“Natalie…take a cab!”

[TMC]

http://thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blo...-take-cab.html

Back in May of this year, I wrote a review of the DVD release CPO Sharkey: The Complete Season 1—and in my closing remarks, I casually noted that I’d really be excited about the release of the sitcom’s second and final season “if Time Life gets that far.” Well, guess what? Time Life did get that far; they brought forth CPO Sharkey: Season 2 on September 22…and thanks to my good friend Michael Krause at Foundry Communications, I was given an opportunity to check this set out.

Both seasons of CPO Sharkey, while also sold separately, will be part of a later release this October 20: Mr. Warmth! Don Rickles: The Ultimate TV Collection, an eight-disc set that also features a compilation (which will be released this October 13) entitled The Don Rickles TV Specials: Volume 1. This release consists of an ABC-TV special, “The Many Sides of Don Rickles” (which originally aired September 17, 1970) and CBS’ “Don Rickles: Alive and Kicking” (from December 12, 1972). Michael generously provided me with a screener for this release as well.

As my chum and colleague Andrew “Grover” Leal remarked on Facebook when I announced the blog would be coming back after a long hiatus: “Enough Don Rickles to keep a hockey team in pucks for years!” Truth be told, I was thoroughly entertained by CPO Sharkey: Season 2, for I have long argued that it was the perfect situation comedy vehicle for the comic known as “The Merchant of Venom” (his 1971 effort, The Don Rickles Show, lasted a scant seven episodes…and his 1993 collaboration with Richard Lewis, Daddy Dearest, was cancelled after a 13-week tryout). Creator Aaron Ruben used Rickles’ Navy background (Don was a Seaman First Class on the USS Cyrene during World War II) to fashion a series on which the famed insult comic played Chief Petty Officer Otto Sharkey—a twenty-four year Naval veteran driven to distraction by his company of recruits. The men under Sharkey were various ethnic stereotypes: jive-talking Daniels (Jeff Hollis), Jewish intellectual Skolnik (David Landsberg), Latino Rodriguez (Richard Beauchamp), and Polish Kowalski (Tom Ruben). Mignone, an Italian character played by actor Barry Pearl, didn’t get his option renewed for Season 2 and he was replaced by the Greek Apodaca (Philip Simms)—who had appeared briefly in a Season 1 episode, “Sharkey Finds Peace and Quiet.”

The other big casting change in the second season was replacing Sharkey’s commanding officer Captain Quinlan (played by Elizabeth Allen) with Captain “Buck” Buckner, a by-the-book martinet played by veteran character actor Richard X. Slattery. I suspect the change was made to make Sharkey more sympathetic: he never really confronted the affable Quinlan (perhaps the producers were concerned about him appearing too chauvinistic) in his trademark antagonistic fashion, so giving him a more formidable adversary in Buckner made more sense from a comedic standpoint. (Oddly enough, Slattery was mostly bombast and wasn’t able to add any comic nuance to the part; perhaps he had become tired of being typecast in the same roles he had played on series like The Gallant Men and Mister Roberts.) And yet, during Sharkey’s second season, character fave Beverly Sanders (whom I always remember as Dom DeLuise’s married sister Olive on Lotsa Luck!) made for an engaging Rickles nemesis as CPO Gypsy Koch in three episodes. (Jonathan Daly’s Lieutenant Whipple was also back for Season Dos, but his skirmishes with Sharkey were de-emphasized—he functioned more as a sniveling “yes man” for Slattery’s Buckner.)

If you’re old enough (*cough*) to remember when CPO Sharkey originally aired I think you’ll find the show a delightful nostalgia wallow. Not every episode is a gem, of course, but there are some fitfully amusing entries. “Operation Frisco” features Sharkey having to share cramped submarine space with his aide-de-camp Seaman Lester Pruitt (Peter Isacksen) and the men in a nice little homage to the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera. “Barracks Baby” finds a pregnant woman from Mexico hiding out in Company 144 and about to deliver at the same time a no-nonsense Congresswoman (played by the legendary Pat “Bunny Halper” Carroll) is on the base on an inspection tour. “Sharkey’s Back Problem” spotlights an uproarious performance from the show’s star when he winds up looped on painkillers for a bad back.