Rhino Factoids: The Long Goodbye of The Monkees

For an extended period of time, it was reported that the final episode of The Monkees to air as part of NBC's prime-time lineup aired 47 years ago today. As it turns out, this isn't actually true, but the reason for the confusion on the matter is interesting enough that we thought we'd pay homage to the end of the series today anyway.

When The Monkees debuted on September 12, 1966, it was an instant smash, and not just with the kids: the comedic chemistry between Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork was such that John Lennon described them as “the funniest comedy team since the Marx Brothers.” But fans can be fickle, and by the time the show had completed its second season, the chances of a third season were looking mighty slim. The possibility wasn't completely out of the question, mind you, but if it had gone on, the Monkees themselves were looking to mix things up a bit with the series by bringing on guest musicians and trying to phase out the clichéd plotlines that had been turning up on a regular basis. Unfortunately, NBC wasn't as enthusiastic about their outside-the-box ideas, resulting in what appears to have been a mutual decision to just bring the whole affair to a conclusion.

The last original episode of The Monkees, “The Frodis Caper” (a.k.a. “Mijacogeo”), aired on March 25, 1968, but the series continued to remain in the NBC prime-time lineup throughout the summer, and it was long believed that the final rerun - “Some Like it Lukewarm (a.k.a. “The Band Contest”) - aired on August 19. The reason for the confusion seems to have been because the series was preempted for the next two weeks, first for the 1968 Democratic National Convention, then for a baseball game between the Cardinals and the Reds. At this point, everyone knew that the series had been canceled, so when it was out of sight for two consecutive Mondays, someone somewhere apparently reported that it was all over between the network and The Monkees.

Not quite: on September 9, 1968, NBC - apparently in the stage of their relationship with the show where they were simply using it to fill space - aired a rerun of “The Picture Frame,” a.k.a. “The Bank Robbery.” And in case you think we're kidding about that filling-space bit, consider that it's the only episode of the series that the network ever aired three times, even though they had other episodes available that had only been shown once. Seriously, one wonders if it was a case where NBC was expecting another baseball game to run into the timeslot but ended up having to scramble over to a shelf and grab the first tape they could find. (That's how TV networks work, right?)

Whatever the heck happened, it hardly matters in the grand scheme of things: as history has proven, the end of The Monkees was in no way the end of The Monkees.