Rant #1,570: A Good Reed

After "The Goldbergs" incident of last week, I guess it is good to get back to TV reality from a different era.

And I was able to do that lock, stock and barrel this weekend, watching "The Donna Reed Show"binge on the relatively new "Decades" network.

"The Donna Reed Show" was one of TV's most popular family sitcoms in the late 1950s through the mid 1960s. Running from 1958 to 1966, it starred the Oscar winner (in "From Here to Eternity") in the starring role, one that was quite the opposite of her most iconic role in the movies--Reed played a suburban Hilldale housewife, married to an erstwhile doctor (Emmy winner, but not for this show, Carl Betz) and two kids--Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen, who would become major teenybopper stars, have hit records, and eventually, stole the show from Reed and Betz.

As the Stones, they were as solid as bedrock as a family, and this was reflected through the values that were the theme of "The Donna Reed Show" throughout its long run.

The show's first three seasons were profiled on Decades this weekend, and watching quite a bit of it, it took me on a time trip back to a different era.

1950s TV, and pretty much through the late 1960s, was pretty much as starchy as it could be, but then again, it reflected where we were as a society.

These shows were pretty much all white, all Christian affairs, and usually the worst thing that happened to the kids was that they got into some sort of mischief, ran away from home for five minutes or so, maybe broke a neighbor's window by hitting a ball playing baseball.

That was pretty much it, but again, when the show went off the air in 1966, we were still three years away from "All in the Family."

So taken within the time span that it ran, "The Donna Reed Show" and others like it--certainly "Leave It To Beaver" was one, "Father Knows Best" another--was a family sitcom that reflected those 1950s values that we all had, that would change after JFK was assassinated.

So taken within that context, "The Donna Reed Show" hits the bull's eye, with every show presenting a theme, and the theme resolved as the show went through its 20-plus minutes of activity.

In the early years, and this is really what made it a groundbreaker, was that the show centered around Reed, the housewife with a heart of gold. It might have been the first sitcom to revolve around the matriarch of the family. Whether helping out a young kid who had run away from military school, or assisting a handyman that wasn't very handy get a foothold on his life, Reed always had the right idea, was the really johnny on the spot as the voice of reason on the show.

I mean, she was the Oscar winner, it was her show--produced by her and her husband--and with its success, who was to argue?

The show was also the first one that I could recall that dealt with women's issues. As one of the most powerful women in Hollywood at the time, I am sure Reed ran into a lot of brick walls, and there were episodes of the show where--years before Women's Lib--she voiced her opinion loudly on women's issues of the time, including where "housewives" stood in 1950s America. 

Youth culture was growing, and the later years of the show highlighted the rise of Fabares--whose TV career usually goes unheralded, but how many hit shows was she a star on?--and Petersen to the heights of teen fandom. The later episodes reflected this, along with the fact that the family adopted another child, Paul's real life sister Patty, into the fold.

But these early shows demonstrated that true family values could be written into a sitcom without hitting you over the head with this message.

Like Rob and Laura Petrie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," you really could believe that Donna and Alex Stone could be married, and you could believe that they had kids just like the two portrayed on the show.

So, yes, in its own way, it was believable.

Sure, maybe it did not reflect true America, but for what it wanted to say, within the time frame that it said it in, it fit as snugly as a glove.

When I watched the sitcom this weekend, sure, I laughed at spots along with the canned laughter that was included in the show. But honestly, the show was more poignant than outright hilarious, but poignancy can be funny, too, and that is where "The Donna Reed Show" really shined, perhaps as good or better than any of the other family sitcoms of the time.

So, it was really easy for me to take a trip back in time this weekend, and I hope that the Decades channel focuses on the middle and later years of "The Donna Reed Show" during another weekend. If it does, you will slowly see the show's dynamic change, and again, it changed to reflect the times.

But I was quite happy with the slice of the pie that we got this weekend.

I think there is a little Hilldale in all of us.