Gary16
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 1,421
- Real Name
- Gary
Great commentary as always. By the way the first elevator was installed in 1857.Episode Revisited
"Switchburg" (S2E16)
When you really have nothing better to do (as I often have), it's time to mix an improving cocktail and watch some old favorites. If memory serves, I've already done an episode commentary on "Switchburg" some time ago--so this just represents some stuff I jotted down that I may or may not have missed in the first go-around. They're mainly half-thoughts and details as opposed to well-thought out comments. They may be interesting to you. Or not.
View attachment 59098
View attachment 59099 View attachment 59100
- When Stu asks the hotel clerk to point out the scruffy sheriff of Kingsley, the clerk comments "Not much like Dan Troop, is he..." (WB loved to cross-reference their properties)
- Stu spends almost the entire episode dressed in white levis (no belt) with ankle-length boots overlapping the cuffs and a western-style denim shirt. Not much different than what I wore most days in junior high
- Coffee in the Switchburg cafe costs .25 cents--and by the look on Stu's face upon sipping, not worth it
- Stu runs into the old lady clerk from the courthouse (Charity Grace) in the bar, where she blithely orders a double whiskey
- I had just watched a Maverick episode, and noticed the same Western town the he's riding out of is the same setting used in Switchburg
- Some really good closeups of Stu's Thunderbird. Funny scene with gas station attendant trying to find the gas cap location (behind the license plate), and being astounded that the hood opened back-to-front.
- The inside of the Switchburg Hotel could well have been the same interior used for Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations if it was filmed at the same studio (which it wasn't).
- Stu gets to the second floor of the hotel by climbing up the elevator shaft. The hotel was supposedly deserted in 1916, which I assume it was built long before that. Were there elevators back then?
- The crooked sheriff remarks "My friends live and work in this musty, humorless town." Pretty erudite language from the chawbacon sheriff. Not to be outdone, Stu quips "If the business is so impecuniary, why keep at it?"
- Can one ever get enough of William Fawcett as the ubiquitous tattered old ranch hand?
- Stu encounters a skeleton in one of the rooms--an office sign designated it as H.H. Osborne--General Practice. A doctor's office in a hotel? Maybe not so unusual back then.
- Not a damn thing wrong with Dolores Donlon, who played twins Nan and Ann Polly:
I think what made this Monty Pittman episode one of my favorites was the atmospherics. The mysterious lights in the creepy hotel, a near-deserted town, peculiar characters at every turn, etc. Almost like a Hardy Boy mystery.
Next:
I'm going to go back over some of the dreaded "international" episodes that I've avoided to see if I change my mind like I did with Season 6. Stay cool, stay dry, stay tuned...