There is not perfect agreement around the best way to learn to play pool. Some argue one needs just to pick up a cue and start practicing. Others counter that practicing without also reading some books or watching some videos or enlisting the aid of an instructor is time poorly spent.
But, there is probably consensus around what not to do, and that includes learning pool solely by studying its history or by watching its hustlers. These two competing methodologies are part of the humorous storyline of the “Car Pool” episode of Hiccups, a Canadian television series that aired for two seasons on CTV and The Comedy Network.
This August 2011 episode, viewable here, opens with Millie Upton (Nancy Robertson), a successful children’s book author with anger management issues (referred to as “hiccups,” hence the name of the series), shooting the “white asteroid [into] planet 5, [where] it’s heading for the black hole!” She asks herself, “Now, who will die next? Ah, stripey planet 13.”
When her on-screen nemesis, Lewis (Paul Herbert), comes over to mock her ability, she challenges him to a game of 8-ball, or what she refers to as, “Death Space 2000! First one to sink all the stripey or solid planets into the black holes wins, but you can’t kill the evil black planet till the last.”
Lewis beats her badly, prompting Millie to enlist the tutelage of one her co-workers, Taylor (David Ingram), who has “studied billiards for years,” playing everything from 9-ball to the awesomely named Manitoba hobo, as it’s “a good way to show off to chicks without lifting heavy stuff.”
The first bit of wisdom Taylor imparts is that “In billiards, like many other things in life, you’re only as good as your equipment. That’s why you need your own cue [but] you don’t pick the cue, the cue picks you. Like in Harry Potter.” Millie ends up picking an Athena, which she christens Delores, named after a friend who was “skinny as a stick, and bigger on one end.”
But, it becomes frustratingly clear to Millie that even armed with her cue Delores, it will be some time before she gets to use it, as she must first understand billiards’ origins, starting with the fall of the Eastern Roman empire.
Fed up with learning about the “history of chalk,” or that “Mary, Queen of Scots, was buried in her billiard table cover,” Millie stumbles upon a new instructor, Anna (Paula Rivera), who learned the sport at a young age when her father took her to a pool hall, handed her a cue, and said, “start swinging.”
Unfortunately, Anna proves no better than Taylor, as her style of instruction involves going to pool halls, duping local bikers by over-chalking her cue stick, and then bilking them of their money, while Millie observes her hustling techniques from the sideline.
Millie’s exasperation reaches its apex when the two coaches clash for the attention of their pupil. Begging them to stop, she says, “The only reason I wanted to learn pool was to have a little wholesome fun demoralizing and humiliating another human being, but so far, Delores hasn’t even touched one single ball, so you can take your history and your hustling and stuff-o! School’s out!”
The historian and the hustler ultimately reconcile and acknowledge their errant forms of instruction. But, by that time, Millie has picked up a few tips from her original opponent Lewis. In a fitting end to the episode, Millie and Lewis challenge the ex-instructors to a game, which Millie wins by “banking the asteroid off of the far edge of the galaxy and obliterating evil planet eight in the corner.”
Though there’s not a lot of pool shown in “Car Pool,” the Hiccups episode has one of the better and more original billiards storylines I have encountered. It is also one of precious few Canadian entries into the billiard television-movie universe, along with Three-Card Monte (1978), The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II (1988), Behind the Eight Ball (2010), the aquatic billiards “Pool Pool” spoof from Unreel Sports (2008), and the anticipated documentary Manitoba Sharks: We Came to Play.
[NOTE: A special thanks to my Canadian colleague, Bo Peng, whose questioning about Canadian billiard movies led me to review this episode.]
