Thursday, January 27, 2011

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

You know a television show has run seriously off the rails when your wife turns to you and says, in all sincerity, "This would have made more sense with a llama."

Flu-ridden and snowbound yesterday afternoon, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I watched a rerun of Lost in Space on the Family Net cable channel, specifically the infamous "Carrotman" episode, a.k.a. "The Great Vegetable Rebellion." For those of you old enough to remember Lost in Space, the Carrotman needs no introduction. For the rest of you, well, let's just say '60s camp never got any campier.

For those of you with an unquenchable thirst for useless trivia, the part of the Carrotman's sidekick, Willoughby, was originally to be played by a talking llama—yes, the kind with four legs, painted purple, no less. (It does not compute!) But the trained llama kept biting Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith) who finally refused to continue production. Which is a pity, because it really would have made more sense with a llama. But the llama was fired, a human was hired, and the series was cancelled two weeks later.

Oh, the pain, the pain.

You can watch "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" here at the Monkey, courtesy of Hulu.com.