Wings, S01E02, "Around the World in Eighty Years"

On Nantucket Island, at the Tom Nevers airfield, the Hackett brothers are arguing about Joe’s resistance to change. Brian thinks his brother could loosen up a little bit. Joe says he’s not opposed to spontaneity, but he’d just like “a little warning, so it doesn’t come completely out of nowhere.”

Helen’s dreams of playing music professionally take another hit when she fails at her recent tryout for the Cambridge Symphony. Brian thinks that it’s because of her boring dress and suggests that at her next tryout she trues wearing something a little sexier. Joe thinks she should rely on her talent as a cellist alone. Helen sides with Brian, gets a new dress, a callback, and an unexpected repair bill.

Meanwhile, Howard Banks, an elderly man on a solo flight around the world, has been hanging around the terminal for three days. Fay finds out that Howard is only a 40-minute flight away from completing his circumnavigation. Why isn’t he heading back to New Bedford? Because, he tells Fay, if he finishes his round-the-world trip, then he is going to die.

Lots of good gags in this one. Where to start?

How about at tofu?

When she arrives home from her first audition, Helen is asked by Roy what she thought of his new in-flight snack:

Helen: I meant to ask you, Roy, what was that?

Roy: Tofu. It can be anything you want.

Helen: Okay, I want it kept away from me.

Is hating on tofu still a thing? Does tofu as a punchline still elicit laughs? I’m not so sure. Tofu used to be a sign that a character was a flibbertigibbet of some sort, a hippie that wasn’t aware that the Sixties were over. Nowadays, I think most smart people keep a package of tofu or two in the fridge. My wife serves up a mean mapo tofu. I don’t think anyone could take a bite of that delicious, spicy, numbing, Sichuan dish and laugh it off.

In the first episode of Wings, Roy bemoans the fact that Jane Pauly was replaced by Deborah Norville as cohost of Today. In this episode, as he tries to sell Helen on sexing herself up, Brian says talent isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be: “Nobody sings better than Madonna? Nobody reads the news better than Maria Shriver?” A little product placement never hurt anyone. Right, NBC?

While Steven Weber is still the go-to guy for punchlines in this episode (Brian’s critique of Helen’s dress as a member of the barbiturate family is delivered with vaudevillian zest), we get a glimpse of what Thomas Haden Church is going to bring as “Lowell, the mechanic.” The character of Lowell is a walking non-sequitur, and he’s got a couple of nice turns here. My favorite is when he tells Joe about his newest hobby: karamandu, the ancient Indian art of face-reading.

Lowell: There are minute movements of facial muscles that mean nothing to you, but that speak volumes to me.

[Helen enters the airport dancing and singing.]

Joe: Now, here’s a challenge. What’s your reading?

Lowell: Either she did well at her audition or she’s drunk as a billy goat.

With the Howard Banks (played by Richard Erdman) storyline, Fay gets her chance to shine, as well. We get a little of her backstory – she used to be a stewardess. It’s nice to see the back-and-forth flirting going on between these two older folks. At one point, Fay calls Howard a “momo.” Had to look that up. It means “an idiot or irritating person.” I’ll have to file that one away for future use.

This is also a nice episode to watch the background extras strut their stuff. If you watch the scene where Fay finally gets the full story about Howard's reticence, you see one of the extras maybe following the action a little too closely. 

And can we just talk about Howard’s hat for a moment. It is, of course, glorious, and I want it.

Helen’s dress ain’t too shabby, either…but I doubt I’d wear it as well as that hat.

Okay, folks, it’s that time again. We are preparing to land at Tom Nevers Field. Won’t you please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright positions, your seat belts are securely fastened, and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins. Any unused tofu can be given to the flight attendants making their way through the cabin.

Our next flight will be “Return to Nantucket, Part 1,” the first of a two-parter (three episodes into a 6-episode season, and we already have a two-part episode?) where we meet the woman who broke Joe’s and Brian’s hearts, Carol.

Wings, S01E01, "Legacy"

Joe Hackett (Tim Daly), sole owner and sole pilot of Sandpiper Air of Nantucket Island, is given a misdelivered package by business rival, Roy Biggins (David Schramm). The package is from the lawyer who handled the estate of Joe’s recently deceased father and can only be opened in the presence of Joe’s estranged brother, Brian (Steven Weber). Joe and his brother have not spoken in six years, ever since Brian ran off with Joe’s fiancée, Carol. Convinced by his ditzy employee, Fay (Rebecca Schull), and his friend/airport diner owner, Helen (Crystal Bernard), to honor his father’s dying wish, Joe agrees to contact Brian.

A few days later, free-spirit Brian blows through Tom Nevers Field airport like a hurricane. Whereas Joe keeps to the straight and narrow, Brian is a jokester who doesn’t take anything seriously. Opening their father’s inheritance, they find a safe deposit box key. Brian believes the box is filled with money, because a few months before his death, his father called him and said, “You’re rich.” Excited, the brothers head off to collect their treasure.

Joe and Brian collect a locked box from the bank and discover another key. This one is to a post office box on the mainland. They follow the trail from post office to bank to bus depot to kennel, all the while finding another key at their destination.

As they return to Nantucket with a mysterious final key, Brian reveals that he lost his job as a charter flight pilot in the Caribbean and was hoping that Joe needed another pilot. Joe refuses, citing Brian’s untrustworthiness, unreliability, and inability to take advantage of all the opportunities he’s been given in life – from flunking out of Princeton to washing out of NASA. Upon landing at Tom Nevers Field, Brian comes clean and tells Joe that Carol left him for another man.

With the brothers about to go their separate ways, Fay notices that the key belongs to one of the airport lockers. Opening the suitcase left in the locker, the brothers find, in addition to the dozen or so magic shop, spring-loaded snakes that leap out of it, their “legacy” – a photo of Joe and Brian together as children. On the back of the photo, written in their father’s hand, is the message “You’re rich.” Realizing that their father’s final wish was for their reconciliation, Brian accepts Joe’s job offer.

The first episode of Wings does everything a sitcom series opener should do in twenty-odd minutes. The characters are painted with broad strokes, allowing the viewer to quickly grasp who each person is and where they fit in the overall picture. Joe’s forthright uptightness meshes well with Brian’s loosey-goosey style. Even the characters’ wardrobes as designed by Elizabeth Palmer signify to the audience who they are and what can be expected of them.

The writing by show creators David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee is of the “set ‘em up and knock ‘em down” variety. I like to think of it as “verbal volleyball.” The characters banter back and forth until one puts the dialogue in the perfect position for the other to spike the punchline over the net and into the audience’s face. For example:

Joe: Dad was getting pretty strange the last couple of years. 

Brian: Why what do you mean? 

Joe: He used to put on an apron, go to the market, and demonstrate cheese spread. 

Brian: A lot of people do that. 

Joe: Sure, but usually the market hires them.

And this:

Brian: I know you, Joe. You're the best pilot around, but you're doing too much. You're running the office, you're flying the planes. You keep this pace up, you're gonna end up like Howard Hughes. Locked in a hotel room, sitting on Kleenex, sucking applesauce through a straw. 

Lowell: Isn't that something? All that money and his hobbies are the same as mine. 

Brian: Really? He also used to collect toenail clippings and keep them in a mason jar. 

Lowell: This is uncanny!

This style of comedic writing is as old as the hills. Listen to old time radio shows like Jack Benny or Our Miss Brooks, watch classic TV shows like I Love Lucy or The Dick Van Dyke Show, and you’ll see this same kind of structure. Please do not think that I am not knocking it. When done by professionals, sitcom writing has a wonderful rhythm and pace that is tantamount to musical theater. Angell, Casey, and Lee cut their teeth writing for Cheers, one of the greatest American comedic TV shows of all time. They also go on to create Frazier. These men knew funny. And they also knew that if it ain’t broke, you don’t fix it.

It isn’t enough to have good writing, however. You have to have the actors who can deliver those lines with verve and aplomb. Tim Daly, Crystal Bernard, Thomas Haden Church, and the others toss lines and jokes at each other with real skill. The entire cast of Wings, in fact, is very good, but it isn’t until Steven Weber shows up that things really liven up. Weber’s Brian Hackett is pure id. Watching him take down Roy Biggins’s Aeromass airlines is a joy. You can tell that Weber relished every line and situation.

Shout-outs to art director Roy Christopher and set decorators Tom Bugenhagen and Laura Richarz are warranted, as well. A good sitcom needs a place for its characters to feel at home. This causes the audience to feel at home there, too. Think: the Bunkers’ living room in All in the Family or the bar in Cheers. These are sets that became real places in the minds of audiences over the years. The terminal of Tom Never Field is such a place. It is a really interesting space. It has height as well as depth to it. For instance, Joe is on the second floor of the set when he meets his brother. Lowell (Thomas Haden Church) is up there later when the suitcase is found in the locker. There are doors and hallways on the sides and in the back of the set that make the viewer wonder what is happening just beyond sight. And like the bar in Cheers, the terminal needs extras to fill out the space. There are always folks waiting for their flights or ordering a meal at the counter of the restaurant. Visually, Wings is as delightful as its dialogue.

There will be more to discuss the further we go along this season (and next…and the next…and the next…). For now, let’s make sure our seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright positions, our seat belts are securely fastened, and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of us or in the overhead bins. For our next flight, we will be looking at episode two “Around the World in Eighty Years.”

Brand New Year, Same Old Resolutions

It’s the New Year, so it’s time to make resolutions that, more than likely, will never be fulfilled. My New Year’s resolution for 2021 is pretty much the same one I make every year…

Not quite, Brain.

My resolution is to write more. More letters to friends, more short stories, more chapters to my novel (which, dammit, I will finish this year). And, of course, more blog posts.

To help me with that last goal, I’ve decided to stack the writing project deck in my favor, so to speak, and review a multi-season television series. It’s a little easier to get into the groove of writing when what I have to write about next is already chosen for me.

The series I’ve chosen is Wings (1990-1997). Eight seasons of quaint hilarity starring Tim Daly, Steven Weber, and Crystal Bernard seem to be just what the doctor ordered for these COVID-crazed times.

Created by a trio of veterans from Cheers – David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee – Wings never garnered the critical or popular attention that other NBC comedies of the 1990s received. It wasn’t as hip as Seinfeld or Friends, and it wasn’t as intellectual as Frazier, but that’s okay. Like the tiny island of Nantucket, where the Hackett brothers make a go of it with their single-plane airline, Wings sits outside of fads and fashions and moves at its own pace.

Next time, there won’t be any fooling around. We’ll jump into the ol’ Cessna 402 and fly right into Season 1, Episode 1: “Legacy.”