The quickest way for any series to create a cringeworthy moment for future generations is to give in to the fads of the time and do something to appeal to the young'uns in the audience. The tastes of said young'uns are by definition mutable, so what appeals to the youth in one decade will by necessity be seen as cheesy by those in the next. That's what makes it so hard to watch a third season episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., for instance, though they all seemed like good ideas at the time. It's hard to imagine that anyone saw The Way To Eden as a good idea, though. While all the instances of future hippy-speak are bad enough, not to mention the brief and bizarre recasting of Chekov into an 'establishment' figure, it's the constant singing by Adam, played by the late Charles Napier of Silence of the Lambs fame, that makes this episode particularly difficult to sit through. Sure, the jam session with Spock in the rec lounge later in the episode is almost bearable - at least, compared with previous jam sessions held there - and if that were the only time Adam sings in this episode, this entry would be much further down the list, if it appeared at all. But Adam never stops singing, the songs themselves are dumb, and it gets well and truly annoying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L36V8z20U4k No wonder Hannibal Lechter killed him so brutally - poison fruit was too good for him.
Tony Whitt has previously written TV, DVD, and comic reviews for CINESCAPE, NOW PLAYING, and iF MAGAZINE. His weekly COMICSCAPE columns from the early 2000s can still be found archived on Mania.com. He has also written a book of gay-themed short stories titled CRESCENT CITY CONNECTIONS, available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle format. Whitt currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
