"Breakfast. Lunch. I said lunch, not launch!"
One of the zanier Saturday morning series from Sid and Marty Krofft Productions, Far Out Space Nuts aired on CBS in 1975. Bob Denver and Chuck McCann played Junior and Barney, two NASA janitors who were loading food onto a rocket when a wrong button press launched them into space.
While trying to return to Earth, our accidental astronauts visited various strange planets. On one of those planets, they met a furry creature whom they named Honk (Patty Maloney).
The series wasn't remarkable, but it was entertaining.
This series provides examples of:
- Accidental Astronaut: The show is about two janitors who were loading food onto a NASA rocket. However, the launch button was pressed instead of the lunch button, sending them off to space.
- Caps Lock, Num Lock, Missiles Lock: The premise was based on this trope, when the Lunch Button was mixed up with the Launch Button.
- Celebrity Star: John Carradine was a guest star in one episode; in fact, Bob Denver was so humbled by Carradine's presence on the set, that a number of Carradine's scenes had to be reshot.
- Expy:
Word of God has it that the characters of Junior and Barney were meant to be like Laurel and Hardy.
- Fat and Skinny: Barney is overweight, while Junior is quite thin.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: The plot of "Dangerous Game", with Barney and Junior as the prey, of course.
- It Runs on Nonsensoleum: The launch sequence was stock footage of a Saturn V launch, and the spacecraft resembled an Apollo lunar module. The real Apollo lunar module carried enough fuel to go between lunar orbit and the lunar surface, once. Yet, this spacecraft manages to visit a new planet each week, most of which aren't even planets in our own solar system. (This probably isn't a case of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale, because the writers weren't Sci-Fi writers.)
- Logic Bomb: In the pilot episode, "It's All In Your Mind", G.A.L., a sentient supercomputer has enslaved all the inhabitants of the planet by transferring their minds into her memory banks, but she still wants more minds and decides to take Junior's. Junior frees the slaves when he inadvertently causes G.A.L.'s circuits to overload by trying to explain how the NASA rocket's engine is put together.Junior: [holding up two of the engine's parts] Well, you see this piece? This goes right on top, because I'm right-handed. Now... and you gotta remember to match the patch to the hatch and make sure you don't lutch the mutch... er, touch the.... Have you eaten peanut butter?
G.A.L: Because you're right-handed?
Junior: No, no, because peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth... [sticks his finger in his mouth] ...and makes it hard to talk...
G.A.L.: You are overloading my circuits!
Junior: Did you ever try it with... like, with jelly, like with kumquat or gooseberry?
G.A.L.: Jelly? Peanut jelly...?
Junior: You know, how about orange marmalade on a hot tamale?
G.A.L.: Slower!
Junior: That's really good.
G.A.L.: Slower! I must compute.
Junior: Oh.
G.A.L.: Tamale? Tamale...?
Junior: Well, I'm sorry. I really am sorry.
G.A.L.: Yum yum!
Junior: I am a fast talker. Look, I'll try to slow down. I'll start from the beginning and start all over again. Now, see, you gotta match the patch to the hatch...
G.A.L.: Stop it! It's computing!
Junior: ...and make sure you don't touch the clutch... or match the hatch to the patch and mutch the clutch... I just don't remember exactly how it goes, but...
G.A.L.: Peanut butter sticks to my transistors...
[An explosion is heard from inside G.A.L. as flames start to erupt on her panel.]
G.A.L.: Slower! Slower! SLOWER...!
[There's a final explosion, and G.A.L.'s voice fades away.]
Junior: Was it something I said? - Meaningful Name: Junior and Barney give Honk his name because he communicates by honking through a horn growing out of the top of his head.
- Pie in the Face: Chuck McCann gets one in the opening credits.
- Power Echoes: Alien guest stars always seemed to sound as though there was a microphone right in front of them even if they were talking at normal inside voice levels. The Large Ham acting made it look more ridiculous than anything else.
- Short-Runner: Another Krofft show lasting one season, with 16 episodes.
- Ten Little Murder Victims: Parodied in "Vanishing Aliens Mystery", in which our heroes attend the reading of a "space will" and the aliens start disappearing one by one, so Barney and Junior have to find out what's happening.
