Vasco da Gama, episode #12 (or, “Me, my stick, and my lion”)

     Here’s an early Christmas present for all of you—one of my favourite episodes of Vasco. This episode marks a turning point in the series—not since Episode #6 (“The Maltese Vasco”) had the writing flowed as well for me; this is the episode where I felt like I was finally in some kind of groove, a happy frame of mind which would allow me to braid as much freewheeling silliness as I damn well pleased into a basic (if flexible) structure.

     Make no mistake, this episode is SILLY. It makes no apologies for being silly. And it takes every opportunity to poke fun at how silly it is, thanks to Rob. This is really where I started to get a handle on how to write for Rob Vincent the character, and for Rob Vincent, the actor playing the character. Rob’s more than just a put-upon straight man in the Bud Abbott mould—he incorporates the real Rob’s appreciation of the absurd. Even while grumbling about what an utter waste of time and effort the latest absurdity is, he plays along with it, like a cat playing with a toy mouse. Like kitty’s facsimile rodent, the circumstances at hand aren’t likely to go anywhere, or offer any surprises, unless they’re given a bit of a nudge. Both Robs, real and fictional, know this; when the fictional Rob works best in Vasco, he’s a kibitzer at the crap table of life, making wry remarks on how obviously loaded the dice are, just to see how quickly it makes some sucker go bust trying to prove him wrong.  

     The game in this episode is one called “How to Get Away with Murder”. As in “The Maltese Vasco”, Rob shows up just when the bodies begin to drop. This time around, he’s stumbled into every British murder mystery cliché I could cram into a half-hour…well, I’m pretty sure they’re from British murder mysteries, anyway. Confession time: I like watching British murder mysteries, but I have a hard time staying awake through them. I have a knack of passing out sometime between when Suspect Number Three is introduced and Dead Body Number Two is discovered, and not waking up again until just before the closing credits. I’ve never figured out why this is. It could be that my subconscious latched onto the idea that the explanation you get right at the end of even the best British murder mystery makes the same amount of sense whether you’ve watched any of the rest of it or not. It’s also a fact (insofar as I’ve been able to tell before dozing off) that the victims in British murder mysteries always seem to have it coming. Maybe I find the prospect of the cream of British twitdom being bumped off one by one particularly soothing.

     There’s more to this episode than silly British voices (as if that isn’t enough right there) and Rob making a bid for the Commonwealth record for laconic sleuthing (Laconic? He makes Inspector Lewis look like Jerry Lewis). But that’s enough to go on for now. It is a murder mystery, after all…it wouldn’t do to spoil the suspense.

     I see you haven’t clicked on the link yet. Maybe that’s because I haven’t given it to you. So here it is, already:

Vasco da Gama, episode #12

     I’ll ditch the Master of Suspense act long enough to let you in on a secret about one of the sound effects you’re going to hear. We needed the sound of a basketball being dribbled and shot with an audible lack of expertise, and we needed the sound to sync up (more or less) with the dialogue we’d already recorded. Imagine my surprise to find that no such effect could be found in any catalogue of pre-recorded effects. Our solution was simplicity itself. Just beside the recording studio was (and still is) a poured-concrete stairwell with all the aesthetic charm of a Cold War-era Polish prison. Its lack of visual beauty was (and is) more than made up for by its acoustic properties. Put a microphone in the right place in this stairwell, and you can fake anything from Mammoth Cave to the Grand Canyon. We set the mike up to fake the echo of a school gymnasium, and, guided by the faith that just the right thing would appear because we now needed it to, went in search of the basketball that someone was sure to have left lying around a campus radio station in case someone should ever need to bounce it in a stairwell and record it for posterity.

     I should mention that it was about 3 AM at the time, so this line of thinking made perfect sense—and, if not exactly perfect sense, then at least no less sense than any other line of thinking we were likely to come up with on short notice. Because we were young then and our hearts were pure, our faith was rewarded with…a half-deflated volleyball. Not exactly what we were hoping for, but if Providence (or any other city in Rhode Island) sends you a half-deflated volleyball, even without a pump to blow it back up, at 3 AM, in a place where there shouldn’t be any volleyball at all, half-deflated or not, you don’t quibble—you just dribble.

     Child’s play, really. If only we’d had a child handy to do it for us. Chasing a half-deflated volleyball down three flights of stairs at 3 AM loses its charm after the third or fourth time.