Maverick

I still remember as a lad when Maverick made its debut on the ABC network. It was on Sunday nights at 7:30 and with that early half an hour start, it knocked the stuffings out of Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen who had their shows begin at 8:00 in the Nielsen ratings.

Maverick was unlike any western that had been on television before. Previously you had heroes stand tall and tangle with villainy head on. Maverick was no coward, but he never went looking for trouble and he never would look for a face to face confrontation if a little back channel maneuvering would work as well.

The show started the precedent that Law and Order, Criminal Intent is using now to give star Vincent Donofrio some rest with having Chris Noth and another female partner solve crimes on alternate weekends. James Garner was the original Bret Maverick and later Jack Kelly was brought in as brother Bart. Later on we had cousin Beau and another brother Brent played by Roger Moore and Robert Colbert.

Those last two we never even see the episodes with them. James Garner wanted a feature film career and Maverick helped launch him in one. His best efforts have always been when he's played a variation on Maverick and that would include his later hit series, The Rockford Files.

Unfortunately Jack Kelly never got the same break as Garner. But Bart was also pretty good at thinking on his feet as well. Still he was good performer and the Bart episodes do hold their own. And the shows they did together, pure magic.

Although I grew up watching classic television I somehow completely missed Maverick until 2015. Thus while Maverick is an older series it was very new to me. I suppose that is the wonderful thing to realize that there are still great series out there to discover.

I started to watch Maverick specifically because of James Garner. I had recently re-watched the Great Escape (a favorite film of mine) and wanted to see more from Garner. Garner is absolutely wonderful here in his first starring role and it's no surprise that he had a long and very rich career.

However a real surprise for me was Jack Kelly. Before Maverick I had absolutely no idea who Jack Kelly was which is not surprising because while he did a lot of small roles and guest spots, Maverick was definitely the highlight of his career. I am also happy I went into Maverick blind and did not read the many grossly inaccurate reviews that Garner was all there was to Maverick. You will notice that most people who say Kelly did not measure up to Garner admit they "skip the Kelly episodes". Another trend I notice that those who do give Kelly the most credit say they have reevaluated Kelly as an adult and realize they underrated him.

Pretty much with the first 3 seasons whether you watch a Kelly or Garner episode you can't lose. Garner tended to have the best comedy and Western parody scripts while Kelly got the better dramatic and drawing room comedy scripts. It was the contrast between Kelly & Garner that made the series so great along with well written scripts that still stand up as classics today. However the very best episodes had Garner and Kelly together, their chemistry was pure magic and one of the shows biggest mistakes was not giving us more episodes with them together.

Seasons 4 and 5 aren't bad but they definitely don't measure up to the previous 3 seasons (the best of which is season 2). Not only because you have lost Garner at that point but Roy Huggins the producer and creator of the series left at the end of season 2. Most of the best writers also left with him.

For a short time Roger Moore joined the series as cousin Beau. Moore put up a good effort despite weaker scripts but the series would never be the same without Garner. Although if my previous paragraphs were not clear I feel if Kelly had been the one to leave the show he also would have left an irreplaceable hole. Garner of course started the series without Kelly but in those very early episodes the show was still finding itself and is also not the best Maverick has to offer.

However even at its worst, Maverick is still pretty entertaining if not as clever and witty as it once was. You only notice the decline in the later seasons when you have just finished watching the superior earlier seasons.

This is the role that made James Garner, and as much as I like his later work, for me he would never be this much fun to watch again (exception: Support Your Local Sheriff, but that was unquestionably written to capitalize on his Maverick role).

I remembered liking Maverick when I was a kid, but after 40 odd years I didn't remember a single episode or plot line. I can't tell you what a pleasure it was to find this series resurrected on Good Life (Now American Life) TV. Sadly, after a few years ALTV abandoned the excellent B&W series they had been showing, and began airing very inferior color series from later years. Yep, I'll take Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip over Time Tunnel and Lost in Space .... EVERY time.

However, when it aired on ALTV, discovering each episode's charm brought my wife and I months of entertainment, and expectation for the next week.

Among some classic episodes to look for are:

* "War of the Silver Kings", this is the first episode and unquestionably one of the best

* "Gun Shy", an absolutely hilarious take off on Gun Smoke

* "A Fellow's Brother", an entertaining story throughout that made me fall out of my chair laughing when presented with the twist that resolved the crises

* "Shady Day at Sunny Acres", in which Bret Maverick spends the majority of the episode in a rocking chair on the town's boardwalk, whittling and uttering the line, "I'm workin' on it"

* "Pappy", wherein you meet the originator of all of Bret's "My old Pappy used to say ..." lines. Garner of course plays dual roles in the episode and does a great job. (So the movie is only the 2nd time he got to play Bret's father!)

I just finished watching the last part of a February 1959 episode that had Clint Eastwood as a guest and it was great like most of the shows were. This show reminds me of how good television can be (but rarely is).On a personal level, it reminds me that this show was one of the few good things about the so-called good old days.

In the 50s (when I was young), there were mainly two types of shows: quiz show and westerns. Maverick brutally satirized two of the most popular, Gunsmoke and Bonanza, in different episodes. Watching either of these alone is enough to demonstrate just how good Maverick really was.

Catch it on TVland when you get the chance. It's worth it...

My old pappy says this is a signature series of the 50's that lives up to its name. It took the producers time to figure out that gold lay not in the direction other Westerns were taking, but in an untraveled direction. In 1958, a Western with a comedic format was still a foreign concept since it was hard to build up to a gunfight with belly laughs. Of course, the matinée cowboys (Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, et al.) included a side-kick for comic relief, but the lead cowboy was always the truest and the fastest on the block. Probably no movie genre stuck more closely to formula than the American Western. That is, until Maverick. Nonetheless, the signature tongue-in-cheek took time to evolve; like a strong friendship, it didn't suddenly spring forth with the first installment.

By my reckoning, the first 30 or so entries had parts that looked like any other Western of the day, ie. gunplay, fist-fights, etc, and it wasn't until episode # 37 "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" that we got 60 minutes of pure Maverick. Here it was a battle of wits from beginning to end with sly running gags, colorful characters, and nary a drop of blood in sight. It's at this point that the series discovered itself, and likely the audience discovered a very different kind of Western.

The biggest problem the series had was keeping lead actor James Garner from jumping ship into the better-paying world of movies. Likely, it was Garner's exceptional comedic skills that moved the series in a humorous direction in the first place. He had such an obvious flair that I think the format came to fit him rather than vice-versa. But TV had a reputation of "using up" actors before casting them aside. So, it's understandable that Garner would use his new leverage to negotiate into the more stable environment of film. But that created cast problems for the producers. The series was pretty much identified with Garner's Bret character. Jack Kelly was an able second banana, but lacked the skills to carry the show. Thus the lead casting bounced around some, depending on Garner's availability. As a result, we came to find that the Maverick family has a number of off-shoots, including Beau (a smooth Roger Moore) and Brent (a rather inept Robert Colbert).

Often overlooked is how well the series tapped into a neglected aspect of Americana. During the Cold War Americans were told the Soviets had a popular advantage, because their national game was chess, a highly cerebral contest of move and counter-move that requires great concentration and sometimes hours to complete. Aside from prodigy Bobby Fischer, the US produced few chess players of note. No, our national game is not the prestigious pursuit of chess, but a case can be made for America's love for good old plain-faced poker. Thousands of neighborhoods enjoy a low-stakes version, as well as the high-stakes casino variety. Surprisingly poker turns up rarely on the screen, perhaps because it's a game of chance associated with gambling, an activity condemned by many. Now chance does play a role in poker, otherwise known as "the luck of the draw". But knowing how to play your cards requires real skill, and just as importantly, being able to "read" your opponent.

Note in Maverick how many pearls of wisdom are drawn not only from dear old Pappy, but from how to play a good hand of poker. I think people enjoyed hearing pearls like "never draw to an inside straight, except...", especially when combined with the usual Maverick dose of wry good humor. So how surprising is it that millions of amateur players tuned in weekly to see their game legitimized on the screen and maybe pick up a few pointers at the same time.

It wasn't all aces, of course, especially in regard to production values. After all, the show was, like most of the day, modestly budgeted. Going into the wide open spaces usually meant crossing the tree line from the Warner Bros. sound stages to the backlot and moving around some of the many fake boulders. But that was okay since the show's appeal wasn't authenticity or scenery. What wasn't okay, in my book at least, was the sloppy matching of stock shots with the backlot footage. Thus, we'd get a shot of someone riding across backlot trees and foliage and the next progression shot of him riding across the barren red rock country of Arizona! Maybe that happens on Mars, but not on planet Earth. I could understand this lack of continuity from an independent production, but not from a big-time studio like Warner Bros.

The show never relied on big-name stars or celebrities to boost its appeal, unlike, say, the popular Wagon Train or Bonanza. That meant, for one, that the scripts had to be unusually good. The writers could not rely on stock situations to drive the plot once the format shifted from melodrama to sly tongue-in-cheek. But now, the screenplays had to come up with contests where the Maverick boys could outwit opponents and generate some laughs at the same time. Scriptwriters didn't always succeed, but when they did, the result was unlike anything else at the time. In fact, if memory serves, ABC even scheduled the show opposite CBS's perennial Sunday evening blockbuster, The Ed Sullivan Show. Pretty fast company for an hour that started off as just another Western.

All in all, however, I think the best measure is that over the years, "Maverick" managed to dig not only a small niche into popular consciousness, but also into the traditional fund of American folklore. Even people who've never seen the show think "sly poker player" when they hear the name. I guess the producers knew how to play the game, after all.

(See my review of "A Fellow's Brother", episode 11, season 3, for discussion of the series' slyly subversive content.)