April is the pre-sweeps month, weeding,
Whacking weekly wheat from chaff, nixing
The lame fare that ain't stirring
The soul or the brain. . .
Winners often wan, colorless,
Mirthless forgettable shows, feeding
Pap and pabulum through the tube.
Worst: two-syllable afternoon stars--barely!--they
Sends us to the drain; and unstop us, a colon aid
An Emmyless enema; it's not made to smarten
Us up as we watch by the hour.
"Fernsehen," keine Griechisch mit Latein gemischt, echt Deutsch.
["Distance-seeing," not Greek mixed with Latin, genuine German.*]

Back when we were children, we would watch an arch Stooge
Conking the cueballed Curly on the head.
Another's frightened; he's called Larry,
Of build he's slight; he's slightly bent,
But he is spouting drollery.

This before always-connected, discontented winter,
Back when Uncle Miltie had his show,
Brought to us each week by the Sun Oil+ man.
Miltie, it was told, was burly-bonely.
Yet in the kinescopic image he wore sheets,
A drag-draped Carmen Miranda, and hidden were his briefs.
Looking like Bizet's señorita, comely
Before the camera, in new frock
(At least he'd not mock the doc who penned "Prufrock"++),
Invisible visage wafting through ether,
Decoded on cathoded tube, coming through.
Folks flocked in the evening for a ritual new.
Then his show was here, and he brandished a bust.

Er trug den Chintz,
Mit schoenem Schuh,
Isst eine Blintz
Und keine Kuh.
[He's draped in chintz
With lovely shoes.
No meat with blintz. . .
A kosher Jew]

He had hyacinths on his verdant chapeau,
Yes, the guy clinched it as a girl.
"Mister Television" might play a jail warden.
In other skits he'd ape a liquored sot
Or gape, a lascivious geezer.
They were winging it; they had nothing
As precedents. . .radio, talkies, silents. . .
Ihr Verstand, nichts mehr
[Their wits, nothing more]
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante
Was one of his characters,
Played as a grande dame dowager from Europe.
At times--not stick to cue cards. Back then he
Couldn't fake it or phone it in--fail 'r
Keep it going, for millions looked
At the teledonna, lady in frock, awaiting comedic situations
(All of this preceded "Jeopardy" and the "Wheel.")
And the screen's omnipresent eye was a hard
Taskmaster; he carried the whole show on his back.
Sometimes. If a bit didn't work; he'd have to find
A way out--maybe throw water
In a guest's face, or in falsetto sing.

Thank you, NBC, for your trio of tones
(A second inversion, major triad),
And you are still at it today.
"Second City"
Has fed the show that Uncle Miltie spawned
Nearly sixty year ago. Yes, so many
Years have passed and, again, so many
Of them, more than half--we've been regaled
By "Saturday Night Live"; it's quite a feat
To pull off a thirty-plus-year streak.
Despite considerable powers,
Uncle Miltie made it shy of nine.
But in that "short" time he begat many a set "son,"
Such as Sid, Jackie and Red, and those two smiley
"Laugh In" guys. . .seeds in his comedic garden
Sprouted a surfeit of shows in ensuing years.
From Uncle Miltie, there's a single thread,
From then to funny women and men.
(Quite frankly this is all beyond my ken,
Moi, critique "hip," voyeur, semblant de savoir-faire.)
[I'm a "hip" critic, watching, pretending to know what I'm talking about]


*The word "television" (meaning "distance seeing") is a hybrid composed of Greek and Latin roots. German generally employs German only for neologisms, so the German for television is "Fernsehen," "distance-seeing."
+Texaco, actually, but Sun Oil is closer to the original line.
++"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by Eliot, who completed his dissertation but did not in fact get a Ph.D.