Yes, you are seeing double in F Troop's
second, and final, season. In "The Singing Mountie," Larry Storch
appears as Corporal Agarn and his cousin, a French fur trapper. In
"Did Your Father Come from Ireland?" Forrest Tucker brogues it up as
Sgt. O'Rourke's visiting Irish father. In "Wilton the Kid," Ken
Berry gets into the act portraying klutzy, clueless Capt. Parmenter
and his look-alike, a vicious bank robber. And in "One Russian Is
Coming! Only One Russian Is Coming!" Storch again doubles up as
Agarn's Cossack cousin. It's a sure indication that F Troop
had indeed jumped the stagecoach (particularly the 1967 episode
"That's Show Biz," featuring a frontier rock group, the Bedbugs, and
a rendition of Bob Dylan's "Tambourine Man" that makes William
Shatner's sound like the Byrds), but the show is so unabashedly
old-school funny, and its ensemble of crack character actors so
likeable, that one willingly takes the leap. During its brief run,
F Troop spawned its share of catch-phrases (Agarn's "Who says
I'm dumb" and "I'm warning you, Dobbs"), but this season's "Bye Bye
Balloon" contains perhaps the series' most classic quotable, as the
Hekawis' Chief Wild Eagle (Frank DeKova) gazes upon the mysterious
flying object in the sky and proclaims, "It is balloon" (it plays
better than it reads).
For a frontier outpost, Fort Courage
sure saw its share of visiting show-business luminaries, including
Paul Lynde as "The Singing Mountie," Harvey Korman as a Prussian
balloonist in "Bye Bye Balloon," Milton Berle as sham medicine man
Wise Owl in "The Great Troop Robbery," Sterling "Winnie the Pooh"
Holloway as a bespectacled sheriff in "Wilton the Kid," and Vincent
Price as a suspicious Count in "V Is for Vampire." One regrets the
show's switch from black and white to color and the replacement of
F Troop's original rousing theme song with an instrumental
rendition (the original, with vocals, obligingly plays over each
disc's menus), but the commercial-break freeze frames are fun.
Tucker, as the entrepreneurial O'Rourke, and Storch, as his wildly
emotional sidekick, are one of TV's great comedy teams, and Berry
displays Astaire-like grace performing the bulk of the physical
comedy. Those who dismiss F Troop as a mindlessly silly
sitcom are directed to the near-half-hour series retrospective, in
which military personnel salute this series' spoofing of military
protocol and life as a morale builder during the Vietnam War.
--Donald Liebenson
Season Two (Color)
The Singing Mountie
How to Be F Troop Without Really Trying
Bye, Bye, Balloon
Reach for the Sky, Pardner
The Great Troop Robbery
The West Goes Ghost
Yellow Bird
The Ballot of Corporal Agarn
Did Your Father Come from Ireland?
For Whom the Bugle Tolls
Miss Parmenter
La Dolce Courage
Wilton the Kid
The Return of Wrongo Starr
Survival of the Fittest
Bring on the Dancing Girls
The Loco Brothers
From Karate with Love
The Sergeant and the Kid
What Are You Doing After the Massacre?
A Horse of Another Color
V is for Vampire
That's Show Biz
The Day They Shot Agarn
Only One Russian Is Coming! Only One Russian
Is Coming!
