Carlton Your Doorman (1980)

I made a promise a short while back that I would take a closer look at Carlton Your Doorman, the only fully animated production to come out of MTM, should it ever show up in its entirety on the web.  Turns out I didn't have to wait long.   As I noted back in November, this had something of a reputation among animation fans for being a "lost" special, although these days I think that the term "lost" gets thrown around all too loosely, more often than not equating to "not currently on YouTube" (as opposed to, say, the lost episodes of Doctor Who, which really have been wiped from existence due to the BBC's former habit of routinely culling archive material).  I figured that if I waited long enough then it would surface eventually, and my gut instinct didn't let me down.  I'll state straight off the bat that I had high hopes for this special.  I've gone into a lot of these one-off animation projects not expecting anything too stellar but simply being interested in what they have to offer.  This one I genuinely thought might be a hidden gem; not only did it pick up a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program, but it also boasts the vocal talents of Lorenzo Music, whose work I've been admiring since about as far back as I've been watching television (I grew up on Garfield and Friends and a number of the original Garfield specials, so there's something about Lorenzo's voice that spells instant warmth and nostalgia for me).  From what small glimpses I could find of the special online, I also really dug the animation style, courtesy of Murakami Wolf Swenson, which features some gorgeously illustrative background detail (reminiscent of the lovingly-rendered New York scenery in The Critic).  And, even though I knew little of the special's source material (see below), I was genuinely fascinated by the concept of an animated special revolving around a bumbling doorman who'd previously existed on the sidelines of a different, live-action series.  Sorry to report, then, that I came away almost wishing that the special had stayed "lost" - not only did it not live up to my expectations, but I was surprised at just how much I kinda-sorta detested this one.  Carlton himself is not a particularly likeable character (there's a definite discrepancy throughout between Lorenzo's warm, disarming vocals and the sleazy, selfish, spineless prick of a character he's playing), which might have been less of a problem if the story he's saddled with hadn't been such a miscalculated downer.  Let's delve in a little deeper.

Carlton Your Doorman aired on CBS on 21st May 1980 and, as per its Wikipedia page, was never re-aired in the US (I'd take what that Wikipedia entry says with a pinch of salt, however - at the time of writing, it states that Carlton Your Doorman was "one of the last animated pilots to use a laugh track", which is a tad misleading as we know from Hound Town and The Jackie Bison Show that the practice was still clinging desperately to life a decade later).  The special was a spin-off of an MTM sitcom, Rhoda, which ran from 1974 to 1978, and focused on one of the show's supporting characters, Carlton the doorman.  And - confession time - I've never watched a single episode of Rhoda so, as with The Jackie Bison Show, I'll apologise in advance if my unfamiliarity with the source material means that I miss out on a bunch of obvious in-jokes.  I'm aware of this much -  in Rhoda, Carlton typically remained offscreen (my perfunctory research indicates that viewers did once catch a glimpse of him in a gorilla mask, but they never saw his face) and spoke to the other characters across an intercom.  Carlton Your Doorman was the first proper, full-on glimpse the world had of the character in the flesh, the twist being that Carlton appeared not as a flesh and blood human, but in the guise of an animated character (this accounts for why the special's opening sequence makes a point of building up very gradually to revealing Carlton's face, so as to squeeze every drop of anticipation from viewers who had followed over from Rhoda).  I'm not totally clear on whether Carlton Your Doorman was always envisioned as a one-off special or if this was intended as the pilot for a spin-off series that didn't happen - if the latter, then I'm frankly not losing too much sleep over what might have been.

Although Carlton Your Doorman initially looks as if it's going to be a lighthearted, if somewhat crude caper starring a perpetual loser, around the middle-mark it takes a deliberately shocking and morbid turn, which certainly piqued my interest, but I was disappointed and honestly a little dispirited by just how heartlessly it resolves itself.  In a nutshell, the plot involves Carlton accidentally killing the dog of his boss's wife while it's in his care and desperately trying to cover up this occurrence (not because he's looking to spare his boss's wife's feelings but because he's terrified of what will happen to him when his boss finds out).  Ultimately, however, he gets off the hook because his boss secretly disliked the dog and is glad to be rid of it (his wife, meanwhile, is blatantly very upset, but the script doesn't give a toss about her feelings because all that matters is that Carlton ends up well).  Oh, and did I mention that Carlton is a sex pest?  There's a bit in the opening credits where he's implied to sexually harass a woman while passing her on the way down to the subway, and it's every bit as jaw-droppingly uncomfortable as it sounds.  I'm aware that in 1980 there existed a somewhat more permissive attitude toward that kind of thing, but from a modern perspective a character who can't keep their hands to themselves is instantly going to lose a number of points on the likeability scale.  It doesn't help Carlton's case that it's his lusting after women and his refusal to accept a clear "no" from a female jogger that indirectly causes the dog to die.  This didn't necessarily have to be the death knell of the special, had it built up to some kind of meaningful character progression for Carlton, but unfortunately all that ever comes of it is that unbelievably callous ending, where all wrongdoings are excused because Carlton's boss is an even bigger jerk than he is, and which unfortunately serves to undo whatever good the special may have accomplished elsewhere.  But I'm getting ahead of things - let's go back and unravel how this entire demoralizing affair unfolds right from the beginning.

During the opening scene, we're introduced to the corporeal Carlton, along with two supporting characters - Ringo, Carlton's scrawny and vile-tempered cat, and Carlton's mother (Lurene Tuttle), a homeless bag lady who's normally seen with her hand in a trash can in search of discarded items of clothing to give to her son.  The two of them are probably most enjoyable characters of the special - Ringo you have to admire for his scrappy energy, and for regularly meeting Carlton with he disdain he deserves, while Mom's appearances are pulled off just the right levels of eye-popping, deadpan quirkiness.  She's used very sparingly throughout the special, but that's fine, as it means that her running gag isn't overdone.

After the opening credits, Carlton arrives at the apartment building where he works, and we run into his aforementioned boss, the gruff, cigar-chomping Mr Shaftman (Jack Somack).  He's none too thrilled with Carlton's performance of late, as yesterday Carlton neglected to walk his wife's dog, Punkin, leaving the dog to satisfy his bodily urges on the Shaftmans' carpet instead.  Carlton has also showed up today an hour late, and Mr Shaftman insists that he make up for it by staying an extra hour - this distresses Carlton, as he hasn't missed Happy Hour in three years.  As Mr Shaftman leaves, he warns Carlton that he's walking on very thin ice.

Carlton retires to the intercom room, and it becomes apparent (if it wasn't painfully obvious already) that he's not a very good doorman - one tenant, Mr Gleason (Paul Lichtman), complains about him having parked his car in a tow away zone, and Carlton lazily responds that he can't be blamed for the parking rules.  Carlton then gets a call from Mrs Shaftman (Lucille Meredith) who asks him to come up and collect Punkin for his walk.  Carlton does, but not before an extended gag in which we hear him noisily chugging down a can of booze across the intercom.  Carlton is apprehensive about setting foot in the Shaftmans' apartment because Mrs Shaftman has a tendency to try and seduce him whenever her husband isn't around.  It seems that Mrs Shaftman gets lonely whenever her gruff old husband leaves the building, and she's developed an unyielding lust for Carlton's sleazy young flesh, to the extent that when Carlton arrives, he finds her lying in wait naked in the bathtub and desperately trying to beckon him in with her (we don't get any glimpses of the naked Mrs Shaftman; nevertheless, it's at this point that it becomes crystal clear that this special never had any pretensions about being kid-friendly).  Mrs Shaftman's feelings for Carlton seem to be partially rooted in his reputation for being something of a horny menace himself; every other woman in the building has complained about Carlton hitting on them, so she wonders what makes her the exception.  Carlton counters that she's married and that while ordinarily he wouldn't let a silly little thing like that stand in the way of sexual conquest, she happens to be married to the one person whom he fears more than anything else in the world.  Carlton also refers to his own girlfriend, a beautician named Darlene, although he can't even bring himself to fake a convincing front of commitment toward her, even in the interests of keeping Mrs Shaftman at bay.

Carlton then collects the ill-fated dog Punkin, a scruffy, elderly little ankle-biter, and takes him for a walk in the park, where he runs into Mom, who's in the process of facing off against another bag lady for ownership of a discarded stocking.  He also spots a female jogger out for a run and...yeah, it's at this point that the story takes a sharp turn into particularly harrowing territory.  Carlton races after the jogger and attempts to pick her up with some vulgar chat-up lines, but she bluntly turns him down.  This doesn't deter Carlton, who continues to chase after her and hound her, all while ordering Punkin to keep up with him.  Unfortunately, the stamina doesn't come easily to such an elderly dog, and Punkin quickly winds up running to the point of exhaustion, whereupon he suffers a fatal heart attack and dies.

To the special's credit, Punkin's death is depicted in a sombre light immediately after the fact - there's a somewhat abrupt moment where Carlton attempts to will the dead dog (for whom rigor mortis has set in very quickly) back to life by dragging him behind him, which is played for laughs, but otherwise the music during this scene is sad and haunting, and it culminates in the tender image of Carlton picking up Punkin's body and cradling it in his arms.  A passing woman comments that Punkin is a cute dog and "so well-behaved", at which point Carlton is mournfully forced to admit that he's dead, and it's all pulled off so poignantly.  The sadness is so authentic that, the first time I saw this special, I genuinely believed that this would be the springboard to Carlton maturing, looking to take responsibility for his actions and seeking to better himself.  Unfortunately, no.  Enjoy this moment of  precious sensitivity, because it isn't going to last.

Actually, despite my above praise, I will say that the laugh track (which I've avoided commenting on up until now) is implemented very clumsily during the moments where Carlton stands over Punkin's dead body, and some of the stuff the "audience" appear to be reacting to (like the close-up image of Punkin's lifeless body featured above) seems disturbingly inappropriate.  In the following scene, we rejoin Carlton at a pet cemetery, where Punkin has been laid to rest, and watch him saying his goodbyes to the deceased dog - he seems entirely sincere as he addresses Punkin as "old friend" and implores him to tell the folks in the afterlife that his death wasn't Carlton's fault, but unfortunately it's undermined by the intrusiveness of that damned laugh track, which detracts from what could have been a genuinely heartfelt moment, however fleeting.  Carlton's self-centredness soon comes creeping back in when he complains about Punkin not being worth the $20 he's had to pay in cemetery fees (I know this was 1980 and all, but that honestly sounds like a bargain to me).

Carlton then sets about looking for a replacement for Punkin, hoping he can find a dog that bears enough of a resemblance to the deceased that he can pass it off as Punkin and the Shaftmans will be none the wiser.  Typically, sitcom plots and urban legends involving covert efforts to replace dead or missing pets don't end well, because the culprits invariably overlook some tiny detail which gives the game away (besides, anyone who's grown particularly close to their pet will almost certainly know the difference), and one senses that this is going to go down rather disastrously for Carlton.  He tries a dog pound, to no avail.  He then happens upon a pet shop, which has a dog for sale that's the spitting image of Punkin, only to learn that the dog has already been sold.  All of this stuff is pure filler, although the pet shop sequence does offer a few moments of pleasing quirkiness, thanks to the repartee between the owner and his verbose parrot.

His morning's worth of dog-hunting having proven entirely fruitless, Carlton retires to drown his troubles in another can of booze and complain to Ringo about his predicament.  He admits that he feels bad about Punkin but also has the view that he was an old dog, so it was just his time, which isn't entirely accurate.  Ultimately, he's more upset at what the consequences might be for him - namely, losing his job and having to face Mr Shaftman's wrath. Carlton then hits upon the wacky idea that he might be able to pass Ringo off as Punkin if he can give him a convincing enough makeover, whereupon he drags the reluctant cat over to see his aforementioned girlfriend, the beautician Darlene (Kay Cole).  Darlene works her magic and, through a series of techniques which look torturously painful for poor Ringo, manages to transform the cat into something resembling Punkin.  Carlton is so delighted that he professes his love for Darlene then and there, only to immediately turn tail on her when she suggests he quit drinking in exchange for the favour she just did him.  Instead, they reach a mutual agreement to have dinner together later that evening.

Carlton assures the miserable, disfigured Ringo that this will only be a temporary measure, until he's able to find another dog that looks like Punkin.  The obvious flaw in his plan, of course, is that Darlene couldn't do anything to modify Ringo's vocal cords - when he opens his mouth, cat noises still come out - so in order to pull of the deception, it's imperative that Ringo keep quiet.  Obviously, that's not going to happen.  When Carlton returns "Punkin" to Mrs Shaftman, she invites him into the apartment, ostensibly wishing to apologise for her behaviour from earlier, and all it takes is a few yowls from the furry imposter and an inconveniently-placed tray of sardines for the facade to come crashing down.   Mrs Shaftman demands to know what happened to her dog, at which point Carlton is finally forced to admit the truth.  Mrs Shaftman turns on Carlton in a display of devastated fury, just as Mr Shaftman arrives back at the apartment and learns of what happened.  He orders that Carlton go and wait out in the corridor, as Mrs Shaftman hisses her vengeful demands to her husband: "Fire him!  Have him arrested!  Kill him!"  As Mr Shaftman approaches him in the corridor, Carlton feebly tries to insist that what happened wasn't his fault.  Shaftman dourly observes that they had Punkin for fifteen years and that it won't be the same without him.  In what proves to be the special's deal breaker, he then lightens up in tone and professes that it will be wonderful.  The laugh track thinks that Mr Shaftman's unprecedented callousness is all great and hilarious, but as we've already established, this particular "audience" has extremely questionable taste.

Mr Shaftman states that he didn't care for Punkin because he barked a lot and because he made a mess on their carpet (but wait, wasn't that also Carlton's fault, for failing to walk him yesterday?).  He then adds that he can't hold Carlton responsible if Punkin died in his care, as he was an old dog.  Alright, that's a greatly less heartless perspective on things than the sentiments previously expressed, and I do wish that it had been his stance right from the beginning, but here's the problem - Carlton DID bring about Punkin's demise by forcing him to run much faster than his elderly body could cope with.  Punkin may have been old, but he could have lived for longer had Carlton been more sensitive to his needs.  This is something that the script gets around by simply ignoring in the end.  Perhaps Carlton could have pulled off this whole scenario if it was played as more of a mordant black comedy, but the final exchange between Carlton and Mr Shaftman is presented with total earnestness, as if we're meant to take it as a sign that he's not such a mean or scary boss after all.  Equally bothersome is just how casually Mrs Shaftman's feelings are cast aside in all of this.  Blatantly she loved her dog and is going to miss Punkin, yet the special doesn't do anything to address or remedy that.  Mrs Shaftman and her grief are completely forgotten as, in a moment which I suspect we're supposed to find genuinely heart-warming, Carlton and Mr Shaftman get unusually chummy and go off to bond over a bottle of champagne.  Frankly, I'm not surprised that Mr and Mrs Shaftman are having serious relationship problems.

In the final scene, we see Mom bringing Carlton a single glove she salvaged from the garbage.  Carlton seems to be in a generous mood, for he invites Mom to come and have dinner with himself and Darlene - I assume that this is the special's way of trying to hint that Carlton really is a swell guy deep down inside, even if we've just seen twenty-one minutes' worth of evidence to the contrary.  Meanwhile, Ringo is unhappy because he still looks like a dog and it'll apparently take two months for his appearance to return to normal.  Carlton jokes that until then Ringo shouldn't plan on any heavy dating, at which point the cat completely loses it and proceeds to maul his shiftless master's hide to ribbons.  The end.

The Verdict:

*Sigh*  I wanted to like this special.  I really did.  The ingredients were all there - a wonderful lead voice actor, appealing animation and an intriguing premise.  Instead, I'm left with the lingering question as to how such a crude and mean-spirited story managed to impress the powers-that-be enough to pick up an Emmy, beating out the Peanuts special She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, the Dr. Seuss-penned Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? and The Pink Panther in: Olym-Pinks.  I'll hazard a guess that the judges gave it points for being "different" - in an age where animation was regarded almost exclusively as a kids' affair, populated largely by magical beings and anthropomorphic creatures, I can see why some might have found Carlton's offbeat, adult-orientated roughness to be refreshing, but unfortunately none of that holds up with time.  As a voice actor, Lorenzo Music oozes likeability, so it's a grand thing that he would go on to a prosperous career across the next decade voicing one of the most iconic cartoon characters of the era.  Carlton Your Dog Killer and Sex Pest's post-Rhoda career began and ended with this special, and that's equally grand.  I couldn't objectively call it a worse one-off special/failed pilot than Hound Town, but it does leave a far, far nastier taste in the mouth.