As I announced last week, the focus on this column is, temporarily, going to shift to the Shazam television series that ran for three seasons, from 1974-1976. It is unclear if these episodes will remain on DC Universe, move to HBO Max, or disappear forever when everything starts migrating, so this seemed like a prudent action for wanting to, eventually, cover these.
And let me tell you, less than a minute in, you realize what a weird fucking trip we are in for.
Let me attempt to summarize the series before going into some details about each episode. Billy Batson is a kid who drives around in a camper with an old man he, and everyone else, just calls “Mentor.” The RV has the Shazam logo on the front, and no one seems to question it. Billy talks to ‘the elders’ when they call him on a light up colander/bowling ball/children’s toy, but the elders are poorly animated cartoon characters that quote Shakespeare and Wordsworth to him. Billy and Mentor get really invested in strangers’ lives for no reason, and Captain Marvel shows up at the end to do something banal.
That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the weirdness, however. Both of the first two episodes have Billy mention that he is either on vacation or leave from ‘the station,’ which we longtime Shazam stans know is WHIZ, but why would random TV viewer who just switched over from Watergate coverage have any idea about that? Why does Billy live with this “Mentor” in a camper? Who is this dude who calls himself “Mentor?” I can understand why Billy calls him that, like you may call your karate instructor “sensei” when you’re in class, but at least two other people call him either Mentor or “Mr. Mentor,” which is a trick to get us to think this guy’s name is Stu Mentor or something, but I’m not buying it.
Structurally, the show, just three episodes in is almost comically predictable. Each episode opens with Billy and Mentor driving around, when the device, clearly ripped from a Showbiz Pizza, in the camper starts to blink after they hear some thunder. Then, the elders, which were clearly animated exactly one time, speak to Billy. They fill his head with a vague idea that somehow becomes shockingly prescient just minutes later, oftentimes paired with a famous quote for him to stew on. Then, Billy gets himself impossibly entangled into someone’s life, and refuses to let go until he definitively solves the issue.
Sadly, he fails every time, and needs to call upon Captain Marvel. It appears that this is consistent with pre-Crisis Cap in that he and Billy are separate entities, and it shows, because why Billy isn’t exactly the most interesting man in the world, Captain Marvel is wooden and stiff and barely says or does anything. He has no personality to speak of, and barely achieves things that seem like they shouldn’t be all that tough in the first place. Then, each episode ends with a PSA of Cap telling kids what the moral of the week was, in case they are too dense to understand the very basic morality play that they’ve been watching, in which this exact moral is stated at least once.
Each of the three episodes take place in a vaguely Californian setting, and each is more bizarre than the last. “The Joyriders,” the first episode, focuses on some kids who are ‘borrowing’ cars with the keys in them. The moral of this story is stand up for yourself, even if it gets you made fun of, and while this episode is hokey in parts, it is the least weird of the batch. Sure, Captain Marvel basically chooses to not tell a heavy machinery operator to put down a car that kids are in, instead opting to pull it down with his hands and that’s about it, but it gives you a decent sampling fo the type of show this is.
The second episode, “The Brothers,” features the RV almost running over a blind kid who wanders into the middle of the street. Mentor must drive without brakes, because the kid is a few hundred yards in front of them, and he chooses to nearly drive off the road instead of just using his foot on the pedal to the left. This leads to Billy trying to convince this kid’s brother that he needs to not be so overprotective, which is a good lesson, but one that is almost instantly undercut by the blind brother constantly running away.
Continued belowThis episode also sees Billy ‘reveal’ his secret to the blind boy. This, ostensibly, is that they need Captain Marvel to act fast, but he could just walk ten feet away and whisper “Shazam,” and then change, and Mentor can say there’s a passing storm. But instead, Billy lets a stranger in on a very weird part of his life for no good reason.
The final episode, with the heavy title of “Thou Shall Not Kill,” is one of the crazier plots I’ve ever seen for a TV show, and I recap Adventures of Superman for this site. Let’s see if you can follow: There’s a woman who dies, and in her will, she declares that her beloved horse must be destroyed. Wait, what?
So, there’s a dude at this ranch that hates the horse (who may or may not be the deceased’s nephew? He doesn’t seem too broke up about his aunt’s death, and just wants to see this horse die), and a young girl who loves the horse. Her dad is the sheriff, and he must destroy the horse because it’s the law to execute a will. I’m pretty sure I can’t put in my will that after I die you need to merc my dog, bruh.
Also, who writes a will like this? The only explanation that is given is that maybe she ‘loved the horse too much.’ That either means that this dead woman thought, “If I can’t have that horse, no one can!” or she was afraid that the horse would share stories about how she, ahem, literally loved the horse and was fearful of embarrassment. Otherwise, this makes no sense at all.
Of course, the only way to get this to stop is for Captain Marvel to fly to the state capitol and get a court order to save the animal’s life. No one ever says why this horse was so hated that multiple people wanted it dead, either.
The moral of this story, shared directly into the camera by Captain Marvel, is “change can only effectively come while working inside the law.” That’s some Blue Lives Matter shit if I’ve ever heard it.
The last thing I want to mention is the flying effects for the series. There’s one shot that looks more like Pumaman than Superman, and the other angle looks sort of cool, even if it only shows him flying from the waist up. And then you realize why, when the camera briefly reveals some sort of rest that Cap is leaning on in a jeep or similar vehicle to achieve this look. Poor editing made what already looked like a clever home movie trick seem even dumber.
I’m trying to balance getting through these reasonably quickly with not having to watch 10 episodes a week. Let’s see how many I can get through for next time!
