"Inspector Manera": A Dazzling, Dreamy Guy Solves Murders with the Help of 10,000 Women

 Last night's Movie Night movie, Ant Man, was too heterosexist and cliched to even review: Scientist mournng dead wife, Scientist's Daughter falling in love with Superhero, whose Comic Sidekick keeps talking about girls.  In a Gay-Free San Francisco. 

 So it's off to Amazon Prime, and Inspector Manera, an Italian tv series: "The dazzling Guido Caprino stars as Inspector Manera, a dreamy man and his supervisor's worst nightmare."

I've never in my life read a blurb describing a male protagonist as attractive.  It's always "That's my boss, Jonathan Hart.  He's quite a guy.  That's his wife.  She's gorgeous!"

The male protagonist is described as "dreamy" and "dazzling."  I don't dare imagine that Inspector Manera himself will be gay, but certainly there will be gay representation.  And dazzling Italian countryside.  I'm in.  

.Wait -- the opening shows Manera kissing two women and gazing into the eyes of four, not to mention a slow closeup of a lady's legs.  Before I commit to a full hour, I'd better go through it on fast forward.

The plot: Manera starts his job as inspector at a small-town police station, spars with the new lady detective (with whom he has a history), and starts work on his first case: a wealthy professor (there are wealthy professors?) is shot in what is apparently a suicide.  But Manera thinks that it was murder.   As Boris Badenov would say, Of course is murder! Otherwise be lousy story.

Suspect #1: A lady from town who found the body. 

Suspect #2: The professor's gardener (professors have gardeners?)  Could she have been secretly in love with him?

Suspect #3: His ex-wife, who broke into the mansion later and took something from his safe.  Something incriminating?

Suspect #4: His doctor. who never actually graduated from medical school.  Could the professor have threatened to reveal his secret?

Beefcake: Manera takes his shirt off twice.  There are a few other cute guys wandering around, but in the background.  The main cast is all ladies.

Other Sights: Not nearly enough Italian countryside, and no street scenes in the city.

Women gazing at Manera as if he's a popsicle: 6.

Kissing scenes: Only the fade-out kiss.

Men finding Manera annoying: 4

Male friends: None.

Gay Characters: Two guys hug.  One says: "We can't live together anymore."  The other: "I want to live with you."  Whoops, sorry, it's the murderer being arrested and telling his son, who apparently is mentally challenged, that they can't live together anymore. Not to worry, Manera helpfully drops the son off at the nearest convent, for the sisters to take care of.

Will I Keep Watching: Heck, no: 

The Muppet Show: a refuge for the head cases

When I was an undergraduate at Augustana College, I spent most of my free time in a little bookstore off the Student Union lobby. It stocked some bestsellers and miscellaneous nonfiction, including The Little Prince and Dag Hammarskjold's Markings,  but mostly science fiction and fantasy, with some underground comics under the counter.

It provided a bright belonging place for "head cases," boy who were majoring in English or philosophy or music, who wanted something greater and nobler from life than carrying briefcases into skyscrapers.  We called ourselves the Bookstore Gang.

During any hour of the afternoon and early evening, half a dozen members of the Bookstore Gang could be found standing by the counter, or sitting on it, or browsing through the shelves, or reading in the armchairs or green couch that blazed with western sunlight.  We discussed classes, comic books, movies, ghosts, and politics, but for some reason never girls.  When the bookstore closed, we adjourned to the Rathskeller or to the TV Lounge, to argue and advise and review, discussing The Wizard of Id or Saturday Night Live, yelling "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" while stuck-up Business Majors stared.

Everything we watched or listened to or read was hip, anarchic, iconoclastic, but my favorite was The Muppet Show (1976-81), with Kermit the Frog from Sesame Street hosting a comedy-variety show, juxtaposing parodies of medical dramas or Star Trek ("Pigs....in space")  with musical numbers, while the elderly gay couple Statler and Waldorf heckled everything (except for the famous guest stars, of course).

And what a cast of guest stars!  Everybody who was anybody stopped by:
Joan Baez
Milton Berle
Bert and Ernie
Joel Grey
Arlo Guthrie
Vincent Price
Tony Randall
Sylvester Stallone

Other hip, anarchic, iconoclastic tv programs and movies -- Monte Python, Mary Hartman, Saturday Night Live, WKRP in Cincinnati, Blazing Saddles, The Cheap Detective, Silent Movie -- were loaded down with fag jokes and hetero-horniness, but The Muppet Show had neither.

Only Miss Piggy regularly displayed heterosexual interest -- at Kermit and various male guest stars -- and she was always rejected. And instead of constantly ridiculing gender transgressions, same-sex contact, and "fags," like most venues in the 1970s, The Muppet Show offered a pleasant nonchalance about diversity in size, shape, affect, and affection (who knew what Gonzo the Great was into?).

Muppet creator Jim Henson was a gay ally, as is his daughter Lisa, now CEO of Jim Henson Enterprises. In 2012, the company severed ties with Chick-Fil-A due to its homophobic bias, and donated existing proceeds to GLAAD.

I always knew that the Muppets were gay-friendly.

Bill Bixby: My Favorite Martian

Bill Bixby played swinging 1960s bachelors with glamorous jobs, cool pads, boss threads, and a never-ending supply of babes -- until one day something happened that changed everything, made his heteronormative hedonism seem trite and crude.









In My Favorite Martian (1963-66), his Tim O'Hara rescued a Martian scientist from a crashed spaceship, and had to keep him hidden from the world.  But what started out as a standard "keep your unique talent hidden" sitcom like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched quickly developed into something more.  Tim and his so-called "Uncle Martin" share a home and a life and generally ignore the attentions of female suitors.  And though they rarely if ever disrobe on camera, they surround themselves with cute and muscular men:






In The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-72), his Tom Corbett is widowed, left with a young son (Brandon Cruz), like the Dads on a dozen other 1960s sitcoms.  But what started out as a standard "fix up Dad with a girl" plot quickly developed into something more.  Tom isn't really interested in marrying again.  Instead, he bonds with a coworker, magazine photographer Norman (James Komack).










 In an iconic photo, the three share the same  banana split, quite an unconventional family for the 1970s:

Bill went on to buddy-bond with Lou Ferrigno off-camera, while they were both starring in The Incredible Hulk.

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium

 If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) was advertised as a hilarious comedy about a group of Ugly Americans on a whirlwind tour of Europe, but I found it heartbreaking.  In fact, I was hesitant about revisiting it after forty years, for fear that it would bring back the intense feelings of longing and loss that had me almost in  tears as a kid.

When you find something heartbreaking that the rest of the world thinks is hilarious, there must be a subtext somewhere.

There was beefcake.  Lots of it.  Ian McShane, the Swinging Sixties Bachelor who herds the tourists around Europe, displays his body frequently as he falls for and loses prim librarian Suzanne Pleshette.

Luke Halpin, formerly a teenage hunk on Flipper (1964-67), wanders around Europe as a hippie in painted-on jeans as he falls for and loses apathetic teen Hilary Thompson.

Even the hunky Sandy Baron, fresh from his odd-couple sitcom Hey, Landlord (1966-67), displays a toned hairy chest as he rips his shirt off and dives into a Venetian canal to avoid a marriage-crazy relative.  (Incidentally, Sandy Baron would become famous thirty years later on Seinfeld, as the doddering oldster Jack Klompus).

But beefcake doesn't make for poignancy.

Sandy Baron's character doesn't seem to be interested in girls, but otherwise I find no significant gay content.  No male bonding, no same-sex rescues.

So why was it heartbreaking?

Maybe it was the metaphor of escape. Dozens of Boomer movies and tv programs were about people trapped in a dangerous alien world -- Gilligan's Island, My Favorite Martian, Danger Island,  H.R. Pufnstuf, Lost in Space.  They are desperate to get home, to return to their conventional lives, to their jobs and houses and husbands and wives and stark heterosexist conformity.  But If It's Tuesday has it backwards -- the alien world is a Paradise, an escape from their conventional lives to a world of light and color and infinite possibility.

At the end of the movie they all reject the romantic partners they've fallen in love with and go home -- you can't stay in Oz forever -- as the theme song says, "Can't wait to tell the folks back home."  But for a nine-year old in a dull factory town, it was heartbreaking to know -- or to suspect -- that Oz existed, that there was a good place out there somewhere.