Previously on WWW.TooManyServingsOfJohn.Com…
“And if I do my job, those answers will finally tell me WHY THE FLYING NUN EXISTS. Who came up with the idea? Who greenlit this stupid show? Why would Sally Field, a renowned and incredible actress, willingly be a part of this? Is this a real thing or did I go insane already? Why isn’t everyone asking these questions? I have found a way to watch all three seasons of The Flying Nun, and intend to do so and talk about it on the blog. But knowing me, I’m probably not going to get around to that for a while, so just disregard this hodgepodge of a post I threw together.”
That was a long time ago. But John never forgot about his stupid idea. Cut to present day!

The Flying Nun IMDb

Introduction –
In the modern day, no concept, TV show or movie is ever forgotten. Everything, no matter how stupid, has a fanbase of some kind, which has led to several ill-advised TV show revival/reboots and podcasts recapping the same TV shows hosted by someone from the cast, as well as many podcasts and deep dives done by completely random normal people. And don’t think I haven’t noticed, Hollywood, that there has been no word of a half-interesting recap podcast about The Flying Nun, let alone a revival or reboot. So I’m here to finally pay Sally Field’s seminal 1967 sitcom the respect it deserves, namely by convincing people that it is in fact real and not a thing I made up. When I was a child, I saw this show on MeTV, the channel for old TV shows, and immediately wondered: “What in the world is this?” I haven’t stopped thinking about it for years.
My plan is to recap/give my thoughts on every episode of this show, but also I kind of hate the idea of trying to do a long, considered, serious review of each episode of a show called The Flying Nun. So I’ve decided I’m going to give myself a word count limit and keep these short. Because nobody, including myself, thinks this show is funny enough for that much mileage. My plan is to cover 3-5 episodes per post, depending. It’s a very loose plan so far. I’m hoping if I can get into the groove of doing these, it’ll help me get back to consistently posting Ruddtrospectives. Dr. Seuss gave himself a word limit of using fifty of the same general words for Green Eggs and Ham. Let’s see if this, too, leads to some sort of creative breakthrough. Maybe years after I die, children will use my recaps of The Flying Nun to help them learn how to read. Who knows? Anyway, it’s time to dive into the world of The Flying Nun. Who is she? What makes her tick? Follow me as I explore a TV show so ahead of its time that its target audience still has yet to be born. Or am I the target audience? We’ll see.

The Flying Nun, 1.1: “The Flying Nun”
The Flying Nun is from New York and just began working at a convent in exceedingly windy San Juan, Puerto Rico. She starts flying while talking about how she wanted to be a bird? The explanation of why she can fly kind of sucks. She weighs ninety pounds and her cornette is shaped in such a way that makes it aerodynamic when countered with a large gust of wind. Okay. And then she makes the orphans at the convent much happier with just one Sound of Music-style song and montage. Mother Superior’s narration says that as Sally Field makes everyone at the convent happier, the children are given chances to express themselves as well, while a bunch of kids paint a car. That’s just child labor. Maybe they should just put all the kids in cornettes and set them loose on the village. There is a fun ongoing joke where she keeps showing up wherever this rich guy least expects it. This show is funnier than I expected. Toward the end of the episode, while flying, she falls out of the sky onto a military base, in the middle of the Cold War. Heh. What is kind of odd is that the back half of the episode is about them trying to prove to the military that Sally Field can fly without just having her fly in front of them. Why wouldn’t that work? Oh, and the Flying Nun has very hip sixties sensibilities that clash with the instincts of the more old-fashioned Reverend Mother. That’s where most of the narrative conflict comes from. Also she starts wearing fishing weights at the end of the episode so she doesn’t start flying all the time. End of Pilot.
Episode Rating – 7.5 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.2: “The Convert”
So as of this episode, they’re continuing the ongoing joke of Carlos Ramirez, a man we are continually told is a rich playboy and a con man and criminal, being startled and bewildered by her sudden appearance. And in this episode it sounds like he’s converted and become 100% religious after seeing Sister Bertrille (The eponymous Flying Nun) fly by his ship. There’s more singing in this episode. And for some reason Ramirez thinks he saw a religious vision, and that’s why he’s converted. But he saw her fly in the first episode and knew definitively he saw her fly. So the final joke of this plotline being that he immediately goes back to drinking and gambling once she shows him she can fly doesn’t work. I enjoyed the extended first episode and the random comedic beats, but I find this kind of narrative inconsistency insulting. And they want Carlos to be skeezy and unlikeable in a funny way, but I don’t know that it works. In this episode, an important religious guy comes to the convent and almost learns that Sally Field can fly but then doesn’t. Not much plot here. End of episode two.
Episode Rating – 5.3 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.3: “Old Cars For New”
This episode introduces two new things to the world of The Flying Nun. Firstly, a new element to Sister Bertrille’s backstory. She’s good with cars, and a solid mechanic. We’re now one step closer to unraveling the enigma that is Sister Bertrille, a quirky girl from New York that is somewhat clumsy but can fly. The second thing it introduces is the character of local car salesman Money Back Hernando, which is a great character name. He’s a fun conman kind of guy. Basically she buys a new car for the convent from Money Back Hernando and it doesn’t work unless you drive in reverse. And then she continues doing the thing where she shows up every time Carlos is about to be with a woman. If I didn’t make it clear, the general plot of this show is there’s a young Nun who sometimes flies and she has two mentors in the convent. The church is always in disrepair. The pipes burst and flood the basement in this episode. And there’s a local rich jerk named Carlos that Sister Bertrille is always running into. So she sells her old car to Hernando and buys a new one with the $800 of emergency money the church had saved up. On her way back to the convent her car breaks down and she borrows Carlos’s car and through a series of misunderstandings, the other convent members sell his car to Hernando and Sister Bertrille has to get it back, stranding Carlos in the middle of nowhere with his date during a thunderstorm, and Carlos goes insane. This is such a flimsy set-up for a television series. At the end they end up tricking Hernando into paying $3,000 for a car he payed $25 for, and everyone laughs at him when the car falls apart, including Hernando. It’s confusing. End of episode three.
Episode Rating – 6.2 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.4: “A Bell For San Tanco”
At the beginning of every episode, the narrator, Sister Jacqueline, says “Sister Bertrille can fly. No, not like in an airplane.” This is this show’s version of “My name is Barry Allen, and I’m the fastest man alive.” Apparently Sister Bertrille also knows how to fix bells, which she does at the beginning of the episode. She then rings the bell and it makes a noise that no bell has ever made before. The contrived premise for this episode: While fixing the bell, Bertrille learns of a sea wreck that might hold lost artifacts, including a new bell without a crack in it, and drives down to Carlos in the car she painted purple that stopped working and lost two of the doors at the end of the last episode (Another disgusting example of a lack of proper narrative flow) to ask him to take her out there in his boat and use his money to help her perform an ocean expedition? Is this a TinTin book? Also, Carlos has now hired a bodyguard to prevent Sally Field from showing up whenever he’s with random women, (It’s someone new every episode) but it doesn’t work. And then Carlos uses the idea of a treasure hunt to ignite more excitement in his relationship (Gross.). He goes into an old haunted house with his girlfriend looking for a clue well before he told Sister Bertrille they should go, but the Reverend Mother tells Sally Field to go at night too, and Carlos’s girlfriend mistakes the Nuns for ghosts. Because they’re wearing white. Great. The next day Carlos hides a bell in the water for Sally Field to find and bring back to the convent (The other one is broken) but his idiot bodyguard spills champagne on the fake map they made and they lose track of where they hid the bell and find it after several hours. And Carlos’s sad girlfriend gets pulled into the water trying to reel in a large fish, only for Sally Field to find her with her Flying Nun powers. And then his girlfriend leaves him because she mistakes flying Sister Betrille for a religious vision. This is a chaotic episode. Because, at the end, they accidentally found the real bell after all. End of episode four?
Episode Rating – 7.3 Sally Fields

The Flying Nun, 1.5: “The Fatal Hibiscus”
Within seconds of the episode beginning, Sister Bertrille accidentally flies through a newly finished stained-glass window, which the man making it had just claimed was his masterpiece. Another addition to the mythos of Sister Bertrille: She can’t handle it when the winds get too strong and she’s allergic to hibiscus. The Reverend Mother, always looking out for everyone, tells Sally Field she has to relocate to a convent with less windy climates. This is a particularly emotionally charged plotline. Sister Bertrille slowly becoming friends with the Reverend Mother has been the best part of these last few episodes. Carlos seems to actually be a semi-good person in this one. He’s actively trying to get Bertrille to stay. Of course, because it’s a sitcom, one of the other Nuns mishears Carlos talking to the Reverend Mother and assumes that Sister Bertrille is dying. Also because of all the Hibiscus, Sister Bertrille is crying all the time. Narratively, this is the best episode since the first one. I love a good “Everyone thinks they’re dying” plot. And then when the members of the convent see the Reverend Mother encourage Sister Bertram to work, they think she’s being unnecessarily cruel and turn on her. But then the Reverend Mother thinks that Bertrille is staging a mutiny against her! This is intense stuff. Instead of having us listen to the Reverend Mother and Sister Jacqueline finally figure out what’s going on, they montage through the revelation by flipping photos of them facing each other in shock with the voiceover: “Dying?” Transferred?” It’s much like a slideshow. Very funny. And of course, after the man managed to fix his window, Sister Bertrille flew through it once again. When the other convent arrives to pick up Sister Bertrille, townspeople and her students organize to protest her leaving. Including one child holding a sign that says “Sister Bertrille is Groovy.” In the end, the town and the convent’s love for Sister Bertrille leads the Reverend Mother to let her stay and give her the blessing to fly around for at least three seasons. The end is a montage of Sally Field dancing with balloons in the sky while children sing. What a great ending to a solid episode.
Episode Rating – 8.2 Sally Fields

Well, there you have it. I’ve begun my exploration of The Flying Nun and so far it’s honestly not that bad. I only saw a few episodes back when I was a kid, and I don’t remember it being this weird or occasionally surreally funny. So yeah. Join me next time as I venture deeper into the world of The Flying Nun.