I did this recent post about this Facebook meme of posting images of three fictional characters that define me, without describing them. And it was unsatisfactory. So this is a do-over.
I will say that Miles, who I haven’t actually seen this century, came closest to getting all the correct answers. He knew, as did Uthaclena. the first fellow is actor Michael Badalucco. But Miles knew he was playing Jimmy Berluti, one of the attorneys on the TV show The Practice in the late 1990s. He was, as Miles described, “an earnest, working-class guy who worked hard to become a good lawyer.” He wasn’t all shiny, and pretty, but a self-described schlub. Badalucco and I were in the same dorm my freshman year in college at SUNY New Paltz.
Miles nailed my next alter ego, played by actor Gavin MacLeod, who you may know better as Captain Stubing on The Love Boat. Here, though, he is Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Miles notes that he was “a wisecracking TV writer who skewered the dumbest people around with his rapier wit.” But he was also not as well-recognized as the very dumb TV anchor Ted Baxter.
The third guy IS a young Sam Waterston, as Miles suspected, before his lengthy stint on Law & Order as crusading ADA, and later District Attorney Jack McCoy. Instead, this is from a short-lived TV series called I’ll Fly Away. The IMDB describes him thus: “Forrest Bedford [named for a Confederate general] is a Southern lawyer in the late 1950s, generally content with his privileged life. But the winds of change are blowing, and he becomes increasingly involved with civil rights cases.” He’s a guy who, despite his initial wish to maintain the status quo, realizes that it’s unfair and untenable. It was a great show in the early 1990s that lasted only a couple of seasons plus a concluding TV movie.
As for the other three characters, Dudley Do-Right was always intending to do the right thing, even if it happens by accident.
Kermit the Frog not only says that it’s not that easy being green, he knows you blend in with so many ordinary things. Surely, I have felt this.
Finally, Popeye the Sailor, who, as my sister correctly noted, was the reason I would eat spinach as a child while rejecting other veggies. I have what I believe to be a very long fuse. But there comes a point where, “That is all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more.”