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.”