and well-maintained despite the passage of years since their cancellation. When one thinks about a show of yesteryear like "Magnum, P.I." or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Frasier," one gets the sense that the lights are still on, the furniture is neatly in place, and while the door hinges may be in need of a dash of oil, the appliances would still work if you cared to use them, and the wine in the cellar would taste agreeably sweet. In short, you would feel very much at home.

But along with the vast edifices we have previously explored, shows which ran for many seasons and had appreciable cultural impact, there are also places which are as small as summer cottages, and upon closer inspection -- once we push past the creepers and vines which have overgrown their decaying wood beams -- we see that the series in question were never even completed during their own lifetimes. What lies beneath the moss and cobwebs is incomplete as well as half lost in the weeds, abandoned before its time. "Tales of the Gold Monkey" (1982 - 1983) is such a show. It existed only briefly, it died an unfair and unnatural death, and its star was retroactively tainted by a scandal which broke decades after the series left the airwaves. In short, it is quite forgotten by all save television historians and those who grew up in the early 80s. Yet it has a place on Memory Lane, however small, because it speaks to something which lies deep within the heart of every small boy, now as then.

I should begin stating flatly that, not only in retrospect but at the time it aired, "Tales of the Gold Monkey" was an easy show to make fun of. It is full of worn-out clichés, embarrassing stereotypes, stupid dialogue, needless narration, bad blue screen effects, cruddy matte paintings, ill-fitting stock footage, archaic costumes, cringeworthy acting, fake sets and utterly preposterous plots. When fans try to defend this series against ridicule or even room-temperature observational criticism, they often begin by pretending as if this isn't so, and thus discredit their own arguments before they can even get going. I would never make the case that "Tales" was great television taken as such. I would actually start by acknowledging that in many ways it was terrible television...and then explain just why that doesn't make a halluva lot of difference.

"Tales" was concieved by the legendary writer-producer Donald P. Bellisario, who, along with Glen Larson and Stephen J. Cannell, is inarguably one of the pillars upon which modern TV rests. He was the brain behind "Magnum, P.I.", "Airwolf," "Quantum Leap," "JAG," and "NCIS" (which is still running after twenty years). Contrary to popular opinion, it was not a slapped-together imitation of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, which exploded onto movie screens in 1981, but an old idea which had been stewing on a back burner called "development" for years before the success of RAIDERS pushed it to the front of the stove. "Tales" is in fact a series which even in 1982 was a rare breed: the action-adventure show, with emphasis on adventure. It recreated a period in history (the last period in history, actually) when vast areas of the Earth were still unconquered, and thus adventure and exploration still possible: the pre-WW2 age of colonial empire. We forget it now, but there was a time within the living memory of some people when a large portion of this planet still slept in the pre-industrial era, and wandering too far off the map could get you eaten by cannibals, devoured by wild beasts, or plunk you down amidst the ruins of a lost city. When men and women who lived on the edge of that map literally straddled the line between civilization and savagery, the known world and the deep blue. It was an era of explorers, treasure-hunters, missionaries, smugglers, sailors, silk-scarfed pilots, drunken storytellers, one-eyed traders, pirate, crooks, spies, unscrupulous businessmen, absinthe-sodden colonial governors, dispossessed tribesmen, and ruthless empire-builders. And that is what "Tales of the Gold Monkey" was all about. That brawling, half-tamed lawless time when half the world was an unknown quantity and wonder was still possible. Think "Magnum P.I." train-wrecked into "Indiana Jones" (with just a little "Land of the Lost" sprinkled on top) and you have "Tales Of The Gold Monkey." It's the chaos and rawness of the Wild West, but with .45s instead of six guns, twin-engined aircraft instead of horses, and palm trees instead of tumbleweed.

The premise of "Tales" was dead simple. An ex-Flying Tiger named Jake Cutter (Stephen Collins), his drunken, memory-challenged sidekick Corky (Jeff Mackay), and their one-eyed dog Jack (Leo the Dog) operate their seaplane, Cutter's Goose, out of the fictional island of Boragora, somewhere in the Marivellas Islands of the South Pacific, in the last few years before the outbreak of WW2, when a great deal of the world was owned by colonial powers. When our heroes are not flying supplies, mail or passengers to this or that far-flung outpost in the French or Japanese mandates, they are belly-up at the Monkey Bar, which is operated by the island's enigmatic magistrate Bon Chance Louie (Ron Moody in the pilot, Roddy McDowell in the series). In the bar are likely to be found Sarah Stickney White (Caitlin O'Heany), a redheaded lounge singer and American spy; the Reverend Willie Tenboom (John Calvin), who is also a spy, albeit for Nazi Germany; and Gushie, a crippled ex-member of the Foreign Legion (Les Jankey). Pushing through the saloon doors every now and again are the villainous but charming Japanese princess Koji (the super-lovely Marta DuBois, staple femme fatale of the 80s and 90s) and her grumpy samurai henchman Todo (the ubiquitous John Fujioka, in full samurai rig), who longs to cut off Jake's head. With a group like this, where nearly everyone is hiding secrets from each other and unknowingly working at cross-purposes, you just know all sorts of wacky adventures are going to ensue, and believe me, they do. Over the course of the season (sadly, the only one the show ever produced), Jake & Co. come up against human traffickers, spies, cultists, boys raised by apes, treasure hunters, giant octopi, rebel insurgents, angry mobs, Japanese Zeroes, Nazis, ancient curses, and pretty much anything else you can think of. (In one memorable episode, samurai warriors battle huge, semi-carniverous monkeys.) It's incredibly silly, cheesy, clichéd and outlandish, ripping off from just about every old movie and Western you can think of, and often looking as if it were shot entirely on dusty old sets on the studio backlot...which in fact it was...but it's also great, great fun. And this is a large part of why it still occupies space, however overgrown and bug-eaten, in Memory Lane.

"Tales" is a show that made up for in heart and good, clean adventure what it lacked in other places. Though it was shot in 1982, it was essentially the product of a much earlier era, the era of the sensational tales written for boys and young men back in pulp magazines the 20s, 30s and 40s, which Bellasario undoubtedly grew up on, and that sense of lighthearted, "fistfights are fun, don't-worry-it's-just-a-flesh-wound" heroics, percolates all throughout the series. When Jake revs up the coughing, smoking motors of Cutter's Goose, we know that just over the glimmering Pacific horizon lies adventure, treasure, good-looking women, and sweaty, squinty-eyed villains of all races who cheat at cards and sell people into slavery. I cannot tell you how much I looked forward to watching this show every week when I was ten years old, or how bitter I was when it failed to be renewed for a second season. All children, especially boys, long for adventure, for dangerous quests in faraway and exotic lands. "Tales of the Gold Monkey" gave me all that, and when it disappeared, a piece of my childhood disappeared with it. I loved Jake Cutter because, like Thomas Magnum, he was a badass under pressure, but rather a dumbass when the pressure was off: he fumbled romances, got thrown through windows, lost at cards, tried in vain to keep Corky sober, and everlastingly argued with his one-eyed dog Jake. He was heroic but relatable, and his fondness for cigars, eye for the ladies and passion for baseball gave him just enough spice to escape the Dudley Doorite dullness that sometimes afflicted 80s-era heroes.

The bitterness of the pill was accentuated by the fact that "Tales" was cancelled not because of low ratings, but due to a pissing contest between Bellisario and ABC network executives: Bellisario wanted the show to stay reasonably grounded, with stories about spying, smuggling, and so forth, while the suits wanted more extreme plotlines that blurred the lines between adventure and fantasy. Bellisario would not budge, so to spite him, the series was relegated to the dustbin, an act that reportedly caused rival networks to literally uncork champagne, since they believed "Tales" was potential mega-hit which would have run as long as seven seasons. Such is Hollywood, then as now, a fact which brings me no comfort...now or then.

So where does that leave us? Does "Tales" have any relevance forty years down the road? Are there lessons to be learned from its brief existence? Can a show that ran a single year have a legacy? Does it deserve one, romanticizing colonialism as it was sometimes accused of doing?

I would argue that "Tales" is actually more relevant and more necessary now, despite all of its early-80s silliness, than it was back then. The age we live in is cynical, and cynicism is the opposite of wonder. Kids nowadays sit in front of first-person shooter video games, Snapchat and Tik Tok with glassed-over eyes, and seldom get a chance to flex the adventure-muscles that are every child's absolute birthright. "Tales" harkens back to a time when the craving for adventure was accepted as a natural function of boyhood and girlhood, as craving for unearned fame and gross material wealth is today. It presupposes that there are realms beyond the border of electric light and air conditioning, where people have to live by their wits or die, something every Western child should consider in this age of flabby keyboard warriors and porn-addicted, basement-dwelling trolls. The fact that it expired after only a year, despite ratings success, serves as a salutary warning about the role of ego in the decision-making process: Bellisario, in my mind, was right to fight for his vision of the show, but naive and silly to let the fight escalate to the point where men obsessed with money were willing to sacrifice hefty future profits just to step on his dream. The very act of bringing a television series into existence is a vast series of painful and occasionally humiliating compromises, conducted for the greater good: it is the painful intersection of the commercial and the artistic, and that intersection is usually littered with blood and wreckage. Bellisario knew this better than anyone. He could have been more strategic, chosen his battles more carefully. In the modern parlance, however, he chose violence, and the people employed by the show, and its many fans, paid the price.

Now we come to the last point. Did "Tales" romanticize colonialism, European or otherwise? The answer, as is so often the case in questions like this, is yes, and no. It is often taken for granted in the series that European colonialism is reasonable or at least justifiable or unquestionable, just as it is taken for granted that Japanese aspirations of this type are inherently sinister. Few of the episodes question the fact that so much of the world was divvied up between a few European powers like so much pie at a Thanksgiving feast. Moreover, native anti-colonialists, though depicted, are not always painted in a good light, but rather as embittered, angry disruptors of the social order; and the whole mystique of mercenaries, smugglers, explorers, spies and and so forth, playing poker in the Monkey Bar beneath clouds of cigar smoke as they plotted their next adventure, is undoubtedly rooted in a deep nostalgia for this era: indeed, as I have said, it is a large part of the show's appeal, just as it is a large part of the appeal of the Indiana Jones films. But it would be unfair to say that "Tales" simply ignored the evils of colonialism. The episode "Shangheid" tackled modern-day slavery, while "Escape from Death Island" chronicled the cruelty of French penal colonies. "Boragora or Bust" centers around the exploitation of mineral rights, while "A Distant Shout of Thunder" directly addresses native hostility and resentment to colonial domination. The writers were not entirely blind to the nature of the world their characters were living.

I don't mean to imply that "Tales" offered sophisticated commentary on this subject or any other; only that it was not completely lacking in nuance (the character of Willy Tenboom, for example, was a German spy, but manifestly not a Nazi; his main interest was bedding nubile island girls, and he often pitched in to help Jake). The show may have romanticized the age and the setting, but its moral compass was firmly in place: right remained right, wrong remained wrong. It was manifestly on the side of the little man against the big man, for individuality and, ultimately, the freedom that comes with living on the edge of the world, where law is more of an idea than a reality, and civilization comes in the form of once-a-month clippers full of mail, cigars, phonograph records and whisky. My ultimate verdict is this: if you're a parent of a youngish kid, "Tales" is as good an antidote for today's world as anything out there. And if you happened to be growing up in the early 80s, it's a fabulous flight down Memory Lane.