The Uncut Bogus Buccaneers

Happy August! August is such a fun time, an interesting, transitional time, as summer moves towards fall. And for everyone who has had too much of this extremely hot summer, like me, autumn surely sounds like a glorious relief!

August is positive for Perry fans in that the 8th will be the birthday of Richard Anderson, our Lieutenant Drumm. (Yay!) But August is also a bittersweet time for Perry fans, marking the deaths of two Perry cast members (on the same day!). And for me, the death of Perry alumnus Simon Oakland as well.

This particular August should be exciting for Perry fans, as we will see the release of the final DVD set. That will be bittersweet too, really, but wonderful to know that all the episodes are at last available uncut! I can hardly wait to see the uncut Sausalito Sunrise and Fanciful Frail.

It also marks the second anniversary of this blog. I will do my best to make August an interesting month here!

I don’t know if I’m going to have to officially bring the blog back to single posts a week for a while. I haven’t had much luck getting up weekend posts for the last couple of weeks. I still need to review the uncut version of The Bogus Buccaneers, and by now it’s been so long that I wonder if I need to go over it again to make sure I remember all the missing scenes. I’ll give it a try and see how well I do.

The first missing scene is right near the beginning, after the wild woman and Tony have their fight. We see the police rounding up the confused Buccaneers and Tony running when they come for him.

I also seem to recall that the lineup scene is longer, with one of the Buccaneers (Mike Woods, the one who goes missing for publicity reasons later) actively complaining about being brought in. The cut and the uncut versions meet when he’s told to go stand in the lineup.

I always thought something was cut around the area where Steve is talking to parole officer Abe, but according to the disc, the scenes in that part are intact. However, I want to say that the part where Perry talks to Tony is longer. I’m not sure I remember the early part of the conversation, with Tony thinking he’s a charity case and Perry being annoyed and wanting him to stop wallowing in self-pity.

Some of the cuts in this episode are very short, but they help flesh things out better anyway, such as the little bit with Clay fussing over Tony’s wife and the telling of the special diet he has her on.

Also available is a scene right when Perry and Paul come to the murder scene to look around. Brice tells them they can come in within five minutes, when Steve will be ready. Meanwhile, they discuss the case, including the weird fact that the victim only lived there for three days.

There’s also a very short scene later showing the girl and Della heading for the car and that guy following and watching them. That takes place right before the scene where he holds them hostage (and Della gets to be awesome bonking him with a frying pan).

I recall a scene right before the reading of the fan letters, where Paul talks to the producer of the show and is given a box of letters. He’s told that it takes a whole storage room to hold them all. He inquires how the sample lists work and if the murder victim’s name was on one of them. He’s told that it was, and that they select people at random after they’ve sent in some sort of card. Paul wants to see hers, but is told that it would be very time-consuming to dig it out.

The part where Perry goes to talk to the star of the show is longer, and in the uncut we see that Della is with him. She ends up accidentally colliding with said star and having a very nice exchange with him—the dream of many girls who are nuts over certain actors. His wife comes and comments that on the show, girls are paid to run into him. When Perry asks to speak with him in his dressing room, Della and the wife are left to themselves.

The Bogus Buccaneers is one of the most interesting commentaries the show did on other television shows, what with its goofy commercials and promotional door-to-door samples and the extended parts on fan letters. And, of course, the fear of the show falling apart if there’s any hint of scandal about the star. Television certainly was different in those days, behind the scenes as well as on camera.

The only thing that seems to be relatively the same these days is fan mail. There’s no more silly commercials, rarely if ever any door-to-door promotions, and people sure don’t worry about scandal like they used to. Although I suppose to some extent some still must, considering how Charlie Sheen got booted from Two and a Half Men. But, for the most part, people didn’t seem to worry that the show would crumble without him.

The Case of the Bogus Buccaneers: Della's Moment

The Bogus Buccaneers is episode 15 of season 9. I’ve only seen it in a badly edited form, as part of my station’s New Year’s marathon. And judging from a detailed summary here: http://www.storrer.com/masongardner/pmesgnine.html#Bogus%20Buccaneers they cut some of the things that would have made the episode make more sense. I might like it better if I see the complete version.

The plot involves a curious group of buccaneers who have a TV show and accompanying commercials for sponsored products. One of the buccaneers passing out samples, Tony Polk, goes to one house and receives a very strange greeting from the resident, who seems to think he was supposed to bring her something other than samples. They get into a struggle and he finally hits the woman to break away. Later, she is found dead and he is accused. This is another very early death, leaving the majority of the episode available for crime-solving.

The most interesting element involves Tony’s expectant wife Bett. A strange man breaks in and demands to know where she’s keeping $25,000 her husband is supposed to have. Later, this same fellow abducts both her and Della, who had gone to get her and bring her to Perry and Paul. While he holds them hostage in the house in order to search for the money, Della tricks him into looking under the sink. She then proceeds to knock him out with a frying pan and she and Bett are able to escape.

Somewhere in the middle of all this and before the abduction is a scene where Della comforts Bett. I do not recall seeing such a scene, so it must have been one of the edits. It’s a crying shame too; this episode gave Della the awesome moment of outwitting the kidnapper. The other scene is probably very good too.

Also missing is any appearance by Clay until the end of the episode, when he, Perry, and Tony’s parole officer have become the three godfathers of the Polks’ son. I realized right away something must surely be missing, as Clay being a godfather when I had not even seen him meet either parent just did not make sense. Him apparently having some earlier participation in the case would have given some foundation to the epilogue. As it was, I was bewildered.

Honestly, I know there have to be commercials, but it’s so aggravating when there have to be so many that parts of the show get chopped out. My station doesn’t even have commercials, but the prints they have available are mostly filled with syndication cuts.

The court scene had an interesting bit where Perry showed that the witness could not have seen everything she claimed to have seen, but aside from that I don’t remember anything of special interest happening in court. Hamilton had very few lines in that episode. I’m not sure he and Perry even engaged in any courtroom banter, and when that’s absent, the court scenes are often very dull for the most part. Make no mistake, I can’t stand it when Hamilton acts out-of-character in several season 9 episodes, and I do get exasperated in the first four seasons when the writers are continually falling back on Perry getting accused of misconduct even when he isn’t doing anything wrong (it happened way too often), but I love the courtroom banter in general. It’s part of the meat of the show.

All in all, I found the edited version of The Bogus Buccaneers very unmemorable, save for the scene where Della bonks the abductor. That was just epic. I don’t recall any other episode where Della got into a confrontation with a potentially dangerous antagonist and wheedled her way out of it. The main characters, as previously observed, are rarely in serious danger (or perceived serious danger). This was Della’s moment and she came through with flying colors. It’s a pity they didn’t have more scenes like this, and that they waited until the final season to bring in this one.

On a completely unrelated note: I found more evidence that season 9 may have been intended as a reboot and another season 1 as far as structure is concerned. In at least two season 1 episodes, they have met or talked about meeting at Clay’s Restaurant and Grill. I think they may have showed the actual place once, but it looked different from the one in season 9. The point is, I don’t recall them mentioning the locale again until season 9, where it became an important stop and Clay became a regular character.

I never realized before that Clay’s had been spoken of as early as season 1. I thought it had been invented solely for season 9. So it’s very interesting that it was among the characters’ first meeting places. I wonder if it was mentioned in the books.