"I Was a 99lb. Weaking"

Recently, I started re-watching season two of The Monkees for research for a future post.  This morning, I watched "I Was a 99lb. Weakling."  When he's trying to convince Micky to sign up for his fitness class, Shah-Ku says, "It is truly written that the coward dies a thousand deaths; the brave man only five hundred or so."  This joke also appears in The Music Man (1962).  Professor Hill tells Marian Paroo, "A coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man only five hundred."  Apparently, both of these jokes refer to lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:  "Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once" (II.ii.32-33).

"I Was a 99lb. Weakling"

According to Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, "I Was a 99lb. Weakling" - the thirty-eighth episode of The Monkees series (and the sixth of the second season) - was broadcast fifty years ago to-day (16 October 1967).  It was written by Gerald Gardner, Dee Caruso, Neil Burtyn, and Jon C. Andersen, directed by Alex Singer, and featured the songs "Sunny Girlfriend" and "Love Is Only Sleeping."  Sandoval describes the plot as: "Micky's pride is at stake when a muscle-man steals his chick."