Word: banana
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...comedy-variety show has evolved. It is the local newscast. Or at least the subspecies of newscast that has adopted what the trade calls the "happy-talk" format. On such programs the anchor man, the weatherman and the sportsman have been supplanted by a happy-go-lucky bunch of banana men. They are not the old authority figures, but just-folks team players. Cronkite is out; Gemütlichkeit is in. What counts is not how the banana men relate the news, but how they relate to each other...
...occasion, Director Carl Reiner offers an ingenious sight gag, and the energy of his cast is never allowed below the manic level, producing some legitimate, if frantic laughter. It was not for nothing that Reiner was the greatest second banana in TV history; it was for next to nothing. His film is but a single joke, and the punch line is the commonplace twelve-letter obscenity...
McHale's Navy and the short-lived sitcom bearing his own name, made it obvious that he is, at best, a second banana. Knotts, the Milquetoast deputy sheriff on the old Andy Griffith Show, tried to make a virtue of his inability to sing, dance or string a show together. Opening night, Guest Anthony Newley pushed Knotts around and took command-a running gag that provoked a feeling of sympathy. But can other guests and the same gag make a season...
...memorable occasion, which Premack records with almost parental pride, his pupil invented a sentence-completion game and invited her trainer to play. The trainer had set up some nonsensical physical-relation tests involving objects and colors-red is on (i.e., superimposed upon) green, green is on banana, apple is on orange-to test Sarah's proficiency in word order. Abruptly, Sarah took over. She began a sentence "Apple is on ... ," and then arranged a number of possible completions, only one of which she considered correct: "Apple is on banana." Then she led her trainer through the multiple choices until...
...other mementos that take the place of wallpaper, are several cartoons. In one, a patient about to go under the knife looks up at the masked surgeon and plaintively asks: "Wait a minute! How do I know you're not George Plimpton?" In another, set in some imaginary banana republic whose government is about to be overthrown, one mustachioed officer demands of his coconspirators: "Before we proceed with the coup, gentlemen . . . which one of you is George Plimpton?" A third (discreetly exiled to the office bathroom) is set in a whorehouse. "See that new girl looking out the window...