Gomer Pyle, USMC, the famous 1960s hero-buffoon of American TV, used to exclaim “Shazaam!” whenever anything inexplicable happened. Because of his good nature and dim wits, much was inexplicable to Gomer, and many inexplicably
good things resulted from screwball situations in this fictional TV portrayal of the U.S.
Marine Corps. For example, rational care and kindness often prevailed over
irrational regulations and cruelty, and profoundly different people -- a kind and gullible hillbilly recruit and a cynical, ostensibly cruel career military man -- managed to create comic and bizarrely symbiotic alliances.