Tag Archives: billiards sitcom

The Goldbergs – “Bad Companions”

In 1956, billiards was still relatively novel to most Jewish-Americans.  Consider some of the Jews who have made an indelible contribution on the sport.[i] Barry Berhrman, the founder of the prestigious U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship, had just turned 10. Billiards Congress of America Hall of Famer Mike Sigel, whose mother used to complain that he wouldn’t go to Hebrew school because he was too tired from playing pool, was just starting to walk up stairs unassisted. Pool Wars author Jay Helfert is one of the game’s great chroniclers, but at best, he was still a little ankle-biter at that time.

Then, it’s hardly surprising that the 1956 episode “Bad Companions” of the TV sitcom The Goldbergs might find humor in Uncle David (Eli Mintz), a nebbish who has purchased a pool table at an auction but not knowing how to play, enlists the help of some pool hall locals to teach him the game.[ii]

In fact, the bigger surprise might be that such a Jewish sitcom existed at all.  Sure enough, The Goldbergs, created in 1948 by radio star Gertrude Berg, was not only television’s first family sitcom, but also a show squarely and confidently about a Jewish family. Ms. Berg, the show’s writer, producer, and star actress, played the family matriarch, Molly Goldberg.

According to columnist Matthue Roth, Ms. Berg’s “vision of The Goldbergs, from which the show never deviated, was that of an everyday family with simple interactions, believable plots, and guided by a gentle humor. The episodes followed a predictable pattern–family members encounter problems, land in tight spots, and then turn to their familial matriarch to bail them out.”[1]

In “Bad Companions,” Uncle David’s new pool table, a “fabulous gift for the whole family,” becomes a bit of a headache, since his peers either don’t know how to play or aren’t permitted to play by their spouses. Justifying his unfamiliarity with billiards, the family patriarch, Jake (Robert H. Harris), says, “pool is a game that requires leisure, it’s not something you’re born with.”

Undeterred, David recruits a well-mannered gaggle of locals from the Friendly Nook pool hall, paying them to come to his house and teach him pool and promising to be the “best pupil [they] ever had.” While not exactly Machiavellian hustlers, the “professors” – Stosh, Big Louie, Little Louie, Cockeye Mike, and Snake Hip Nellie– show little interest in letting David practice; instead, they take advantage of his family’s hospitality, playing pool for free and delighting in a never-ending buffet of sandwiches and coffee. More attention is given to the composition of the sandwiches (e.g., “cheese on rye with mustard, not so much lettuce”) than to the mechanics of the billiards game.

Tensions start to run high among Uncle David’s family members who feel their magnanimity is being exploited, especially when some of the teachers start using the Goldberg’s phone to place horse racing bets. When Jake finally ejects Uncle David’s friends from his house, David goes down to the pool hall to make amends, only to unwittingly get ensnared in a raid. The judge releases David, calling him the “dupe of unsavory characters” and the product of a poor upbringing.

To show all is not lost, and to prove that Molly is hardly just a naïve sandwich-maker, the episode ends with Molly and David playing a game of pool. Like a pro, Molly announces her shot will “kiss the four ball off the nine and into the side pocket.” It’s a combination designed to impress, though discerning audiences will wonder why there is no sound of a ball falling in the pocket.

The Goldbergs may have had little impact on the future of billiards, but there is no question that Gertrude Berg was a true trailblazer.  Her inspiring comedic style earned her the first Best Actress Emmy in 1951, and laid the groundwork for future comedians, such as Lucille Ball, as well as the domestic family sitcom genre, creating a blueprint for subsequent shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best.

Until very recently, “Bad Companions” was available to watch on Jewish Life Television (JLTV), the network founded in 2007 to promote Jewish-themed programming.

[1]      “Jewish Film: The Goldbergs,” by Matthue Roth.

[i]       While it’s hard to argue that “Boston Shorty” Morton Goldberg had an “indelible” influence on billiards, I’d be remiss if I did not give him a special shoutout. Boston Shorty was 40 years old when “Bad Companions” aired. By that time, he had already defeated legends such as Willie Mosconi, Ralph Greenley, Irving Crane, and Jimmie Caras. And, no, The Goldbergs was not named after Boston Shorty.

[ii]       The Goldbergs should not be confused with the currently-running, identically-named ABC sitcom The Goldbergs.

The Jersey – “New Kid in Town”

The premise behind The Jersey, a vanilla television series that aired on the Disney Channel from 1999-2004, is that four teens – Nick, Morgan, Coleman, and Elliot – discover the magic of “the jersey,” a mystical football jersey that transports them into the bodies of professional athletes. So, when I first learned the series included a 2003 billiards episode entitled “The New Kid in Town,” I got a wee bit giddy. Perhaps, Nick would morph into Earl “The Pearl” Strickland, who reigned in 9-ball in 2002, or Morgan Hudson would transfigure into Jeanette “Black Widow” Lee, who won the gold medal at the World Games in 2001.

New Kid in TownWas I so naïve to think that the producers and writers of The Jersey might distinguish themselves by deeming billiards players professional athletes? After all, past episodes had featured not only familiar superstars like Terrell Davis (football), David Robinson (basketball) and Randy Johnson (baseball), but also household names from less popular sports, such as Kelly Slater (surfing), Dan Lyle (rugby), Scott Steiner (wrestling), and Dominique Dawes (gymnastics).

Alas, my hopes were dashed as I began watching “The New Kid in Town,” which, like many sitcoms, actually included two unrelated storylines, and most definitely did not include any billiards professionals. The jersey/athlete storyline involves Elliot Rifkin (Theo Greenley) assuming the body of professional BMX rider and X Games Dirt Jumping gold medal winner Ryan Nyquist in order to better understand why a “new kid in town” has a chip on his shoulder. Lots of killer bike jumps follow.

The non-jersey, utterly unimaginative storyline involves the show’s father figure, Larry Lighter (Michael Bofshever), having just re-felted his pool table, trying to relive his college glory days when he was known as – wait for it – Missouri Fats.[1] His first opponent is his daughter, Hilary, who has never before shot pool. Unfortunately, his skills have apparently atrophied over time, and he becomes insufferable after repeated losses to his daughter. As she says, “I must be really good considering you’ve been playing like 25 years and I’ve been playing like 25 hours.” (Of course, given his blatantly incorrect racking of the balls, it’s not clear he ever had the skills.)

New Kid in TownMore bad jokes follow (“It’s not me, it’s the table…somehow when they re-felted it, they messed it up.”) before Larry confesses to his wife, “I just want to be competitive at one thing, and pool was my last salvation, and now I can’t even win at that. Missouri Fats is no more.”

Last salvation?! And, in a final twist of the knife, Larry only wins a game because his wife bribed his daughter to throw it. Larry proclaims he will celebrate the win by buying himself a new graphite cue. Billiards fans, on the other hand, shrug their shoulders, dismayed that yet another television episode reduced their sport to bad racks, bad jokes, bribes, and the basement floor of avocations.

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[1]       For a more original and funnier permutation of billiards legend Minnesota Fats’ name, watch the Aurora Skittle Pool commercial (1970), featuring comedian Don Adams as “Wisconsin Skinny.”

Family Matters – “Fast Eddie Winslow”

Family Matters - Fast Eddie WinslowIn billiards sitcoms (yet, ironically, not in billiards movies), the high-school student who thinks s/he can play pool only to subsequently get hustled has become a trope as stale as last week’s bread.   Consider:   Steve Harvey Show – “Pool Sharks Git Bit” (1996); Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – “Bank Shots” (1991).  But, it turns out this particular trope may have a relatively recent genesis, starting with the 1990 episode of Family Matters called “Fast Eddie Winslow.” 

Family Matters was a CBS sitcom about the Winslows, a middle-class African-American family living in Chicago.  Among the show’s claims-to-fame was that it featured one of the most annoying characters ever to appear in television – the nerdy, flood-pants and suspender-wearing, nasal-voiced neighbor Steve Urkel (Jaleel White).

In the second-season episode “Fast Eddie Winslow” (a reference, of course, to Paul Newman’s character Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler), the oldest Winslow son Eddie (Darius McCrary) believes that he is a pool shark when he beats his friend Rodney in ten straight games.  Mistaking cockiness for ability, Eddie goes to the Corner Pocket, an adult pool hall, where he challenges a seemingly friendly and innocent Texan named Boyd Higgins to a game of eight-ball.  While he initially wins when the stakes are $5/game, he quickly loses ten games when the stakes are raised to $25/game.  Moreover, it turns out that with $250 now owed, Boyd is neither friendly nor Texan, but a local hustler, who frightens with menacing ultimatums, such as “When I play, it’s cash or carry.  Give me the cash or get carried out,” or “show up with the money tomorrow or stay home for a month and watch your body heal.”

Now, Eddie needs a savior, or at least someone to loan him the $250.  Initially, that savior appears to be Urkel, who after lecturing Eddie for getting “hustled, taken, fleeced, and conned,” not only loans him the money, but also steps in for Eddie, challenging Boyd to a one-game, double-or-nothing bet.   Turns out Urkel “plays a plethora of pool when [he has] time to [himself], which for some reason is quite often.”   Urkel then geeks out, pulling out tape measures, and proclaiming, “Pool is a game of angles.  One must cue at an angle to the object ball so that it travels in the same angle to the impact point.  An 82 degree angle intersected by a 42 degree vector, cue ball velocity, Jupiter in retrograde, Harvest Moon…”

(No one really know what Urkel is talking about, but then again, did anyone understand the similar pseudo-babble from the billiards scene in the 1990 movie Lambada when the main character pulled out a protractor and started waxing about the rectangular coordinate system while he shot pool?)

Family Matters - Fast Eddie WinslowUrkel’s rescue effort fails, however, when Boyd crushes his thick-rimmed glasses beneath his boot.  Fortunately, new saviors step in, this time in the form of Eddie’s father, Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson) and his grandmother Estelle (Rosetta LeNoire).  Reliving his youth, Carl makes a shot on Eddie’s behalf, and then hands over the cue to Estelle, who sinks the eight-ball on a quadruple bank shot (of course!).

So, what’s the lesson here?  If you’re a dumb enough chump to get fleeced in billiards by a guy with a terrible fake accent, then there better be a bad-ass grandma in the family, otherwise you’re going to be staying home for a month and “watching your body heal.”

“Fast Eddie Winslow” is available to rent or purchase as part of Season 2 of Family Matters.

Malcolm in the Middle – “Water Park”

Malcolm in the Middle - billiards sitcomMost billiards sitcom episodes are pretty light on substance and pretty glib in their treatment of pool.   (Among the top offenders: Married With Children – “Cheese, Cues, and Blood.”)  “Water Park,” the final episode of the first season of Malcolm in the Middle, is no different.  Aired in May 2000, this episode pits Malcom’s older brother Francis (Christopher Masterson), a cadet at the Marlin Academy, against Commandant Spangler (Daniel von Bargen) in a game of eight-ball. Francis’ predicament is that if he beats the Commandant, his fellow cadets will “torture him with hours of educational programming on PBS,” but if he loses to the Commandant, he will be suspected of throwing the game and his fellow cadets will have all their privileges revoked by the Commandant.  Oh, what a conundrum indeed.

For those not familiar with Malcolm in the Middle, the highly popular, award-winning series aired on Fox from 2000 to 2006, the show primarily revolved around Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), the middle child in a dysfunctional, suburban family, though side stories also focused on his siblings.  Unlike other sitcoms of that time, the series allowed Malcolm to ‘break the fourth wall’ and talk directly to the audience, abandoned the use of a live audience, and used a lot of contemporary music (in place of any laugh tracks) to set mood.

To call the series original a decade later seems almost comical (something this episode was certainly not, but then again, I’m hardly the target demographic).  However, in getting back to the pool, this billiards sitcom episode does have a particularly original, albeit utterly nonsensical, resolution.  Francis and the Commandant opt to compete to see who can lose in eight-ball the most times in the most spectacular fashion.  (You read that correctly.)  Set to Beck’s contagious song “Mixed Bizness” from the same year, Francis and the Commandant battle it out with a series of trick shots (some real, some edited) to scratch on the 8-ball.  Overall, it’s a pretty enjoyable billiards sitcom scene, though it’s deplorable that no credit is given to the billiards technical advisor behind the scenes who is the real masse maestro.

The billiard sitcom episode “Water Park” is available to purchase as part of Season 1, though digital sleuths can find it one some bit torrent sites, as well.