Sur le pont la marine

I started watching this in reruns in the mid-sixties. I'd watch it while having lunch on a stool in my kitchen in Oakland California.

It just blew me away. There I was - spraying avocado & sprouts sandwiches & salads all over the kitchen in uncontrollable hysteria - 3 or 4 gut-wrenching laughs for every chew-&-swallow.

Never since have I ever seen a show - TV series or feature film - with as great a complement of genuinely riotously talented comedians as McHale's Navy: Tim Conway, Joe Flynn, Carl Ballantine (comic magician on Ed Sullivan), Bob Hastings, Billy Sands. Even Gavin McLeod was on board & Ernest Borgnine gave it authority & glue! It was brilliant; as far as I'm concerned on a par with the Marx brothers & Abbott & Costello. Ageless & priceless!!!

So where's the DVD?

Who can resist the comic talent of Tim Conway? Further, who can resist both Conway and Flynn on the same show to "play off" one another? The result is hysterical. I recently bought this first season, after having seen McHale's Navy (the 1960s movie) and McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force. I had enjoyed them both, but was unaware that the original TV show is now available for purchase.

I am always sad that nowadays, comedians are vulgar and crude and do not need to have ANY talent in order to be popular. True comedy is one of the toughest things for an actor to portray well. Any fool can spew forth obscenities for a cheap laugh, but true comedy requires something more. Joe Flynn and Tim Conway both have that "something more" I am referring to. You will know what I am talking about if you watch any of these old episodes.

What a delightful television show with good writing and decent acting.

After years of playing primarily dramatic roles, Ernest Borgnine really shines as the lovable con man Commander Quentin McHale. I loved "F-Troop", but you can see where that show got its inspiration. The supporting cast was also great, especially Joe Flynn playing his usual hot tempered authority figure in Captain Binghamton and Tim Conway playing the role that made him famous, the nerdish Ensign Parker.

This show is so funny you often wonder if we had a navy like this, how did we win the war.

"McHale's Navy" manages to present THE PERFECT take on "War-Time Comedy", (eclipsed only by "M*A*S*H"). Some may point to "Hogan's Heroes" as being superior, but while I enjoyed that as a kid, nowadays I cannot get past "Hogan's Heroes"' simple-minded take on The Nazis and sugar-coated fantasy prison camp setting. The Nazis were NOT simple-minded, easily-fooled buffoons, and "Hogan's Heroes" is an insult to the ordeals endured by every Allied POW in WW2.

McHale's Navy" on the other hand,never insults the intelligence of The Viewer by taking too many broad liberties with history. The Japanese in Mchale's Navy are a serious enemy,(save for the harmless "Fuji" the escaped POW given shelter by McHale and Crew).

In "McHale's Navy", The REAL Enemy is..... THE BRASS!

That's where honest War-Time Comedy is meant to derive from,and where it is at it's best. When you spotlight the overly- officious asininity of The Higher Ranks, you get Genuine Comedy. It's a Truth that Ernie Pyle, Bill Mauldin, Floyd Gibbons and Richard Hooker understood; and that Truth is showcased no where better than in "McHale's Navy".

I know this was Ernest Borgnine's show, and though he played it too broadly sometimes, he was still pretty good in it. However, the main reason I watched the show was for Joe Flynn's Captain Binghamton and Tim Conway's Ensign Parker. Binghamton was always trying to nail McHale and his crew (he kept calling them "you and your pirates") and some of his schemes to get rid of them were hilarious, especially when, as usual, they blew up in his face. Conway's eager but almost totally incompetent Ensign Parker was a a joy to watch, due to Conway's comic genius. It was side-splitting to watch him squirm, stutter and completely fall apart whenever he was given any kind of responsibility at all; he'd try to do a good job, and it usually worked out in the end, but what happened in between was always good for a lot of laughs. I especially enjoyed watching him totally dissolve whenever Claudine Longet put the moves on him. Conway was one of TV's great clowns, as shown by his work on "The Carol Burnett Show," and he's at the top of his form; he had the amazing ability to move his body in three or four different directions at the same time--he would look like a marionette with the strings tangled--and that combined with his twitches, facial expressions and look of total incomprehension was a riot. Another actor I really enjoyed was Bob Hastings, who played Binghamton's loyal, long-suffering and abused underling, Lt. Carpenter. Carpenter was the ultimate company man, so eager to please his boss that he gladly entered into whatever lame-brained scheme Binghamton cooked up to discredit McHale ("Oh, good-o, sir, that's brilliant!"), which usually wound up with Binghamton's shifting the blame to him whenever it went wrong--which Carpenter, of course, always readily accepted ("I'm sorry, sir, of course it was all my fault"). Carl Ballantine's scheming Gruber, always on the lookout to make a (usually dishonest) buck, was a lot of fun, too.

I think the series lost a bit of steam when the location was moved from the South Pacific to Italy, and some of the supporting cast was somewhat weak (Gavin McLeod's Happy was especially annoying), but overall it was a very funny, enjoyable show, with some great byplay between Flynn and Conway.