Out Tomorrow - Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Season 4 (***3/10)
I just picked up a show I never know existed. Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., season 4. It came out May 13th, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment. Oh, I’ve heard of Gomer Pyle. The Andy Griffith Show and all that. And I knew he was played by Jim Nabors, and I knew he was goofy and as dumb as a bag of hair. I might even have been able to pick him out of a lineup of 1960s TV characters, if he stood beside Dick Van Dyke and Carol Burnett and Chester from Gunsmoke. Gomer Pyle is an American institution, just like Jerry Lee Lewis is a French one. But somehow the existence of the show completely eluded me. And I should have known – I always thought, in Full Metal Jacket, that R. Lee Ermey was referring to the Andy Griffith character when he calls Vincent D’Onofrio “Private Pyle”. But now I know better - He’s referring to this, actual “Private Pyle”. Which makes that bathroom scene all the creepier.
Especially now that I watched Season 4 of Gomer Pyle. I couldn’t help but think about Vincent D’Onofrio and that maniac smile that spreads over his face while he sits on the floor of the bathroom. Seven-six-two millimetre. Full. Metal. Jacket. And so every time I see even a shadow cross the permanently-happy, blissfully stupid face of Gomer Pyle in this series, I expect the next thing he’ll do will be to bust into the weapons depot, load up a Rambo rifle, and go on a killing spree. (Which, as I understand it, is the alternate ending to Episode 91, “A Visit From Aunt Bee”. Or, at least, the director’s cut.) There are very few killing sprees in Gomer Pyle, USMC. And I wasn’t counting, but I think there are more laughs than murders. I think. I believe the final score is 1-0. One laugh, zero kills.
Not that I expect a military-themed show to have actual soldiers doing actual fighting. Remember Major Dad? No, neither do I. But I DO expect a “comedy” to make me laugh. And I have rarely seen a comedy that feels more dated than Gomer Pyle. The premise here is that a garage station attendant of sub-par intelligence has left Mayberry to enlist in the Marine corps. While there, he has to deal with his angry, yelling, order-barking platoon sergeant, but because he’s a “knucklehead”, he can’t do anything right ever. Which makes the sergeant yell more. And that makes Pyle screw up more. And hilarity, one would suppose, would ensue. But somehow, it just doesn’t. There is something just so painfully sit-com-ish about Gomer Pyle USMC. And perhaps in it’s day, it felt new, but there are few shows on DVD today that feel as dated as this. And that includes the A-Team.