Monkee Mayor

Written by Jack Winter

Directed by Alex Singer

Produced by Robert Rafelson&Bert Schneider

Songs: "No Time" by Hank Cicarlo, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by Gerry Goffin&Carole King

Guest Appearances

Zeckenbush                                   Monty Landis

                                Mayor                                           Irwin Charone

                                Mr. Swezey                                    Peter Brocco

                                Mrs. Filchok                                Queenie Smith

                                Mrs. Homer                                  Violet Carlson

                                Secretary                                 Kathy Wakefield

                                Publisher                              Walker Edminston

                                Skywriter                                      Bill Benedict

Premiered on October 2, 1967

Summary

As the Monkees are having their meal, their elderly neighbors, Mr. Swezey, Mrs. Filchok and Mrs. Homer each barge in the pad to return their chairs, dishes and the table that they lent to the guys.  They claim that they're all being evicted from their homes be-cause its being torn down to make way for a parking lot.  Mike tries to convince them that they can't be evicted because it breaks their contract but soon they hear the sound of a wrecking ball as parts of the roof comes down.

Mike goes to the Mayor's office to complain about his neighbors' eviction but his first two attempts to see the Mayor are thwarted by the secretary until Mayor Motley makes an entrance and Mike makes his complaints but falls on deaf ears.  It turns out the Mayor is being paid by a greedy construction tycoon, Wilbur Zeckenbush who wants to tear down all the buildings in the city for parking lots so no one will be able to enter or exit without paying him a toll.  Meanwhile, the guys have invited their neighbors to stay with them until the find other places to live. The guys convince Mike run for Mayor (since he's the only one with a hat) and Micky selects himself his campaign manager.  Mike soon goes through different public images from George Washington, Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson but decides to use his own image with the wool hat.   Then a campaign is launch to the romp "No Time" where the guys deal with violent beauty pageant contestants, an umbrella attacking elderly woman, kissing a grown man in baby stroller etc!  Unbeknownst to them, Zeckenbush pays the people off and to make matters worse they return home to find their place ransacked and photos of Mike with a beard drawn on it.  Their neighbors tells them two men did the deeds convincing the guys that the Mayor was behind it and that he's hiding something.

Dressed in suits, the guys break into the Mayor's where they find a skeleton in the closet (literally) and retrieve a key from its coat pocket to open the file cabinet.  They  find some of the Mayor's files that reveal plans to turn the city into parking lots and Peter snaps a picture of the files as evidence.  Soon they hear voices and hide in the closet just as Zeckenbush and the Mayor enter.  The Mayor wants to show Zeckenbush the files and opens the closet where takes no notice of Micky who's now in the skeleton's place as he gets the keys.   He soon spots the camera on a tripod in the room and figures that Monkees were behind it.  He swears he'll play dirty with them too and break them just as the guys make their hasty exit unseen.  Back at the pad in the dark room, Peter is developing the photos but they realize the photos are only of the file cabinet due to Peter's error.  Meanwhile, Zeckenbush does a background check on Mike can't find any-thing on him, (he even brushes his teeth three times a day) so he decides to use other tactics to handle him instead.  The guys still fret about having no proof of the Mayor's schemes when Micky barges in with a sack full of mail each containing a $100 check.  The use the money for their campaign and soon Micky goes to the newspaper, Peter to a Skywriter and Davy to a TV network.  Then Zeckenbush and the Mayor arrive at the pad to inform Mike that the money came from people who work for him and warns him to back off or they'll pay the consequences.  At the studio, the others try to convince Mike not to back down but when he goes on air Mike makes a moving speech about his intentions of only wanting to help the little people like his neighbors who have no power to be heard.  Then he admits to being tricked into taking money from improper sources to finance everything and announces his withdrawal from the race.  However, Mayor Motley is impressed by Mike's honesty and decides against Zeckenbush's plans and promises to make things right again in which all the guys hop up and down for joy.

Back at their pad, Mr. Swezey, Mrs. Filchock and Mrs. Homer all return to their own homes and now with Zeckenbush in jail and their neighbors' homes safe of being torn down, the Monkees are relieved that everything is perfect again.  Then to their surprise, a wrecking ball crashes from their roof causing all it to fall down. 

This episode ends with the guys doing a rendition of "Pleasant Valley Sunday".

Trivia Notes

This was the second appearance of actor Monte Landis and the last episode

he filmed on The Monkees TV series.

The filming of this episode was put on hiatus to record their fourth album titled

“Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd.”

The day before production on this episode, The Monkees received two Emmy

awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement

in a Comedy.

The original ending of this episode had the Monkees putting up posters again after a

derrick appears in their pad.

Stand-ins David Pearl and David Price once again cameos with Pearl as a cameraman

and Price during the "No Time" musical romp.

The late actor William Benedict (Skywriter) is best remembered as Whitey in the

Eastside Kids/Bowery Boys films of the 1940s and as Willie Trankis in the classic

CBS sitcom “The Petticoat Junction”.

Actor Walter Edminston (publisher) was also known as Enik in the Sid & Marty Kroff’s “The Land of The Lost”.