I DREAM OF JEANNIE: 15 YEARS LATER (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*

Larry Hagman couldn't make this TV reunion-film, as he got an urgent call from DALLAS (that put him in a different pay-grade). But by 1985 Hagman had become so typed as J.R. Ewing that he probably would have cast a discordant note attempting to re-enact the role of Tony Nelson from the fondly remembered sixties comedy show.

Most latter-day reunions of TV-characters are forgettable, and JEANNIE '85 isn't much better than average. Of course, the original I DREAM OF JEANNIE show was largely slapstick froth, so even a bad follow-up wouldn't exactly have been a crime against great art. Further, the last season of the program allowed Tony and his ditzy genie Jeannie (Barbara Eden) to be married, which eliminated one of the two main tropes of the series; that of the man who chased a woman until she caught him. That last season was obliged to pursue the other principal trope, the struggle to keep outsiders from finding out that the respectable astronaut was married to a genie able to wreak miracles with the blink of an eye. Surprisingly, this trope also goes unused in the script by Dinah Kirgo and Irma Kalish. (The latter contributed one script apiece both to the original 1965-70 show and to the Hanna-Barbera JEANNIE cartoon.) Instead, Kirgo and Kalish focus on a motif that only occasionally appeared in the sixties series: the "war between men and women." 

So JEANNIE '85 opens when Jeannie and Tony (now played by Wayne Rogers) have been married 15 years, and they have a middle-school-aged boy, Tony Jr. (Brandon Call), who does not appear to have inherited any genie-genes from, uh, his mother. Tony is just about to retire from his astronaut career, and Jeannie anticipates that she and their son will be able to spend more time with him. But Tony accepts a plea from his superiors to delay retirement and participate in one more manned mission. This breeds an argument between the couple, in which Tony breaks his word. Yet Jeannie's somewhat in the wrong, for she fails to trust Tony's marital fidelity, becoming jealous when he's scheduled to work with a pretty female astronaut.

This plebeian quarrel is exacerbated by Jeannie's scheming sibling (also Eden), who for convenience I will call Jeannie II. This conniving cat would like nothing better than to break up the couple and claim Tony for herself (though in the telefilm she never actually makes a move on the astronaut). Naughty Number Two gets some help from Haji, King of the Genies (Andre de Shields). In the old show, Haji was always an elderly Arab, but in keeping with eighties tropes, he's now a relatively young Black guy who runs a fitness center. However, Haji has some traditionalism in his makeup, for he doesn't like how the younger breed of genies envy Jeannie I's successful marriage to a mortal. To discourage further intermarriage, he abets Jeannie II's plans.

The JEANNIE TV show did sometimes show Tony's male authority being undermined. Even though a genie was theoretically under her master's total command, Jeannie seemed to pick and choose when she would obey her master's orders. In JEANNIE '85, the couple separates because of the quarrel about retirement, and Jeannie takes Tony Jr. with her, to prove that she can make it on her own, without using her genie-powers. Kirgo and Kalish were probably trying to make a general statement about the difficulty of wives trying to market their skills after years of domestic work, but at least they keep the feminist content light. Jeannie II, in addition, continues to seek ways to break up her sister and Tony, and also gratuitously encourages Tony Jr. to help a pretty classmate (a teenaged Nicole Eggert) cheat on a school test.

Eden is game in her dual role, and she's easily the best thing about the telefilm, since most of the script is lacking in the humor department. Two performers from the sixties show, Bill Daily and Hayden Rorke, are given some minor scenes, but they could have been written out with no great loss. Indeed, Tony Nelson doesn't have much to do either. The main story arc revolves around Jeannie's attempts to prove herself and to mend fences with her husband, while trying to keep Jeannie II from messing up her life and that of her son. It's interesting that the characters with the most scenes are Jeannie, her sister and her son, but the writers don't do anything interesting with this conflict. There is one development that almost seems like the two Jeannies are struggling more over Tony Jr than over Tony. Jeannie II tricks her sister into entering her bottle and then traps her with a cork that only another genie can remove. Tony Jr. finds his imprisoned mother and swears to take care of her, while she makes the odd comment, "Don't all boys want to keep their mothers bottled up?" As if to disprove this canard, Tony Jr. taps his latent genie-powers and sets his mother free, just in time for her to rescue Tony from his conveniently-in-peril space-mission. The resolution seems like the writers were told to set things up as if a new series might eventuate-- an unlikely possibility, even though Eden still looked quite fetching in her middle years.

One other odd aspect of JEANNIE '85 was that it was directed by William Asher. Back in the sixties I DREAM OF JEANNIE competed with (and may've been inspired by) the 1964 BEWITCHED. William Asher worked on over a hundred episodes of that show as either writer, director, or producer, and was married to Elizabeth Montgomery to boot. But though the original JEANNIE was Asher's rival, JEANNIE '85 was one of the last few projects Asher directed, the very last being another reunion-film, RETURN TO GREEN ACRES.

ADDENDUM: It belatedly occurred to me that I probably allotted too much responsibility to the writers for the final form of the script. After all, Barbara Eden was the one performer who, in terms of pleasing nostalgic viewers, could not have been credibly replaced-- and what would have sealed the actress's participation more than a script in which she was the main focus in her dual role? Whereas the sixties series placed both Tony and Jeannie center stage, here it's really just Jeannie. A different writer penned the true last hurrah for the character, the 1991 telefilm I STILL DREAM OF JEANNIE-- but in that one, Tony is conveniently off stage for the whole tale, and once more the narrative emphasis is on the two Jeannies and Tony Jr.