I personally think the four individuals chosen to BE the Monkees displayed infinite gall when they expected to be allowed to take complete creative control over the TV show.With the music,I can understand,because all four Monkees(particularly Tork and Nesmith)did have prior musical experience,Davy Jones as part of a traveling theatre group that performed "Oliver" many times.(You can see Jones with his peers performing a scene from the famous musical on the February 9,1964 broadcast of "The Ed Sullivan Show",the very same night the Beatles delivered the most popular musical performance of all time)However,none of the "Pre Fab Four" had any business whatsoever instructing NBC producers and execs how to run the show.I can see that they felt the need to break away from Don Kirchner and NBC because they wanted to fly on their own wings and I can maybe understand the musical end of that becauase they did make some fairly decent songs on their own when they became a "real band",but attempting to wrest control of the creative nature of the TV show away from NBC was ballsy to the point of absurdity.Now I know Mickey Dolenz did direct that last episode and even quite well,but the bottom line here is these guys,instead of realizing what a huge break the whole Monkees project was for them(the band could have easily had Stephen Stills as a member among the other 400 applicants),they let the whole thing to their heads and VOILA!All of a sudden they're television executives themselves.Apparently,the Monkees,if there had been a third 1968-69 season,wanted to do something muchin the style of "Laugh-In",which probably would have come off as some sort of lack of imagination rip off.In season two,you can see the show morph into something with rather bizarre yet interesting episode concepts and they were being original and creative in doing so.And don't even get me started on Mickey Dolenz.Ever since he started hangin' out with the likes of the Beatles and Brian Wilson,he seemed to egotistically equate his art with theirs.Seems to me,this guy really let the Monkees thing go to his head,as if it started out as a real band.NBC became so exhausted with arguing over what the ides for season three should have been,the show was dropped and end result was far less PR due to no longer having a weekly tv series to promote new material.Songs from later albums that hardly fared well on the Billboard chart might have been bigger hits with this now absent advertising.As far as critiquing the quality of the music is concerned ,I agree with the previous post of an overall C- rating.PS.Concerning the aforementioned possibility of Stephen Stills being a Monkees,he was turned down due to what the producers considered "bad teeth" that wouldn't be so photogenic for television.Instead,Stills recommended a friend of his audition for a role,Mr. Peter "Auntie Grizelda" Tork...............