(I first wrote this for Matchflick (now defunct) in 2009. I’m posting it here today in honor of Tom Smothers’s passing.)
I don’t know what’s going in your stockings this year, but if I had my way (why do I never get my way?), it would be a copy of David Bianculli’s DANGEROUSLY FUNNY: THE UNCENSORED STORY OF THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR. I would probably throw in some DVDs of the show just to make sure you were able to appreciate the master comedy show Bianculli is talking about.
None of my college students knows who the Smothers Brothers are, which is a shame, since all of the political satire the students enjoy (on THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART, THE COLBERT REPORT, and SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE) owes its existence to the brothers and the show they created.
Of course, they’ve heard of THE SIMPSONS, which featured the Smothers Brothers last Sunday. They’ve also heard of Steve Martin, who got his comedy chops as a writer for the show, but they don’t know the other great writers or the impact the show had.
A few years ago, I did a unit on censorship with some classes and I showed the students a great documentary on THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR called SMOTHERED. It illustrated the spirit of the show with fantastic clips and interviews and then took the viewer into what the show is most remembered for—being taken off the air.
THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR made a lot of people uncomfortable because of its progressive politics. It was against racism, against politics and religion as usual, and against the Vietnam war.
My students were unimpressed—the satire seemed tame, but we must remember that comedy shows had not tackled politics or race or war or religion on T.V. before. All of a sudden, a T.V. show had the attention of the White House (and not in a good way). Network executives came under fire for allowing the show on the air.
It’s hard to put ourselves back in time to this moment. Try to imagine watching the news about Kent State—the National Guard opens fire on unarmed student protestors (and quite a few students who were merely walking to their next classes). Now try to imagine your neighbors being happy that those students are dead; many people said the students deserved to die because they were protesting the war. To protest the war was un-American and thus exercising your freedom of speech made you a target.
The SMOTHERS BROTHERS came under similar scrutiny. In fact, I asked my grandmother about them a couple of years ago and she was still mad—she saw their Vietnam protests as a direct insult to her husband who was serving in the war. (Strangely, it was my grandfather who first introduced me to THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS.)
The network wanted to get rid of them, but there was a contract. Thus, the network ended the contract at the first chance, when they claimed that a tape was delivered to an affiliate a few hours late. That same year, THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS won the Emmy for best writing. The show also sued the network for breach of contract and won.
But by then it was too late. Decades later, the network wanted another SMOTHERS BROTHERS special. They said they wanted edgy. A lot had changed. TV had changed and THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS was the germ of that change.
Now, when you watch the DVDs, you’ll note that a lot of the numbers are silly; it’s a variety show after all. And like all shows, it’s uneven. But just as MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS changed and defined British comedy, THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS made American television satire what it is today.
We luckily have a great adjective to describe that which the British wrought: Pythonesque. We don’t have a similar word for the comedy THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS gave us, except, as Bianculli reminds us, “dangerous.”
