My Favorite Martian: The Atom Misers (#1.11)" (1963)
Decent episode pushed into outer space by a phenomenal soundtrack
This review includes an important spoiler. If you are going to watch this episode in the near future, I suggest that you skip my review, or at least skip the end of it.
This is a cute episode with a few funny moments and at least two laugh out louds for me. Further fun is provided by Tim putting his hands all over a babe that he barely knows. In my viewing I've got one classic, one boner, and the rest average, with average for this series being a pretty good show. This episode again falls in the average range, but it's got an ace in hole.
That ace is an incredible soundtrack! The main portion of this episode is an extended exercise in Uncle Martin's levitation, with the accompanying signature theremin sound. The music during this entire segment is like listening to a concert. It's really good and the synchronization between the on-screen action and the music is great. You get treated to a long, extended theremin (actually electro-theremin) performance. I've noticed previously that the music for this series is custom written to each episode, with various on-screen actions happening in sync to musical prompts. Several previous episodes feature this type of interplay, but this one takes it to a new level. This earns this episode a 10 rating for me, in comparison only with other episodes of this series.
Trivia: The theremin is an electronic instrument that provides the sliding sounds when Uncle Martin's antenna go up and down, as well as when he levitates objects. It's also heard during the closing theme song. It's played by waving your hand closer or further from an antenna to raise or lower the pitch, that's why the sound slides around. You don't actually touch the instrument, you just hold your hands near it and it picks up your motions with a type of capacitance field. A theremin is intensely difficult to play well because you have no way of judging where to hold your hands. It's similar to the slide on a trombone, but the trombonist has two reference points, one being the slide's home position and one being the bell of the trombone, making it possible (but still challenging) to judge where to place the slide. The theremin has no such reference points. To partially solve this problem, trombonist Paul Tanner invented the "Electro-Theremin," aka "The Tannerin" which was then used on "My Favorite Martian" as well as other TV shows. This instrument uses a pointer that slides over a diagram of a keyboard, making it easier to hit desired pitches.
************************************* ************************************* SPOILER HERE************************* ************************************* ************************************* The big laugh out loud moment for me came when the clarinet comes on screen. As the music is going along, at a certain point a beautiful clarinet enters the score. It starts playing along. You don't notice it, you don't think anything of it. Then the camera cuts to a guy practicing clarinet at the university and you realize that the clarinet you have been hearing is not part of the score but rather part of the on-screen action, or somewhere between the two, really. It's a laugh out moment and a clever break of the dramatic fourth wall in an unusual way.
Decent episode pushed into outer space by a phenomenal soundtrack
This review includes an important spoiler. If you are going to watch this episode in the near future, I suggest that you skip my review, or at least skip the end of it.
This is a cute episode with a few funny moments and at least two laugh out louds for me. Further fun is provided by Tim putting his hands all over a babe that he barely knows. In my viewing I've got one classic, one boner, and the rest average, with average for this series being a pretty good show. This episode again falls in the average range, but it's got an ace in hole.
That ace is an incredible soundtrack! The main portion of this episode is an extended exercise in Uncle Martin's levitation, with the accompanying signature theremin sound. The music during this entire segment is like listening to a concert. It's really good and the synchronization between the on-screen action and the music is great. You get treated to a long, extended theremin (actually electro-theremin) performance. I've noticed previously that the music for this series is custom written to each episode, with various on-screen actions happening in sync to musical prompts. Several previous episodes feature this type of interplay, but this one takes it to a new level. This earns this episode a 10 rating for me, in comparison only with other episodes of this series.
Trivia: The theremin is an electronic instrument that provides the sliding sounds when Uncle Martin's antenna go up and down, as well as when he levitates objects. It's also heard during the closing theme song. It's played by waving your hand closer or further from an antenna to raise or lower the pitch, that's why the sound slides around. You don't actually touch the instrument, you just hold your hands near it and it picks up your motions with a type of capacitance field. A theremin is intensely difficult to play well because you have no way of judging where to hold your hands. It's similar to the slide on a trombone, but the trombonist has two reference points, one being the slide's home position and one being the bell of the trombone, making it possible (but still challenging) to judge where to place the slide. The theremin has no such reference points. To partially solve this problem, trombonist Paul Tanner invented the "Electro-Theremin," aka "The Tannerin" which was then used on "My Favorite Martian" as well as other TV shows. This instrument uses a pointer that slides over a diagram of a keyboard, making it easier to hit desired pitches.
************************************* ************************************* SPOILER HERE************************* ************************************* ************************************* The big laugh out loud moment for me came when the clarinet comes on screen. As the music is going along, at a certain point a beautiful clarinet enters the score. It starts playing along. You don't notice it, you don't think anything of it. Then the camera cuts to a guy practicing clarinet at the university and you realize that the clarinet you have been hearing is not part of the score but rather part of the on-screen action, or somewhere between the two, really. It's a laugh out moment and a clever break of the dramatic fourth wall in an unusual way.