The Monkees Lost Episode

I'd ask you if you have ever heard of The Monkees before, but that'd make as much sense as a literal monkey grabbing onto a microphone and shrieking out "Daydream Believer" after announcing to the audience that the song title's "Sleepy Jean". Say what you will, but I know that you love them because everybody does. There's literally nothing not to make you smile when it comes to Micky, Michael, Peter, and Davy. Mixing the music of The Beatles with the comedy of the Marx Brothers (and I'm not talking Communism—as far as I can tell, though John Lennon could be a little confusing in that regard), The Monkees were beloved by anyone with a sense of humor and melody. Girls thought they were cute, dudes wish they could get those girls by emulating the Monkees' charming looks, personality, and vocal and instrumental parts, and even good ol' Granny could hop onto the table and dance along to "I'm a Believer" or "Last Train to Clarksville"—though the latter of those two songs actually has a rather grim backstory.
Even so... I have a story to tell you that's rather grim in its own right. I'm not going to tell you that I acquired the tape at a yard sale or through an eBay order. In fact, I got it for my birthday—by accident. It was meant to be gifted to my little cousin but he threw a fit and cried and refused to open any of his presents because of something about his birthday cake not being chocolatey enough. Despite the fact that we share the same birthday, we don't have much in common as I'm a very chilled out guy in comparison to that little shooting pain of the backside. So, his mom and dad punished him by allowing me to open one of his presents and take it home with me. I didn't wanna do it because he was only five and I thought this would be a rather harsh life lesson, but my own mom and dad prodded me to go along with the discipline so I reluctantly unwrapped (not torn apart or anything feverish like that—I really didn't want a part in what I considered to be a cruel misdeed) the 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon holiday paper and, well, as you may have guessed... there it was. A Monkees VHS case.
Although I always loved The Monkees, this was actually a rather sinister and unpleasant surprise. I remember shrieking and falling to the floor, and passing out for what I was told was a few minutes. I could have sworn... no, I still do... that the front of the tape's packaging featured a zoom-in of Michael Nesmith's face, crimson red Winter cap tightly adorned... and his eye sockets were literally egg whites. Well, perhaps not literally, but they were like egg whites. Not actual eggs. So, yes, call it karma, because justice was served. I was the one disciplined, but something wasn't right somehow because by the time I came to it was just an innocuous image of the four boys gathered around a piano and singing. Could one or more of the adults at the party played a cruel and rather unnecessary prank on me? My parents did have a dark sense of humor sometimes—they convinced my little sister that she was adopted as punishment for smoking her first pack of cigarillos—but what did I do to deserve this? "C'mon, we'll watch it when we get home. It's nothing to be ashamed of.", grandpa chimed in. "If I was your age, I'd swoon over The Monkees just like you did, too." Oh, grandpa. Grandpa, grandpa, grandpa...
When I got home, I felt like going to bed, but my parents kept me up even though it was a school night. "You really should enjoy your birthday, son. These don't come around very often, and once you get old enough you hope that they don't come around ever again." "Oh Peter...", mom rolled her eyes. "If you tell him that you'll make him think we wish we were dead." "Well, sometimes I wonder...", dad sarcastically mumbled off. I knew they were planning on divorcing, but they didn't know that I knew. Dad brought out the VCR and set up the coax cables and all that and popped in the tape. "Birthday boy's honor", he said to me with a... well, disturbingly mocking smile. My family wasn't usually this bad. I didn't get it.
What I did get is my endless adoration for all things Monkees, as the TV song started blaring out of the speakers. Except it wasn't the usual Monkees theme song. At all. It was... what kind of lyrics were these? "Hey, hey! We're the Monkees!". Then a zoom-in on Micky Dolenz's usually boyishly happy go-lucky face... but his eyebrows were arched in a menacing expression, now. "And now it's time to suffer and hurt!", they all blurted out. Yeah, I know, ha ha, but seriously, it happened. Or so I thought. I plugged my fingers in my ears and started crying. "What is it, son?", dad asked indicating surprise, but it sounded much more like he was feigning it. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Heck, I'll rewind it...". I screamed at the top of my lungs for him not to while the tears streamed down my face, but he ignored me while muttering about how I had to learn how to be a man at some point or another or I'd be attending Kindergarten at age 23.
Well, wouldn't you know it.
The usual theme song played. It was joined by clips of fun times they had in other episodes, or some of their usual slapstick antics. Answering corded telephones, running around in the park, and everybody sure loves puppy dogs. I tried to smile, but I was still petrified. There wasn't anything wrong with the tape, it seemed. There was something wrong with me.
A title card came on screen. I'm having a memory lapse—I actually don't remember if title cards were normal in Monkees episodes or not, but I think they were. The title of the episode nearly made me lose bowel control as I yelled out a high-pitched "What?" and cried out for mom. The title card read... well... it read this: "Davy Joins a Cult".
"A little piece of Monkees trivia, son", dad added with a cheeky half-grin while running his fingers through his blond, curly hair, "It was originally Michael who was going to join the cult." "What's a cult?", I inquired in a state of shock and disconcert. "That isn't important right now, son." And so went that vocabulary teaching opportunity...
The episode began with Peter fooling around with a bass guitar. Micky gave him a wry smile as his right cheek dimpled in what I assumed was disappointment. "You, you, you!", he muttered, like one of those classic slightly overweight comedians who placed emphasis on tone of voice and body language. "You're gonna be late to the show. We promised Davy we were going to be there." There was a pause. "And we also promised that we wouldn't be short on time." A classic, 1960s laugh track played. The joke was that Davy was short, so it was a little bit of a pun. If you've ever heard the intro to "Daydream Believer", there's an impromptu remark Davy made about being short while having an exchange with the recording engineer about which take they were on (7A, if you're fond of your Monkees trivia). Anyway, this may not have been the most well-written joke in the history of the program (in fact, it nowhere near was), but I felt a little better that things had gotten more expectedly light-hearted. "Can you at least give what I'm working on a shot? I really think this song will make us rich!", Peter exclaimed. Yeah, that was the setup of The Monkees television program: unlike in real life, they were struggling to make ends meet as a band and kept on slugging it out in hopes of finally reaching the bigtime. Micky sighed. "That's what you said about 'Helter Skelter'." I didn't know it at the time, but that was an impossible joke. "Helter Skelter" was a hard rock song released by The Beatles on their selftitled White album in November of 1968. By then, The Monkees television show had already ceased syndication of new episodes. Just thinking about this line now... I still don't get it. Peter put away his bass and bent over behind him to pull out an acoustic guitar. "It's a really pretty song." "Don't get any bright ideas.", Micky offered with his sleeve rolled up. Again, this went over my head back when I was a kid, but it was a joke about being gay. Again, I couldn't tell you what that was doing in a Monkees episode. Peter started playing chords—by my count, there were four, in a typical pop progression—and he started to sing.
"Girl, oh girl, I'll change my ways/
How, I know, you've gone astray/
I wait you here, I starve away/
Five hundred and seventy-six days"
Micky shook his head. "That last line doesn't fit in with the rest." He proceeded to enact a Three Stooges comedy bit and pretended to poke Peter in the eyes before pulling back his fingers. Why was Mick in such an overly violent mood? There was a loud rumbling sound, as an audience laugh track followed. Peter... stared directly into the camera. "We haven't eaten in several weeks." Micky turned around, with the same firm expression, as if some sort of demon had possessed him. This sent a shiver down my spine. "Unless you count garbage." That... that wasn't Micky Dolenz's usual voice. He sounded depressed, but kind of... matter of fact.
I asked my dad to shut off the tape, but he said something about it being my 'rite'. I told him I thought it was wrong, but he spelled out r-i-t-e. I didn't know what that word meant at the time and, as you may have guessed, dad didn't bother to explain it. The camera flashed and the color scheme jarred me as it changed to black, white, and grayscale. It was outside of The Monkees' Hollywood beach house. Eventually, the camera panned in to an opened trash can and... a crimson, woolen winter cap? That meant that I couldn't have imagined the cover earlier! But what was Michael Nesmith doing rummaging through the garbage? Wait. This had to have meant... The Monkees were literally subsiding off of trash. But how did they afford to pay the rent? My questioning was abruptly cut off as I watched Michael throw half-eaten shoelaces, gnawed-off fish bones, clumps of discarded cat fur, and torn up garments out of the trash. I felt like vomiting, but dad said that's normal and the best way to handle those urges is to pretend they're not even there.
The next scene began. Micky and Peter were driving down the street in an Edsel. "Michael sure would've liked this show.", Peter began. "Quiet, you! I need to keep my eyes on the road." "And not on the pretty girls walking down the California sunset boulevard, I suppose." Audience laugh track. Well, they were easy today. "There's a reason I told you not to get any bright ideas." Okay, Micky Dolenz had just suggested to Peter again that he's gay. Suddenly, the car came to a screech and Micky gave Peter a shocked and confused look. "Peter." Peter was similarly mortified. "Ye... Yeah, Mick?", he managed to utter. "You didn't bring a map, did you?" Peter shook his head no. "Well, fucking shit!" Yes, that's right: Micky Dolenz cursed his ass off in the middle of a Monkees episode. On top of that, he committed a far worse act that... I have to tell you... it was truly an act of tragedy, and one that I could never hope to forget, as the airbag popped out of the driving wheel and... well, I don't really know how to say it, so I guess I'm just going to have to. It was so large, and came out with so much force, that it must have broken his bones and smothered Mickey Dolenz alive.
Mickey Dolenz was dead.
Peter... laughed. "Should have told him I have GPS." The audience laughed. My dad laughed. I didn't know what GPS meant at the time. GPS, "Helter Skelter", before the time of one and the other... what did this all mean? "Oh, and I also should have told him...". Peter Tork pointed out the window. "We're here!". He broke the fourth wall again. At this point, that meant nothing to me.
Now, I'm aware that they never said what kind of show it was. Well, it wasn't a musical show (well... sort of), or a comedy act. It was silent while Peter was outside of the car, as he walked past a DeLorean with its vertically risen doors wide open. The place... well, it looked just like a haunted house. It was rundown, too. Boarded up windows, graffitied, too... the number '2023' was spray-painted on the door, as Peter Tork knocked. There was no audience, no sounds of rapping by the knocker... and everything was back in grayscale. Finally, a voice that sounded like Lurch from the Addams Family moaned out, "Come in".
If I could remember it all I'll tell you, but I can't. All I remember is... approximately ten people dancing like one of those freaky Pentecostal services while several of them, including Peter Tork, vomited up what looked like canned cat food onto the floor and Jerry Lee Lewis, who was cameoing for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, banged out a sinister number on a pipe organ that looked like it was straight out of Count Dracula's castle. The last thing I needed to see was... well. It was Davy. He was wearing sunglasses and a vintage detective hat like something out of film noir, with a detective's jacket over his shoulder and a lollipop stick crammed into his mouth. He was sitting next to Jerry Lee Lewis, but in the opposite direction of the keys. It was at that moment that I made out the haunting pipe organ melody of "Helter Skelter", and the words carved into the side of the instrument. "Goat Pig Slaughter". I stared on in disbelief as Michael Nesmith, covered in dirt and other filthy substances that I couldn't quite identify, barged through the door and tossed off his crimson red Winter cap and started dancing to the music as if he was taken over by the dark master of the underworld himself. His arms and legs flexed like a Stretch Armstrong as my mouth gaped and the animals... yes, as you may have guessed, goats and pigs... ran into the house, and into what appeared to be a kitchen, and blood curdling, butcher shop reminiscent screams blared out of my parents' TV speakers. I wept into the couch cushions while my dad laughed uproariously and, by the time I turned back... I recognized that the VHS slipcase cover was ever so real after all. Michael's egg white eyes were zoomed in as I passed out for the second time that day.
When I 'came to', I was surrounded by emergency medical technicians and my father, who insisted up and down that the episode we had watched was Season 2 Episode 5, 'Art for Monkees' Sake', in which Liberace appeared and smashed his own piano with a sledgehammer. He also denied that we had gone to my cousin's birthday party that day, claiming that the VHS tape was from his own personal media collection. I did have a strange-tasting slice of chocolate cake earlier that day, though. And I recalled my mom talking about a visit to a mystic, who claimed that time collapses into one moment when we die.
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