My doctor’s visit yesterday
went about as good as it could have gone … under the circumstances, of course.
My eyesight is what it is, and I will go for a second opinion later this month to see if maybe it can be improved.
That aside, as a semi-retired person, I try to keep busy when I don’t have any work pending.
This morning, I do have a story to edit, which I will do posthaste after I do what I normally do in the morning, like write this blog entry.
But there are down times, and during those times, I often find myself watching television, and I gravitate toward the older shows, and primarily, the older sitcoms.
I won’t add onto to that sentence “of my youth,” because some of them seem to have been popular just before I was born in 1957, continued their popularity when I was a tot, and have remained immensely popular decades later to this day.
One such show is “Father Knows Best,” a sitcom starring Robert Young that ran from 1954 to 1960.
It was one of the first true family sitcoms, with a father, a mother, and three kids being the focus of the program, and I think in these times of uncertainty, even though it was showing the white-bread world of the mid to late 1950s, the show is appreciated more today than it was even when it was new.
You know the setup of the show: the father, Jim Anderson, was an insurance salesman, the mother, Margaret, was the housewife, and then you had the three kids … one, the ever social-climbing oldest sister, Betty, who tried to be Miss Perfect in her house, in school and the world; Bud, the only son, who rolled with the flow and was the direct opposite of his older sister; and Kathy, the youngest child, who was imperfect as her older sister was perfect.
Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin played their parts to the hilt, and the show was an enormous success for Young in particular, who had had some personal troubles in Hollywood as a film actor and used this show as a comeback springboard for fhis re-emergence in Hollywood, including as “Marcus Welby, M.D.”
Anyway, why am I bringing this all up?
The other day, I was watching the show on a morning where I had already done everything I wanted and needed to do on the computer, so I sat down to a relaxing millionth rerun of one of the shows in the series.
I thought I had seen every episode of this series, in particular now, because the show runs on MeTV and Antenna TV at the same time in the morning, so if I have recently seen an episode showing on one of the channels, I simply move over to the other channel, where I probably have not seen the episode that is running for a long time.
Anyway, on Antenna TV the other day was an episode I have never before seen, and it featured some characters in the series that I never thought existed.
“Father Knows Best” centers on the Anderson family, and while there is often talk of other relatives in the Anderson clan, they are rarely shown.
However, in this episode, the maternal grandparents of the Anderson children are not only shown, but they are the centerpieces of the show … and I found two of these newly discovered characters quite interesting.
I love “Father Knows Best,” but another classic sitcom that I really enjoy is “Dennis the Menace,” starring Jay North as the comic strip dynamo.
I always thought that the show was the most well-cast sitcom in TV history, as the original cast actually resembles the comic strip cast, meaning that North, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, his parents—Herbert Anderson and the recently departed Gloria Henry—and the Wilsons—Joseph Kearns and Sylvia Field—were probably chosen for their resemblance to the cartoon characters as much as for their acting chops.
Well, here is what I posted on Facebook about this particular episode, which became a “mashup,” of a sort, between “Father Knows Best” and “Dennis the Menace:”
My eyesight is what it is, and I will go for a second opinion later this month to see if maybe it can be improved.
That aside, as a semi-retired person, I try to keep busy when I don’t have any work pending.
This morning, I do have a story to edit, which I will do posthaste after I do what I normally do in the morning, like write this blog entry.
But there are down times, and during those times, I often find myself watching television, and I gravitate toward the older shows, and primarily, the older sitcoms.
I won’t add onto to that sentence “of my youth,” because some of them seem to have been popular just before I was born in 1957, continued their popularity when I was a tot, and have remained immensely popular decades later to this day.
One such show is “Father Knows Best,” a sitcom starring Robert Young that ran from 1954 to 1960.
It was one of the first true family sitcoms, with a father, a mother, and three kids being the focus of the program, and I think in these times of uncertainty, even though it was showing the white-bread world of the mid to late 1950s, the show is appreciated more today than it was even when it was new.
You know the setup of the show: the father, Jim Anderson, was an insurance salesman, the mother, Margaret, was the housewife, and then you had the three kids … one, the ever social-climbing oldest sister, Betty, who tried to be Miss Perfect in her house, in school and the world; Bud, the only son, who rolled with the flow and was the direct opposite of his older sister; and Kathy, the youngest child, who was imperfect as her older sister was perfect.
Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin played their parts to the hilt, and the show was an enormous success for Young in particular, who had had some personal troubles in Hollywood as a film actor and used this show as a comeback springboard for fhis re-emergence in Hollywood, including as “Marcus Welby, M.D.”
Anyway, why am I bringing this all up?
The other day, I was watching the show on a morning where I had already done everything I wanted and needed to do on the computer, so I sat down to a relaxing millionth rerun of one of the shows in the series.
I thought I had seen every episode of this series, in particular now, because the show runs on MeTV and Antenna TV at the same time in the morning, so if I have recently seen an episode showing on one of the channels, I simply move over to the other channel, where I probably have not seen the episode that is running for a long time.
Anyway, on Antenna TV the other day was an episode I have never before seen, and it featured some characters in the series that I never thought existed.
“Father Knows Best” centers on the Anderson family, and while there is often talk of other relatives in the Anderson clan, they are rarely shown.
However, in this episode, the maternal grandparents of the Anderson children are not only shown, but they are the centerpieces of the show … and I found two of these newly discovered characters quite interesting.
I love “Father Knows Best,” but another classic sitcom that I really enjoy is “Dennis the Menace,” starring Jay North as the comic strip dynamo.
I always thought that the show was the most well-cast sitcom in TV history, as the original cast actually resembles the comic strip cast, meaning that North, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, his parents—Herbert Anderson and the recently departed Gloria Henry—and the Wilsons—Joseph Kearns and Sylvia Field—were probably chosen for their resemblance to the cartoon characters as much as for their acting chops.
Well, here is what I posted on Facebook about this particular episode, which became a “mashup,” of a sort, between “Father Knows Best” and “Dennis the Menace:”
“I had no idea that Sylvia Field, the actress who played the grandmotherly Mrs. Wilson on the "Dennis the Menace" TV show, also played the maternal grandmother on "Father Knows Best."
And on both shows, her first name was Martha!
And on the same "Father Knows Best" episode, the actor who played Henry Mitchell on "Dennis the Menace" appears, playing the guy who wants to buy the business from Martha's husband.
And this actor's name is Herbert Anderson ... and Anderson is the family name on "Father Knows Best."
With this knowledge, my life is complete.”
I received a few comments to my post, and one commenter basically said that he finds sitcoms of the past much more enjoyable than the fare we are offered today on television, and I agree, today’s TV really doesn’t hold a candle to these old shows.
My reply to the commenter was this:
“Everything today is political and pushes agendas. Back then, all these shows wanted to do is to make you laugh and be entertaining, without any strings attached. The shows were well written, the actors seemed to enjoy what they were doing, and the shows have become timeless. Most of today's shows won't include me as a viewer. I have absolutely no interest in the politics presented. I just want to laugh for a few minutes.”
And yes, I guess that is the bottom line of today’s Rant.
I cannot get into today’s television—or movies for that matter—because all I want from these shows is entertainment. I am not looking for hidden messages, political agendas, or anything other than fun.
In Hollywood today, that seemingly has been lost on those creating these things for us to watch. I think the general public does not want to be hit over the head with agendas. We just want to be entertained.
There is a time and a place for everything, and yes, there are shows and films that should enlighten us, should open up our eyes to different things, but those shows and films should be pretty obvious in their intentions.
When I am watching a sitcom, in particular, I want to laugh, I want to be engaged, I want to relax for a couple of minutes, not be hit over the head with agendas and messages.
That is not to say that sitcoms cannot open up our eyes about certain things. Going back to “Leave It To Beaver,” which was the first sitcom that I know about that had an episode about divorce and the effect it had on kids, and through “All in the Family,” which did its commenting about the 1970s with an in your face attitude, sitcoms can enlighten viewers.
I just feel that today, all these shows and films have a definite agenda that they want the viewer to get, and they will get you to get it whether you want to get it or not.
It is a different world, TV and films reflect that world, but we still sorely need sitcoms like “Father Knows Best” to ground us, to engage us, to give us a window on a world that was so long ago,
We all need that, and shows like this knew their place, knew what they were trying to do, and went about it with an aplomb and a joviality that you just don’t see today on television.
And what a shame that is.
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