Baggy Pants & the Nitwits

A very odd show, I didn't understand at all what I was seeing as a kid - not in a "wow, whatever's going to happen next?" kind of way, more of a "I don't understand what this is supposed to be."

With hindsight I see now that someone had the idea of converting three icons of comedy into a Saturday morning kids' cartoon - Chaplin was presented as a comedy cat, two characters from the old Rowan and Martin show as whatever they were, and Groucho Marx as a wise-cracking cat. And these characters presented Saturday-morning grade comic antics about on the same level as the Pink Panther cartoon, ie not really all that funny. From my perspective the trouble was that, while I was familiar with Chaplin and could see that that's what the baggy-pants cat was presenting, I had no knowledge of Groucho beyond the iconography and, being British, had never heard of the Laugh-in. So these characters were just baffling. I don't know how the producers could have thought it would be meaningful to the target audience - I guess even American kids of the right age-group would be too young for the referneces. Not funny enough to justify their eccentricities, I watched this show simply because it's what was on.

For at least half this show, "Baggy Pants and the Nitwits" was as funny as anything on TV. But then there's that other half....

Y'see, it's like this: in the first half, the focus is on the character Baggy Pants, who looks for all the world like Charlie Chaplin reincarnated as a cat. In his part, he basically goes through kiddie versions of his original's antics. For some reason, seeing a cat-like Charlie was pretty redundant (at that time, I was already familiar with Chaplin's work) and just simply not as funny in this watered-down version. In fact, it was just biding time until the second half....

The Nitwits took over the last half, where retired superhero Tyrone (voiced by Johnson) and his long-suffering wife Gladys (voiced by Buzzi) go into action to fight unspeakable foes (like a woman in a chicken suit, a moving blob of water, etc.) and all the while act and look like their dopplegangers back on the original "Laugh-In" series.

The dialogue, sounding mostly improvised by Johnson, was a riot and, to be sure, he got the best lines that way. SAMPLE - complimenting his walking cane Elmo (don't ask): "You are a good cane - remind me to take you jogging with me tomorrow!"

Well, at least it was a half-good show to watch on Saturday mornings. Back in 1977. If they ever release it on video, I hope they just go with the GOOD half.

Five stars for "Baggy Pants and the Nitwits". Yay, Tyrone; sorry, Charlie.