Zorro and Son: Failed 1983 TV Series--Interesting Random Facts

I  haven't really talked much about the Zorro TV series on this blog before.  (Although I mentioned it in passing HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.)  But Disney's Zorro series was a big part of my childhood.  

The show was originally on TV in 1957-1959, before my time, but reruns of the show were a staple of the Disney channel in the 1980s.

At some point, I would love to do a watch through of the whole series, from beginning to end, and add it to my TV show review project.  But that's going to have to be a project reserved for the distant future, at this point.  For one thing, I don't have a lot of free time these days with two young kids.  For another thing, I don't have any way of getting ahold of the whole series out here in Vietnam.  Even if I was back in the US, it might be difficult to track down the whole series.  According to Wikipedia:

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the entire series on DVD in Region 1 on November 3, 2009, under their Walt Disney Treasures banner featuring several bonus features.^[7] however like many other Disney releases it was available for a limited time, before entering moratorium and put back in the Disney Vault along with the other Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets.

... (*sigh*) typical Disney marketing strategy.  (See Disney Vault and Artificial Scarcity)

But nevertheless, watching the whole Zorro series all the way through is one of my someday projects.

I watched a lot of Zorro as a kid, but of course the nature of TV back then is that you just tuned in when you could, and you could catch the odd episode, but it was very difficult to follow the whole storyline.  

You see, the old Zorro TV series had storylines.  Each episode was independent in that each episode had its own mini-conflict, and it's own climax (there was always a fight at the end in which Zorro won), but it was also part of a larger story-arc which (if memory serves) was typically about 6 episodes long.

[Sidenote 1: Conventional wisdom is that television couldn't get away with serialized storylines until DVDs and streaming services emerged, which allowed viewers to catch up on the back-episodes that they had missed, and keep up with the story.  Which is why TV shows were always episodic in my childhood in the 1980s, but nowadays every TV episode is always part of a longer story arc.  But I wonder... was there a brief window at the beginning of television in the 1950s when serialized storylines were more common?  Or was Zorro just ahead of its time?]

Now, the storylines at the beginning of the Zorro series were relatively simple.  An evil Comandante would oppress the townsfolk.  Zorro would foil the Comandante's evil plans for about 6 episodes.  Then eventually the Comandante would be killed.  Then a new Comandante would take his place.  There would be a brief period of optimism  in which the townspeople hoped that this Comandante would be good.  But then, he would turn out to be just as oppressive as his predecessor, and Zorro would have to fight the new Comandante.

I actually saw the first several story arcs in order.  You see, during the 1980s, the Disney channel was mostly using Zorro as filler during the weekdays.  But then, at one point, they moved it to their prime-time slot on Friday nights, and they made a big deal about how they were going to start at episode, one, and show the series in order, one episode a week.  

I think I saw the first 4 story arcs in order this way (which equals about 24 episodes).  But I never made it through the whole series.  

I'm not sure if I got distracted and stopped watching, or if the Disney channel might have given up on the idea, and gone back to just showing Zorro in the afternoons.  I think it was the latter, but I don't remember.  It could also have been that there was some sort of change in my schedule, and I wasn't able to watch Zorro on Friday nights. (As a child, it was hard to be dedicated to watching any TV show, because my mother had this crazy idea that life was not to be arranged around TV schedules.  There were real-life events, like school, soccer games, church, youth group, family gatherings, etc, and all of them were to be given priority over TV schedules.  If a family gathering was scheduled for a night when Zorro was on TV, so much the worse for Zorro.)

So anyways, I made it through roughly the first 3 or 4 story arcs in the Zorro series in order.  But the other episodes, I just caught on weekday afternoons at random when I could.

And despite only running for 2 seasons, there were a lot of episodes.  According to Wikipedia, 39 episodes per season.  So, about 80 episodes.  Plus the follow-up specials.  

[Sidenote 2: Boy, they sure did crank out the TV episodes back in the day, didn't they?  Strange to think about nowadays when we're so used to thinking about a season of a TV series being 10 episodes.  (Of course, that's prestige TV I'm thinking off.  Maybe the regular sitcoms are still being cranked out weekly.  I don't know, I've been abroad for so long I'm out of touch with regular TV schedules.)  But still, 39 episodes a season is quite a schedule, isn't it?  And I know they didn't spend a lot of money on special effects, but all those fight scenes must have taken time to choreograph, right?

Actually speaking of fights, that brings me to Sidenote 3:  Whatever happened to all those great stage fight scenes that used to be in old TV shows?  Is it just me, or is the action in TV shows nowadays really boring?  As I noted in my retrospective on Star Trek, I really like the choreography of the big stage fight scenes, that used to be so common in TV shows in the 50s and 60s.  Why did this go out of style?]

...where was I?

Ah, yes, the point being that as a kid I never saw the whole series straight through, and so would just pick up bits and pieces of random storylines.  And although the early storylines were very simple (there's a new Comandante in town, Zorro has to fight him), somewhere along the line things must have started to get more complex.

For example, I remember in second grade tuning into an episode of Zorro one afternoon, and watching An Eye for an Eye (Season 2 Episode 7), in which the viewer is dropped into a storyline about a little civil war going on between Governor Luis Rico and his men and the bandit Joaquin Castenada and his men.  Zorro is caught in the middle of this little war, and tries to keep the peace between both sides.

Zorro S02E07 An Eye for an Eye

It's clear from the beginning of the episode that this is a conflict that had already been established in previous episodes.  But where did Joaquin Castenada and his gang come from?  How did this little war get started?  What episodes had I missed?

I suppose some people would be frustrated by this, but as a child I was fascinated by this.  I was captivated by the idea that there was this larger, richer story out there somewhere, and that I could only get little glimpses of it, but that by digging around a bit, I could hope to gradually uncover more of it.  (That is, if I kept watching Zorro episodes, maybe someday I'd discover more about who Joaquin Castenada was, and how this whole conflict got started in the first place.)

This was the exact same thing that so captivated my imagination about the convoluted continuity of comic books when I was a teenager.  (i.e. there was this decades long backstory to the characters that I didn't have access to, but if I kept searching the comic bins and buying back issues, the story would gradually become clearer and clearer.)

...although, that being said, I still to this day have not yet watched the whole storyline of Joaquin Castenada and his gang.  But someday I'll track down and watch the whole series!

[Sidenote 4: I've been googling it now, and it's hard to find a lot of information on the Internet about this storyline.  Although I did find this article HERE  which claims that the storyline was based off of real-life outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, but seen through the conservative lens of 1950s Hollywood: 

In the late 1950s, the hero of Walt Disney’s TV series Zorro, played by Guy Williams, was often seen as the “good” rebel while Joaquin Castaneda, clearly modeled on Joaquin Murieta, was presented as the example of the irresponsible “bad” rebel who Zorro constantly had to lecture to and keep in line. 

...the same article goes on to say that Joaquin Murieta was also a character in 2005's The Mask of Zorro:

In an ingenious touch, the screenwriters of The Mask of Zorro had Joaquin Murieta’s brother, Alejandro, played by Antonio Banderas, become the new Zorro after Joaquin’s death.

...which, I've just checked Wikipedia on this, and it seems to be true!  Interesting.]

But all of that is simply a digression.  The point of this post is that I wanted to talk about a failed 1983 TV series called Zorro and Son which was supposed to Disney's follow up to the 1958 Zorro series.

I just found out about this show recently while browsing Wikipedia: 

In 1983 a comedy follow-up, Zorro and Son, aired on CBS. The series was shot in color on many of the same studio lots where the original was filmed. Featuring none of the original cast (Gene Sheldon and Henry Calvin had passed away by then, while Guy Williams walked out after a script dispute), the show performed poorly in the ratings.

1983 was actually during my lifetime, but I was still young and don't really have any memories of this show being a thing.  (Although, this was only a few years before I got really into Disney's Zorro.  And I think I do vaguely recall my dad or somebody saying to me that there had been a sequel to Zorro about Zorro's son, that it was supposed to be a comedy, and that it wasn't very good.  So I guess I was vaguely aware of it.

Episodes of the show can be found on Youtube.  Of course.

I've just watched the first one now, and I've got to say, it's not very good.

Zorro and Son 1983 episode 1 HD

The general concept is okay, but the problem is that it's just not funny.  Like, really not funny.  Like, the jokes are so cringe!

Well, that's the problem with writing comedy, huh?  You can have a really good idea for a sitcom, but actually making it funny is a difficult business.

Part of me thinks it's too bad that Guy Williams couldn't be convinced to come back for this role.  (It would've been nice to see him as Zorro one last time.)  But part of me recognizes it's probably for the best he didn't come back for this.

(Plus, I don't really need to see him one last time as Zorro.  I still have 80 episodes of the original TV show I need to catch up on first!)

Addendum 1:

While I'm on Wikipedia, the story behind the cancellation of the original Zorro series is kind of interesting: 

Despite good ratings (#30 in Season 1 with a 26.6 rating), the series ended after two seasons due to a financial dispute between Disney and the network over ownership of Zorro, Mickey Mouse Club, and the Disney anthology television series (at the time titled Disneyland). During the legal battle, Disney produced four new hour-long Zorro adventures of the franchise, aired on the anthology series: Zorro: El Bandido (October 30, 1960); Zorro: Adios El Cuchillo (November 6, 1960); Zorro: The Postponed Wedding (January 1, 1961); and Zorro: Auld Acquaintance (April 2, 1961). Guy Williams was kept on full salary during this period. But by the time Disney and ABC resolved their differences, Walt Disney decided that public interest in the character had flagged. Disney continued to pay $3,500 per year until 1967 to retain the television rights.^[5]

See also this Youtube video:

Why Did WALT DISNEY Cancel ZORRO At The HEIGHT of its POPULARITY?

Addendum 2:

As a kid, I had always assumed the character of Zorro had a legacy in books and folklore.  I was surprised, when I looked on Wikipedia, to see how scanty his legacy really is.  

Zorro is not some old folk legend that dates back to colonial times, but a rather recent pulp fiction character created in 1919.  And he only appeared in one novel before he started getting adapted to screen (although more short stories did come afterwards):

Zorro debuted in Johnston McCulley's novel The Curse of Capistrano, serialized in five parts between August 9 and September 6, 1919, in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly.^[2] The story was originally meant as a standalone tale, and at the denouement, Zorro's true identity is revealed to all.

Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, on their honeymoon, selected the story as the inaugural picture for their new studio, United Artists, beginning the character's cinematic tradition.^{[citation needed]} The novel was adapted as the film The Mark of Zorro (1920), which Fairbanks produced, co-wrote and starred in as Diego/Zorro. The movie was a commercial success,^[2] and the 1924 reprint of McCulley's story by publisher Grosset & Dunlap used the same title, capitalizing on the movie's popularity. The novel has since been reprinted using both titles.

In response to public demand fueled by the film, McCulley wrote more than sixty more Zorro stories, beginning in 1922 with The Further Adventures of Zorro, which was also serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly.

Given my childhood interest in Zorro, it's on my someday reading list to read the original novel.  It's on project Gutenberg now, and I did buy a Kindle for precisely this kind of thing.  Maybe I could even squeeze it in this year for Garbaugust?  We'll see.

Addendum 3 (Update July 21, 2023): Now I've got Whisky watching Mask of Zorro