the aftermath of judy's death

So as I have no doubt mentioned, we watch a lot of The Box round here, and we're presently sometime in1975 (episode 259-60 territory). (It's hard to be sure when episodes were actually broadcast because IMDB doesn't say, and the newspapers of the day didn't either). This is the exciting/depressing ep where Judy has been blown up by Frank Roberts' bomb, but she's not precisely dead yet. Here are Paul and Lee in the street outside, seconds before the bomb goes off. 

This is where The Box starts to contort itself a bit to try and figure how to both deal with the demise of a major character at the same time as two other characters (Jean and Kay) leave (Jean's gone, to London to be with her husband Brad, and Kay is just about to be press-ganged into doing essentially the same thing by Michael Brooks (John Waters). Here are Sir Henry and Max dealing with the shocking situation while Jack O'Brian, um, is on the phone. 

Here's Kay dealing with that ridiculous situation where Michael is saying he has bought her a ticket to London that afternoon and she's, I suppose, required to not only pack in her job but leave her entire flat for ever, while her ex-lover Paul is grieving the likely death of his estranged wife. 

Here's Lee on Paul and Judy's couch, where so much has happened:

Michael and Kay blah blah. Laura said something funny, 'what's she going to do with her record?' (it's on the counter next to the flowers). 

I can't remember why Fanny was here but she is. She (and others like Syd Heylen as Vern, Ken James as Tony Wild, Tracy Mann see below, and I can't remember who else) have to serve the role of being light and shallow in the face of this tragedy, to propel the narrative to the future.

Tracy Mann must have simultaneously been really pleased to get the role of Tina the cleaner and really unhappy about how goofy the character is, at least at the beginning, will be interested to see where it goes. 

This is a golden moment, Paul's dream where he and Judy are having a baby. 

He is woken from this dream by a telephone call from a very unprofessional doctor who apparently thinks it's OK to tell a man his wife is dead over the phone. 

Unusually for The Box, the episode ends with a freeze frame on Paul's face and audio of a (simulated?) heartbeat while the credits go over them.

I just want to say that I am very much in the market for Philip Brown knitwear. 

Briony Behets went on to play someone called Jorja Jones in Class of '75 (I have watched practically every episode of that show, admittedly over a decade ago, and I don't remember her at all!) then she was in Bellbird and by the end of the year she was a weather presenter (in November John Pinkney wrote in the Age that she peformed this duty 'with the intensity of a Pinter heroine, but gets away with it'.) * 

The mainstream news, to the degree it paid any attention to shows like The Box, accused it of being unrealistic lol:

Sydney Sun-Herald 21 Dec 1975 p. 70

*26 November 1975 p. 2

too weird

This is insane. 

This evening I watched an episode of Homicide which aired 5 March 1974 and which starred John Krummel in multiple roles. 

It's not the best episode, frankly, but it's a very interesting one. The main weaknesses are (1) the attempt to mix comedy with the deaths of three women (2) the compete literal cluelessness of the detectives as they utterly fail to realise that as they keep showing up at the same property to interview a middle aged man called Phelby-Thomas, his elderly father, and their German and Asian (?) servants, they are actually always talking to the same man. And also (spoiler!!!) they are talking to the man who, dressed as a woman called 'Mrs Monday', is the murderer. 

So at a certain point a witness realises she's seen Mrs Monday somewhere before and finally she remembers - she was a character on this thing called The Phil Thomas Show. So the Ds (and the witness, and some kind of skinny archivist) all pile into a viewing theatre and watch what is apparently the only extant example of this show. (Skinny archivist explains that most of the shows went out live, so there's not much evidence of it, but that doesn't really explain why the intro is in colour and the rest in black and white). 

The characters seen in the show are all played by Thomas/Krummel and include:

And, of course, Mrs Monday:

Here by the way are the Ds and the witness and the archivist watching the show:

And the closing credits:

It's not the best Homicide episode. But that's not the weird part (although it is weird that, in the midst of so many good eps, they came up with this oddity). 

I thought well, who were/are you, John Krummel? And I went looking online. I found him. He died two weeks ago, on the 23 February. But his obituary was only published this afternoon, about 7 hours before I'm writing this!!!

By the way shout out to Bettine Kauffman. It's been a while!