I found no bookmarks. Just magnetic poker chips, Vegas t-shirts that didn’t match what I wanted in a nice view of the Strip or something else that represents the Vegas I love, shot glasses, and those pens with the liquid at the top that, when you turn it upside down, the outfits fade from the women, revealing all.
Walking to the register to see if there might be any bookmarks around it, I stopped at a small flatscreen TV showing clips from a Vegas tour DVD made up of the sights, in high definition. There was the Luxor pyramid, the synchronized Bellagio waterfalls, the Venetian gondolas. It was obviously a souvenir for tourists. But to me, it was an historical document. It was shot in October 2007. I knew that because Toni Braxton’s picture was on the side of the Flamingo, when she was performing there. And the palm trees were being blown around more than usual by very heavy winds. In the Santa Clarita Valley, at the same time, vicious Santa Ana winds had triggered many wildfires, one of which caused my family and I to evacuate our house for the day. Luckily, it was only for the day.
That latter detail didn’t matter to me while I watched the scenes advertising that DVD. I only remembered it as a reference point to establish when this had been. Now, Donny & Marie Osmond are on the side of the Flamingo. I like to remember who performed where and when in Las Vegas like baseball fans love their statistics, so this DVD would have been important for me to have. However, I went back and forth on it. Did I really need it just for that? Why would I have this DVD when I’d soon have the sights of Las Vegas available to me all the time as a resident? Isn’t it enough just to remember that Toni Braxton performed at the Flamingo for a time?
I left without buying the DVD, but in April, it nagged me. I bumped into a website called the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Gift Shop, found the exact DVD, and bought it. I needed the DVD for its history that always means a great deal. Later this month, Las Vegas will become my home and I want to know absolutely everything about it and Nevada, which entails ransacking the Nevada history sections of my local library system. I’m going to explore every inch of the state in the years to come. Every detail matters to me.
Knowing from Vega$: The Third Season, Volume One that the last half of this final season was not likely to get better, I looked at Volume Two as an historical document. During the theme music alone, there are marquees touting Wayne Newton at the Desert Inn, Sammy Davis, Jr. at Caesars Palace, Folies Bergere ’80 at Tropicana, Dean Martin at the MGM Grand in its Celebrity Room, overseen by musical director Ken Lane. After the theme song, the first episode of this set, “Heist,” shows Folies Bergere ’81 at Tropicana, as well as it being “home of NBC’s “Las Vegas Gambit” starring Wink Martindale.” Tony Bennett and David Brenner are at the Desert Inn, which is the central hotel and casino in the series, and Wayne Newton is at the Frontier. All real-life signs, since the series was filmed entirely in Las Vegas.
And think about this. See The Desert Inn right there? That’s where the Wynn stands now. Amazing to think that Las Vegas was once a smallish town, huh? These moments, noticing the marquees and the streets of Vegas as they once were (though I’m not yet good enough to know immediately what street Robert Urich’s Dan Tanna is driving on), help get through the continually ridiculous plots and the equally taxing performances by some of the guest actors.
In “Heist,” two security guards are shot dead during a robbery of the Desert Inn, and owner Philip Roth (Tony Curtis, who I wish had been available more for the third season because he’s one of the few bright spots just by his sheer go-for-broke style) wants Tanna to lead a team to knock over one of his casinos in order to expose any security flaws so that a Desert Inn robbery doesn’t happen again, nor any at his four other casinos. Tanna gathers a team that doesn’t include his trusted legman Binzer (Bart Braverman) or his secretary Beatrice (Phyllis Davis) because they don’t need to get mixed up in this. It’s more complex than that, or so it would seem if the arrangements for the heist weren’t so boring. Only Siegfried Klaus (Werner Klemperer; yes, Colonel Klink himself) is the most interesting figure because he remains so proper and low-key about the whole thing. The inside of the money-holding room has to be taped so that he can have that tape be the one that the security guard sees on the monitor and thinks that everything in the room is status quo, while a large rectangular hole is blown into the room for the sacks of cash to be taken. It has to be done, and so Klaus does. No complaints. No questions. He knows what to do.
There’s a scene in which Klaus and a shakier associate in this heist are walking down the hallway toward the money-holding room, and there’s no security! Nothing! Not one guard with a gun, not one vigilant pair of eyes. We learn later that it’s because of Roth, who has this all wrong. If he really wanted to find holes in the security that need to be patched up, then keep security as it is. There would have been more suspense that way, much more excitement than seeing Burton Cohen himself saying hello to Tanna and introducing himself to the rest of Tanna’s table. At the time, Cohen was the real-life president of the Desert Inn, and was the one that pushed for the Desert Inn to give full cooperation to Vega$. More Vegas history for me to absorb, which is exciting, but the heist should be just as exciting, not with as many holes as the fictional Desert Inn’s security has.
This second half of the final season is really only good for the actors who appear. Not just Tony Curtis, but also Victor Buono as Diamond Jim, a kind of guru for Tanna who gives all the right insight, and gambles smartly at blackjack and roulette, all the while with his trademark glass of milk in front of him and his three women at his side. I’m fond of Buono because of his performance as President William Howard Taft in the 1979 miniseries Backstairs at the White House, and while Diamond Jim would definitely not exist in today’s Las Vegas, I could imagine him back then at one of the casinos, so many stories emanating from him. Las Vegas can give you many stories every half second, so at least Vega$ knows what it has there.
In the third-to-final episode (the series finale, by the way, isn’t a series finale since the production likely thought it would be renewed), Wayne Newton appears not as himself, but a Wayne Newton that owns the Aladdin and performs two shows a night, every night of the week. Newton is being stalked by a man who sees him as an imposter, and the stalker believes himself to be the real Wayne Newton, first sending him an exploding flower box and then shooting at him at his palatial home, Casa de Shenandoah, which is still in Vegas today. In fact, the home is currently embroiled in a legal battle over Newton wanting to turn most of his property and some of the land across from it into a museum and tour, which includes showing off the wildlife on the property. The manager of the project claims that Newton hasn’t yet made good on his intent to move out of his mansion for it to be turned into a museum and to choose a new site on the property to build his new home, and Newton’s side says that his accuser’s inaction has caused countless delays on the project. It’s an only in Vegas thing, and it’s never boring.
Not only does this particular episode have what must be the shortest car chase in TV history, but it is also the most suspense-free stalker episode ever. It’s just waiting and waiting, bored, for the inevitable climax. Plus, Richard Lynch, who plays Benjamin Lang, the stalker, is too over-the-top in his performance, even for a series like this. He’s on par with the criminals who seek Binzer for payback in “Time Bomb.” Yeah, these performances are funny because of how overdone they are, but more frustrating than entertaining. I know it’s an Aaron Spelling show, and I used that mantra just like I did with the first volume, but when the only thing you’re getting out of it is the chance to see Vegas as it once was, it’s hard to remember that.
Newton is wonderfully game, though, plus he performs a few songs, so you also get a sense of what he was like back then as Mr. Las Vegas. In a way, as you see, he still is today. Had Vega$ gone on into a fourth season, the end of Newton’s episode presents a very intriguing proposition, one of which might have helped in the times that Tony Curtis wasn’t available to guest-star. As if Las Vegas itself wasn’t promoted enough in this series, this would have boosted the sparkle of the city even more.
Paramount has it all wrong yet again. Volume one of the third season is going for $26.93 on Amazon. That much for only 11 episodes. This second volume, coming out in two weeks, is pegged at $27.99 on Amazon. Only for 12 episodes? For fans of the series who have got more stamina than I do for this, breaking the season in two and selling the halves separately interrupts the rhythm of the season. And if each season had been sold as one season, Paramount could have charged more, and got bigger profits right away, because obviously the series has sold well enough to see it being sold all the way to the end. And still no further seasons of The Love Boat, but that’s another issue for another day (Come on, Shout Factory! Make Paramount a deal and take ownership of it!). As our entertainment increasingly becomes digital, this practice of selling these seasons in volumes is as ridiculous as the writing on this series. Treat the consumer better than this and you’ll have your money.
Vega$ is meant to be pure entertainment, to not think at all and just be dazzled. But it’s hard to do that when the writing treats viewers like idiots. Not that it has to be complex, but more excitement requires more thought, better-choreographed car chases if necessary, characters that would put certain areas in Vegas at risk for their own selfish reasons, but done more intriguingly. Hollywood seems to think that Las Vegas is theirs to do whatever they want with it, just because of the Strip with all those marquees and signs and those stunning views at night. But there are more interesting stories than they come up with, much more to learn in quieter times. Vega$ is unforgettable to me not because of the sheer silliness, but because it’s an inextricable part of the city’s history. It was there, and it will always have a place because of that. At best, it’s not the NBC series Las Vegas, which pissed on the city, treated it like a piñata, and goosed it a few times before running off, laughing. Despite a mostly crappy script, Lucky You, starring Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore, is one of the great Vegas movies because it exists in the reality of the city. The great Vegas TV series has not been made yet, but at least Vega$ respects what it was back then.
