D.C. Follies

It's pure silliness, slapstick, you name it, it's that very thing. It's just what you'd expect from Sid & Marty Krofft. They were great in the ways they chose to portray their characters and it was funny without dragging their names through the mud. They played on every possible political issue and made perfect satire of it. In it's own chosen dimension (and I do mean outside this sphere), this was an absolute MASTERPIECE!!!

If this was on today, it would probably be the most popular show on TV. The humor was as witty and sharp as anything by the South Park guys. Well known US politicians would appear as Kroft puppets, along with many famous Hollywood people (Cher was always on, speaking in a creaky old lady voice) also in Kroft puppet form. The show was only 30 minutes, I always wished it had been an hour long.

Ex presidents like Ford, Carter and Nixon along with then president Reagan and first lady Nancy were regulars. Fred Willard was the only living person on the show, appearing as a bartender and playing a kind of straight man to the comedy of Nixon's harebrained schemes and other hilarious skits with the puppets. Absolute genius. They should rerun this on Comedy Central!

I was sitting in a boring, warehouse-type building, working as a security guard for a well-known firm dealing with banks and valuables. We would wait for service calls, and respond to them. This was the "swing shift" and nothing ever happened. As I recall, it was Friday or Saturday night, and we usually played poker or hearts, when Dave brought a black-and-white TV set in. We would often watch Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Jake the Snake and the other retard wrestlers so popular to the missing chromosome set of that time period. I stumbled upon "D.C. Follies" while walking up and changing the channels. At this point, my memory becomes quite clear. Nixon, Ford, and Carter sat around a table. Nixon was always plotting a money-making scheme (e.g. "Bookmobile, and everyone gets a free chest x-ray), Carter was his usual sanctimonious self, and Ford would often just laugh and fall backwards in his chair, feet and legs exaggeratedly flying up to the sky. HILARIOUS! The first episode I remember was ol' Tricky Dick playing the keyboards at the very end, throwing in synthesized crap for effect. WE ROLLED AROUND ON THE FLOOR AND COULDN'T ANSWER THE DAMN PHONE FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER THE SHOW ENDED...HAND TO GOD! If I don't get copies of these episodes soon, life will no longer be worth it!

At the time of writing, this, and the far superior show it was ripped from (Spitting Image) are neck and neck in terms of viewer rankings. How? Spitting Image was a trendsetting classic, this was a cheap knock off by folks who should stayed on Saturday Morning. The Krofts made a ton of great shows for various Saturday Morning blocks, top of which was the way ahead of it's time "Land of the Lost." But DC Follies falls totally flat, proving that the Krofts needed to stay in their niche and not try political humor. Fred Willard can't even save it, or was he even trying? One wonders if he knew how off the mark it was and there picking up a quick payday, Cheap, unfunny, and not worth your time.

I do so wish that DC Follies had a much longer run on network television. It was certainly a unique show, I've never seen another like it on the little screen.

Fred Willard played a bartender at a Washington, DC establishment where not just the political elite, but everybody came to drink. Everyone who the Sid&Marty Krofft puppets could caricature. The writing was just excellent and the puppets were delightful. My best memory of the show were the then ex-presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter all gathering to compare notes on each other's time in the Oval Office.

As for Willard it might have been a bit disconcerting to be a really good comic himself, but here he just served as straight man to all the puppets. But it was the best thing he ever did. I wish he would bring it back for the Obama years.