Rant #1,806: TV OD II

Earlier this week, I posted my five favorite TV shows of all time.

I go for situation comedies, as four of my five choices were of that genre, but the next five choices are going to be a mixed bag.

You won't find any hour-long dramas or Westerns; most of these I simply never got into as a child, or as an adult.

I guess my attention span won't allow for it, although there are hour-long choices on this second list.

So here goes ...

6) The Ed Sullivan Show: "The Toast of the Town" really was just that during its 23-year run. This was TV's circus, featuring everything from opera singers to plate twirlers to acrobats to the latest and hottest singers. Sullivan was bland, and he was perfect for the show because as a showman, he knew that the acts always came first. The one, the only, and the greatest variety show of all time, in my opinion, and the only reason it did not rank higher was because I missed the early days of the show, being born in 1957. But when all is said and done. this show was a milestone program, and as Sullivan later said, CBS should have allowed the show to go 25 years, but politics got in the way, as did Fred Silverman, who canceled some of TV's greatest shows in one fell swoop ... including our next entry.

7) The Andy Griffith Show: Well, no, Silverman didn't cancel this show, per se, but he canceled its successor, "Mayberry RFD," and the show was so similar to this one that it was like he had put the clamps on Andy Taylor and Co. Anyway, this show, like "My Three Sons," cast an eye on our neighbors in fictional Mayberry, N.C., and its rural humor--almost entirely based on the personalities of the characters--enthralled audiences for years. Andy was a small-town sheriff that touched our hearts and our funny bones, and the Don Knotts years, as Deputy Barney Fife, were the best years of the show. In the later, color episodes, the Andy Taylor character kind of moved aside, allowing the show to develop other characters like the Pyles--Goober and Gomer--Emmett the fix-it man, and many others. A subtle comedy that is still funny to this day.

8) Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In: The variety genre was getting stale by 1967, so a talented group of writers and performers got together and turned the entire genre upside down, inside out, and pretty much killed it. The original show was an amalgam of shorts skits, blackouts, and mayhem, with little stringing it all together less the hosts, veteran Las Vegas performers who became household names from this hour-long show. And the performers--Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Arte Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, Joanne Worley, Henry Gibson, Judy Carne, Larry Hovis (twice!), Pigmeat Markham ... well, what a talented cast this was! Everyone wanted to be on this show, but if you blinked, you missed three or four bits. A true TV classic, its topicality has aged it while watching today, but most of it is still a hoot!

9) The Munsters: From the clever people who gave us "Leave It To Beaver," this sendup of the modern American family was actually a goof on "Beaver." Like what happened in the Abbott and Costello and monster mashups in the movies, the producers took two common elements of our entertainment world--monsters and sitcoms--and mashed them together. As a kid, I simply loved this show for what it was, but as an adult, I see nuances of the extremely clever writing that I didn't know existed. This show is satire at its best, and Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis, Yvonne DeCarlo, Butch Patrick and the two Marilyns--Beverly Owen and Pat Priest--play it for all it is worth. Yes, some people prefer the "Addams Family," but to me, there really is no comparison.

10) The Honeymooners: Honestly, this could have been my first choice, my fifth choice, my seventh choice, or my ninth choice, but it does belong on this list. Jackie Gleason created a small group of characters in a very spare environment, allowing for the peccadillos of these characters to stand out above anything and everything else. The show, all these years later, touches both our hearts and our funny bones, and even though we have seen each episode 1,000 times, it still resonates as real and pure. The one season of the show, the 39 episodes, are glorious, but search out the so-called "Lost Episodes," and you will see really how good this cast of characters and their show actually was, not just as a comedy but as a mirror of life in the 1950s, and even today.

Well, there it is. Yes, I could have easily listed my top 20 TV shows, what with "I Love Lucy," "Star Trek," "The Wonder Years," "F Troop," "Batman," "The Twilight Zone," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "All In the Family," "Star Trek," "Hogan's Heroes," and others left off the list, but if I have to pick 10, these are it.

What are your favorites? What did I miss on my list? Please let me know.

Speak to you again tomorrow.