Route 66

Tod Stiles (left) and Buz Murdock (right).

A four-season television drama series starring Martin Milner (later of Adam-12) and George Maharis. It chronicles two heroic drifters Walking the Earth (or at least the continental United States) in a Corvette convertible. Each week Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock, and then Murdock's Suspiciously Similar Substitute Lincoln Case, stumble upon different Adventure Towns and take odd jobs to support themselves while committing random acts of kindness, chasing skirts, putting right what once went wrong, wearing skinny late-50s ties, &c..

The writing can be clever, nuanced, and heartfelt, but whether due to a changed social landscape, the dawn of the cynical age, or the fact that invariably any drama will have scenes that miss their mark, it is also victim of extensive Narm. Of course, YMMV. The series ran from 1960 to 1964, a period that still falls thematically into the era exemplified by The Fifties (as opposed to The Sixties). The series also heavily subverts Hollywood Atlas stereotypes, as Route 66 had a roving production set-up and episodes were filmed on location throughout Flyover Country.

Tropes used in Route 66 include:
  • Adventure Towns: Real cities across the US serve this function as the two leads take odd jobs.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Tod and Buz pull this pose when outnumbered by a gang of hoodlums, complete with the camera panning around them.
  • Bifauxnen: Jan in "Sleep on Four Pillows".
  • Book Dumb: Buz. He claims he received a diploma without being able to spell "diploma", and in the first episode confuses the homophones "poor" and "pour": "We're P-O-U-R."
    • Yet later episodes show that with nothing better to do, he'll settle in with Shakespeare and Hemingway.
  • Character Filibuster
  • Contemplate Our Navels: Tod and Buz are "searching" for "something" and along the way they're going to spend a lot of time musing philosophically.
    • A lot of the writing is reminiscent of Faulkner on a comprehensible day.
  • Cool Car: Tod's Corvette, the last gift his wealthy father gave him before bankruptcy and death. Somehow he gets a new model every season.
  • Corrupt Hick: The antagonist of the very first episode, in fact.
  • Department of Child Disservices: Buz's experiences, and in one episode he almost cries because Tod returns a runaway orphan to a state-run orphanage. In another episode, he himself tries to bring a child to the attention of the authorities because of the boy's alcoholic father. That episode suggests that it would be better if Social Services Did Not Exist and that everyone's alcoholism could be cured with a simple moral lesson, like "be responsible for yourself and your offspring" which is a tad idealistic.
  • Estrogen Brigade Bait: Between swim trunks, lots of shirtless scenes and wet shirt scenes, almost every inch of the men gets its turn on display. Buz's tiny black Speedo gets special mention.
  • Evil Twin: "I'm Here to Kill a King" features an assassin who looks exactly like Tod and is played by Martin Milner.
  • Family Versus Career: This is kind of the situation in "Poor Little Kangaroo Rat", where a Married to the Job scientist's wife threatens to take their son and leave him. Tod believes that family should be his first priority and finds his neglect of them disgusting. Buz solves the problem by reminding the man's wife that a woman's place is supporting her husband, no matter what financially precarious and ulcer-inducing work he may choose. He's a man, you see, and that means he's got to have an identity outside the house, outside the family sphere. Whereas...

Buz: Don't you think he has the right to do any kind of work he wants to? ... He's a man. Do you have the right to force him to be something less than a man, because all you understand is that he owes you companionship? What about the companionship that you owe him?

    • ... she's a woman, so she should get back in the kitchen and scrape together a pie using whatever she can find in the almost-bare cupboards. That will be a comfort to him. She's utterly convinced by this, too.
  • Fauxlosophic Narration: Several episodes, where (usually) Tod's narrations are pseudo-Contemplate Our Navels affairs that try to make this particular run-in with a beautiful or troubled woman seem more extraordinary than usual.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: Tod and Buz. They have a joint bank account.
  • Hidden Depths: Buz is presented as a barely literate street-fighter type, but his narrations are just as poetic as Ivy League-educated Tod's.
  • Ice Cream Koan: Frequent.

Mechanic: Who are you fellas?
Buz: Who're we supposed to be?
Audience: ...

...and no, we don't mean 8.1240384.

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