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A REVISIONIST VIEW OF "THE FLYING NUN"
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'Gidget' on wires with big hat = A 'Flying Nun'
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Some readers may wonder why we would assign one of our better columnists to review a TV show that officially ended production 35 years ago. Well, we believe cultural icons need constant re-interpretation for each new generation. And then there's this thing Risa has about penguins. She wants them in every column! But look at her picture. Could you resist that plaintive smile? |
of TheColumnists.com
Can ANYONE, possibly
YOU, explain to me what drug the ABC-TV producers were smoking
when they conceived a show called, "THE FLYING NUN”?
Also, perhaps you can tell me why Sally Field, high off the success of "Gidget,"decided that playing a nun who was some sort of Christian superhero was a good career choice?
Incidentally, Sally herself could not tell me what drugs she was on. She doesn't remember--and considers her "Flying Nun" years to be a bad dream which she just happened to live out on national television.
Let us start with the Lowdown.
Sister Bertrille used to surf. Now she just convinces Puerto Ricans to embrace Jesus Christ as their savior. Ooh! Can't you just picture the hilarity that will ensue! She also flies. No one knows how or why but she flies. Maybe it is a cheap evangelistic trick to raise money for her mission. Anyway, let's examine the scientific data which the show has provided us with to understand how the Sister can fly.
1) She wears a large medieval nun hat called a coronette which was possibly invented in the Middle Ages to keep some circus freak nun who had three foot wide ears from getting sun burnt. For, yes, it is three feet wide, and looks like a swan landed on Sally Field's head and proceeded to die there, with its wings outstretched in rigor mortis.
So, she wears a hat. The hat, apparently has magical flying powers when combined with the winds around Convent San Tanco. Not to be confused with the windsaround San Taco.
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...or is she just being held up in front of a big fan by a prop man who's hiding under her nun's habit? |
Incidentally, Sister Bertrille lives there at Convent San Tanco near San Juan, Puerto Rico, and this may or may not explain the flying. Because when she surfed in California, she definitely could not fly. Whether or not she wore weird hats when she surfed is anyone's guess.
Problem with the nun hat flying issue: Other nuns at San Tanco wear the same hat, and yet do not...fly. Perhaps this is because they are fat or at least this is what the producers tell us in Point Two...
2) Sister Bertrille weighs 90 pounds. I don't know why this is important but the show's writers insisted on drumming this piece of trivia into my young mind on many occasions. The fact that Sister Bertrille is either anorexic or malnourished combined with the hat and San Tanco winds allows her to fly.
Having failed math throughout my childhood,
it was hard, but I managed to draw up an equation that might
prove helpful should future nuns ever need to fly:
Weight of 90 pounds +
Messed Up Nun Hat + San Tanco Winds = Flying.
3) Also needed in this equation is the wire that lifts Sally Field off the ground. That is supposed to be invisible. But due to either low budget, bad direction, or the 1960s in general, the wire is visible every time Sally Field has to fly. So, let's revise that equation:
Weight of 90 pounds + Messed Up Nun Hat + San Tanco Winds + Wire and Hefty Men Pulling = Flying.
Unfortunately, as my luck would have it, just when I sat down to write this column about "The Flying Nun," The TV Land cable network up and cancelled it and replaced it with slightly (SLIGHTLY) more sane episodes of "Fantasy Island." Please picket outside TV Land headquarters about this as they seem to be the only people in existence who still own any episodes of "The Flying Nun."
That's why you'll have to rely on my somewhat rusty memory of this tripped out science baffling show.
FUN FACTS ABOUT NUNS THAT FLY!
1) We have already established that the large dead swan hat is to blame for the flying. Oddly enough, the hat has no string to tie around Bertrille's chin. So, although the hat flies free of Bertrille's head, due to some unseen force, the hat stays on Bertrille's head despite not being attached in any way that is visible to the naked eye.
2) Bertrille has numerous run-ins with cranky Reverend Mother Plaseato. Which for some reason, every time I see the name, I mis-read it as Reverend Mother Placebo. Don't ask me. I could be going senile at 30; it is entirely possible.
There may or may not have been an episode where Bertrille helped struggling acid tripping rock bands write drug inspired lyrics for a church fundraiser and Placebo had a cow. I remember there was some sort of Jefferson Airplane music video that involved Bertrille strumming her guitar and reciting Beatnik Poetry at Carlos A-Go-Go.
3) Smarmy Latin Playboy/Millionaire Carlos Ramirez, who has so much hair on his body he could be mistaken for a bonobo, owns the local den of sin, Carlos A-Go-Go. Shameless things happen at the den of sin, like folk singing and mini-skirt jiggling and the necessary psychodelic lighting. Smarmy nasty Carlos is a heartthrob in Puerto Rico because apparently everyone else in the town is a nun. Carlos hits on Bertrille's sister at some point, and may or may not be engaged to her, but of course Bertrille blows their love making sessions by flying by the window unexpectedly! Ooh! Silly little flying nun!!!!
4) Carlos, whose playboy lifestyle is constantly being interrupted by the fact that Sister Bertrille's 90 pound body drifts in the San Tanco winds to his love shack, seems only slightly irritated by this matter, exclaiming pleasantly, "Ooh! It's you again." Frankly, most smarmy playboys I know, if their love making was interrupted by a sanctimonious penguin, would either...tell her to go away...or get a new address...or live in a basement with no aerial access. But Carlos, restricted by his deep religious faith, will not tell the nun off and instead just goes without getting any for most of his lifetime.
5) During one episode-- I kid you not--a pelican falls in love with the flying nun. Confused by how to mate with her, the pelican stalks the nun everywhere, not daunted by the fact that a 90-pound human in a weird hat would make one big fat pelican. Love is truly blind and pelicans falling in love with nuns is a concept only a truly drug- induced mind could produce,
6) In addition to being smarmy, hairy and in general, icky, Carlos is also a total wuss. And why do women fall at his feet? Because, like I said, he appears to be the only male in town, however hairy, unlikable, and wussy he is. In one episode, he cuts himself and faints multiple times, while Bertrille's butch sister tends to her wussy lover. All in all, making Carlos' character even more unpleasant and grotesque.
7) In addition to the previously mentioned unlikable traits, Carlos also had neon white dentures. I just thought you should know this in case you were starting to feel like being hairy, smarmy, and wussy was not enough to make you dislike Carlos.
8) Sister Bertrille often whips out a guitar ala Julie Andrews and starts wailing at the top of her lungs about Friendship and Morals. Obviously the producers soon realized that having a nun suspended by rope was not enough to tempt viewers unless she sang really sappy songs and interruped possible sex between Carlos and every woman in Puerto Rico.
9) People often speculated that Bertrille was stalking Carlos and I couldn't agree more. She's like the annoying ex-girlfriend who calls your boyfriend up at all hours of the night and leaves depressing poems on his answering machine. Except she's a virgin. She flies and she is sanctimonious. Other than that, she's pretty much the classic pathetic stalking ex-girlfriend. Except they never dated. But regardless...stalking is stalking.
10) Catholics loved this show and felt that it made being a nun "cool." Of course, let's not even talk about how the nun had to fly in order to get people to watch from sheer curiousity of how stupid the idea was, let alone how there had to be rampant sex at the Go-Go club to maintain any viewership, and how Sister Bertrille had to basically start a folk rock band to even stay on the air.
Most of the good Catholic girls who were watching the show admit to only watching it to see if Carlos and Bertrille were actually going to "get it on." Therefore, this show would have done way better if it had been called "The Flying SLUT" and had progressed accordingly.
11) When people fly and it is poorly executed, it looks like they have a hunchback when they are mid-air. Or a tent pitched on their back.
12) When nuns fly and it is poorly executed, the wind does not blow in the correct direction and it looks as though the nun is lying on a table while the cameraman jiggles the camera.
13) When pelicans fly and it is poorly executed, it looks like a wooden pelican is suspended on string and jiggling in front of the camera.
14) When nuns fly past Puerto Rico, only it is not Puerto Rico, but a really cheesy backdrop, the whole island of Puerto Rico jiggles when the fan is pointed directly at it.
15) For instructions on how to make a nun fly convincingly, see below.
TIE NUN HAT TO HEAD. DO NOT SHOW STRINGS HOLDING NUN UP. USE REAL PELICANS. USE REAL PUERTO RICO. HAVE NUN FACE THE FAN. HAVE NUN'S HAIR MOVE WHEN FAN IS ON IT. USE FLYING SLUT INSTEAD OF FLYING NUN. HAVE NUN TAKE AIRPLANE. HAVE NUN NOT BE A NUN BUT SOMEONE WITH AN INTERESTING OCCUPATION WHO DOES NOT SING FOLK MUSIC AND WEAR LARGE HATS.
I hope this little lesson has been helpful should anyone ever get the urge to make nuns fly again on national television.
©2005
by Risa Williams. The photos from "The Flying Nun"
are from a very dusty ABC press packet. This column first posted
May 2, 2005.
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