“Swingtown” Is There A New Janet?
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- August
- 14
Our prissy little Janet seems to be loosening up, thank goodness. How so? After Tom gave her a no-big-deal kiss on the lips, she started to develop the hots for him and even went to a shrink to talk about it. I’m not saying that Janet’s having the hots for Tom is necessarily a good thing from a moral standpoint, but the simple idea of the wet rag even entertaining the thought shows that she might not be such a drag after all.
Then Janet, under the delusion that Tom has reciprocle feelings, decides that she must set him straight: A romance can’t ever happen. Tom, being a nice guy, humors her. I, not being so nice, rolled my eyes. Let us see what Janet’s future holds when she signs up with an employment agency to get a job. (How about a position in a Tupperware store…if there were such a thing?) 
And then there’s Susan, who has already proved that she’s got a mind that is open to at least a bit of experimenting. She even did some phone-flirting with Roger! And later, Roger called Susan at the cabin and is totally bummed that she didn’t pick up the phone in time.
And how about that thinks-she-knows-it-all minx Laurie? As they say, youth is wasted on the young. She was lucky that, while hitch-hiking it away from the family’s country cabin, that she was picked up by an innocuous senior citizen lady instead of some big-time perv guy who could have raped her—or worse.
I can see why Susan and Bruce, who had intercepted her at the diner, eventually let Laurie take off with Doug, with Susan first giving Laurie her semi-blessing and Bruce giving her some cash. That Laurie is one headstrong chick. And there’s that adage: If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever; if it doesn’t, it never was. Corny, yes, but there is some truth to it.
The installment ended up with Tom and Trina reverting to their old ways by “swinging” with another couple. A leopard can’t change its spots.
The weekly background-song count: Real: “Disco Lady” and “Running on Empty.” Can you imagine how horrible it would have sounded if they had used a Jackson Browne sound-alike to sing “Running on Empty?” It would have put a kabosh on the whole meaning the episode and its relation to the song. I’d like to add that the album “Running on Empty” wasn’t released until 1977. Perhaps the single came out in 1976, or were the writers hoping that we wouldn’t notice? And there were three songs I couldn’t quite ID. 
As for tomorrow’s show, it’s called “Get Down Tonight.” See Tom do his best imitation—complete with the white three-piece suit and his hand pointing up—of John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever.” Then again, the iconic film didn’t premiere until well into the next year, on December 14, 1977. Go figure. Was Tom a trendsetter, or were the writers hoping that we wouldn’t notice? The Millers enjoy a night of line-dancing with the Deckers, and Janet starts a temp job with a local newspaper. Working at a newspaper myself, I will be very interested to see how that situation unfolds. Also, tomorrow may be the “Swingtown’s” swan song. It was a summer replacement series, and next week a pre-season football game is in its time slot. I can’t say that I will miss this show. But I can say that I enjoyed hearing some my old faves on its soundtrack. (Photos by Monty Brinton/CBS.)
This entry was posted
on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 4:30 pm by Jenny Higgons.
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