DO THE MARIO!
Hey Paisanos! Are you high right now? We are!
The Super Mario Brothers Super Show! was more than just an accomplishment in the history of television. It was more than just a stepping stone in video games exceeding the profitability of the movie industry. It was the ultimate form of entertainment. The ultimate combination of sadism, hilarity, and outright mental illness on the part of the writers and directors. Yet another of the great achievements in 1989, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show! took the entertainment ball and ran 88 miles per hour towards the end zone of accidental greatness, stiff-arming right through the opponent's rib cage and continuing to run with an impaled corpse on one arm. The above picture taken from the opening theme should say it all: "We're both criminally insane, wearing plumber outfits, and can see you through the TV screen."
Even now, after recalling the full-on assault to the senses that was the opening theme song, I'm having trouble deciding whether my childhood experiences of watching this show should be considered rewarding and worthwhile or personality-alteringly traumatic. What I do know is that while I was raised on Super Mario Brothers and after-school cartoons, a fully grown man or hyperintelligent sasquatch came up with the idea to combine the two. I'm picturing the process of getting the whole thing past the initial stages, but I'm still baffled. I can only speculate that the whole thing went down like this...
WRITER A: OK, here's what I'm thinking. Stay with me on this. We're gonna make Super Mario Brothers into a cartoon series... You following this?
TV EXEC: Yeah, no problems there. Sounds feasible. We've been toying with the idea of a video game to cartoon for a while now. They've been getting popular with the kids these days. Go on.
WRITER B: Well, we were watching Mr. Belvedere while conjuring the whole thing up, and we think maybe we'll combine the show into a live action sitcom format too.
WRITER A: Yeah, and we've got the perfect candidate for playing the part of Mario. We just got finished playing some Super Mario Brothers after smoking crack cocaine for several hours, and when we turned it off, Saturday Night's Main Event was on. So we got to thinking, "You know, Captain Lou Albano would make a perfect Mario."
TV EXEC: I've heard some bad ideas before, but... no, wait, come here a sec... (kicks WRITER A full in groin) THAT'S WHAT I FUCKING THINK OF THAT FUCKING IDEA! WHAT ARE YOUR NAMES? I'LL REMEMBER NEVER, EVER TO EVEN THINK OF LOOKING AT ANYTHING HAVING TO DO WITH ANYONE WITH EITHER OF YOUR FIRST OR LAST NAMES! JESUS CHRIST! CAPTAIN LOU ALBANO? FUCK YOU! MARIO SITCOM! FUCK! GET THE FUCK OUT! GOD! MORONS!
...is what I would picture in a sane world. Instead, they got the green light to do exactly what they envisioned while incredibly bored and likely extremely intoxicated or high.
The Super Mario Brothers Super Show! starring Captain Lou Albano as Mario in a combination live-action sitcom and cartoon show.
Luigi eating a plate. If you've been watching for this long, there's no way you'll think that's out of the ordinary.
It's not like the writers came up with the idea and went blank, either. They came up with around 65 episodes of this. Some very worthy shows get cut off after the pilot, but I guess when you come up with ideas for episodes where Luigi eats plates and Cyndi Lauper gets help from the Mario Brothers to find the missing Captain Lou Albano, the TV executives can't possibly argue. They also had episodes with Ernie Hudson from the Ghostbusters, Roddy Piper, and Magic Johnson, among others.
Ernie Hudson shows up to bust some ghosts.
The cartoon part of the show was pretty standard stuff for kids, but the sitcom format was really where the show was genius. The Mario Brothers, Mario Mario (Captain Lou Albano) and Luigi Mario (Danny Wells, who had guest roles in shows such as Hunter, Small Wonder, Punky Brewster, and The Jeffersons) were local Brooklyn plumbers who got into all sorts of zany misadventures in their shop. Supposedly the show took place before they went to the Mushroom Kingdom. I'm not sure where it stands in the timeline of Mario saving his girlfriend from a giant psycho gorilla.
Left: Mario gets his mind switched with a monster by Dr. Frank N. Stein.
Right: The doctor fixes this by hitting them with a hammer.
One time the brothers got into a weird mix-up when Dr. Stein showed up at their shop with a strange box. One thing led to another, and Mario winded up getting his brain switched with a monster. Get it? The doctor was some Jewish guy named Frank N. Stein! The whole thing got resolved after he hit both of them in the head with a large mallet. Right now, you're probably thinking, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." That may be, but it's actually pretty standard sitcom stuff. It just goes to show you that all sitcoms are, in fact, written by a crazy person with a horrible IQ. Don't try to tell me Friends was written any better. At this point, I wonder how they never got around to making a game based on the show based on the game. I'm looking at you, next-gen game consoles.
After it was all over, everybody danced, just like in Footloose.
But the best thing about the show was the ending theme. At the end, the Mario Brothers and whoever the guest was would dance and tell you to "DO THE MARIO!" This was followed by the credits, where Mario would sing the "DO THE MARIO!" theme song and dance, based on the NES game music. The lyrics went something like this:
DO THE MARIO! Swing your arms from side to side, come on, it's time to go DO THE MARIO! Take one step, and then again, let's DO THE MARIO! All together now! You got it! It's the Mario! DO THE MARIO! Swing your arms from side to side, come on, it's time to go DO THE MARIO! Take one step, and then again, let's DO THE MARIO! All together now! Come on now, JUST LIKE THAT!
Captain Lou Albano "DOING THE MARIO!" If you've never seen it, you don't deserve to live.
The end credits can be best described as a combination of watching someone dancing the way black people make fun of the way white people dance, taking a large dose of hallucinogenic drugs, and having a self-induced seizure. To those of you who used to watch the show, don't you dare tell me you ever heard the NES Super Mario Brothers theme song the same way again. Captain Lou Albano would owe the entire dancing world, as well as all people who have sight, an apology, if not for the fact that he has experience as a wrestling heel and could easily tear your head off should you demand one to his face.
Throughout the process, from the people who somehow were original and psychotic enough to come up with the idea to the finished product of about 65 episodes, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show! achieved a level of accidental greatness so high that nothing I've seen since has come close. I've become so jaded that any and all television, when prompting us to react, fails to succeed in my case. It wouldn't matter if Kramer goofily stormed into Jerry's apartment, raped him, and chopped off Elaine's head with a katana sword. I would still think back to Luigi eating a plate and realize that the height of television's peak of perfection has come and gone.
Although that Seinfeld scenario would have come close.
JUST LIKE THAT!
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