Friday, June 28, 2013

One and Done: Seven Short-Lived Series Worth Remembering

 
Longevity isn’t always a measure of quality when it comes to television (see: Step by Step). That’s especially true over the past 5-10 years when shows like Wonderfalls and Freaks and Geeks and Firefly were pulled before their time. I thought Pan Am had its moments, too.

That was not the case in the classic TV era. Back then if a series was canceled after one season it was usually for good reason. Networks were slower to go to the hook, allowing shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show and Cheers to find their audience despite low-rated first seasons.

Unfortunately, not every show was so lucky. Here are seven Comfort TV series that disappeared too quickly, but still have their fans.

My World and Welcome To It (1969)
Maybe its blend of live-action and animation was ahead of its time. Maybe its basis in the writing of James Thurber made it sound too highbrow – or maybe it was just scheduled against Gunsmoke and never had a chance. Whatever prompted its early cancellation, My World and Welcome To It is one of television’s buried treasures. Sample the clips on YouTube and see if you don’t fall under its whimsical spell. 

Ellery Queen (1975)
After creating one of TV’s greatest detectives in Columbo, Richard Levinson and William Link introduced Ellery Queen to television, in the genial presence of star Jim Hutton. Set in the 1940s, the series revolved around Queen assisting his police detective father (David Wayne) on baffling murder mysteries. The high point of each episode had Hutton turning to the camera and addressing the audience at home, just before he cracked the case. “Have you figured it out?” he’d ask, before reminding us of the suspects and the most important clues. Rarely has it been more fun to match wits with the characters on screen. 




Gidget (1965)
Gidget made Sally Field famous but didn’t find an audience until it was rerun over the summer, not surprising for a show about surfing under the California sun. By then the show had already been canceled, and ABC scrambled to find another vehicle for its breakout star. The best they could do was The Flying Nun, which lasted three seasons but doesn’t hold up nearly as well. For all its carefree sand and surf fun, what really made Gidget memorable was the heartfelt connection between Field and costar Don Porter, who created one of TV’s most appealing father-daughter relationships. 



The Green Hornet (1966)
This Batman spin-off was played with similar visual style but less camp, and is best remembered now for Bruce Lee, who appeared opposite Van Williams as the Green Hornet’s high-kicking chauffeur, Kato. It was the first time many Americans had seen martial arts performed by a master, and the charismatic Lee insisted on authenticity in the fight choreography. Given the shortness of his subsequent film career, it would be wonderful to have more Green Hornet episodes to enjoy. 




The Magician (1973)
Two magic-themed films recently opened to mixed reviews (The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Now You See Me), and neither was one-tenth as entertaining as The Magician, starring Bill Bixby as a magic man who helps those in trouble with his powers of prestidigitation. Bixby is one of TV’s most appealing leading men, as well as a talented amateur magician. Every illusion in the series was performed with no camera tricks or special effects.  

Jennifer Slept Here (1983)
Ann Jillian deserved a more substantive TV career. She got close with It’s a Living, but with all its title changes and timeslot changes and personnel changes the series never really found its footing. Jennifer Slept Here was her second shot. The high-concept premise has a family moving into a Beverly Hills mansion once owned by glamorous movie star Jennifer Farrell, now deceased.  As a ghost, she appears to the family’s 14 year-old son, and helps him adjust to high school, meeting girls and life in California. Jillian elevated her material as she always did, but the show could not compete against Webster and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980)
Can too much promotion kill a TV show? I think so. I never watched Malcolm in the Middle because of the obnoxious nonstop promos that FOX aired leading up to its debut. ABC tried that same desperate strategy for Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, which teamed Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldbum as unlikely detectives. Result? Big numbers for the first episode followed by rapidly diminishing returns. Perhaps if the network had merely promised a good show rather than the landmark television event of the season, viewers would have been more patient. 




Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Breaking 1950s Conventions on Father Knows Best

 
There’s something remarkable about Father Knows Best. You can watch any dozen episodes and be entertained by the wholesome charms with which this 1950s sitcom is identified. And then you’ll discover a story that is so compelling in its content that you could write a term paper about it.

To some extent this is true of many shows from an era we now group into a collective memory of innocent nostalgia. To some these situation comedies are nothing more than idealized portrayals of a traditional family that may provide a few simple pleasures, but are no longer relevant to the way we live today. Some actually find them offensive – a reactionary fantasy of a Middle America that never really existed, where Dad brings home the bacon, Mom is happily chained to her stove, and together they raise unfailingly polite kids. 

Those who hold such opinions have either never watched shows like Father Knows Best or The Donna Reed Show, or they just weren’t paying attention when they did. There was far too much talent involved, both in front of and behind the camera, to create something so bland.


If certain formulas tended to repeat themselves – first dates, first jobs, eccentric neighbors and relatives, keep in mind that these are moments and rites of passage that many families experience in the non-scripted world as well.

You won’t find challenging content in most of these vintage series, but that is not a creative flaw. Consistency and predictability is an important part of their enduring appeal. I for one would never want to watch an episode of Father Knows Best in which Margaret gets cancer, or Bud is critically injured in an auto accident. I don’t want Jim to lose his job at the insurance company, and wonder how he’s going to keep up the mortgage payments. That was not why these shows were made.

But that doesn’t mean Father Knows Best can’t surprise you. Here are three remarkable episodes that skirt the comfort zone of classic television.

“Woman in the House”
Often shows like Father Knows Best seem to be set within a secure suburban bubble, immune to the confusion of the outside world. In this season two episode from 1955, some of that less settled world invades Springfield in the form of Jill Carlson, the younger and free-spirited wife of one of Jim’s oldest friends. She smokes, she talks a little too loud for the heartland, and at one point she asks Margaret if she’s ever read Kafka. Margaret, played with quiet dignity by Jane Wyatt, can barely hide her discomfort, which only deepens after Jill becomes their houseguest for a few days. At one point she breaks down, ashamed by how provincial her life seems to this strange outsider, and by her own intolerance. This being Father Knows Best, both Margaret and Jill are changed for the better through the experience, but it’s the culture clash that makes “Woman in the House” so unsettling.

“Mister Beal Meets His Match”
Betty, writing a story for college, casts her family in a new version of the Faust tale.  Mysterious stranger Harry Beal sells Bud a set of books that seem to grant wishes, but you don’t get something for nothing (or at least, that was a lesson still taught in the 1950s). Jim discovers to his horror that the gifts in the books were received at the forfeiture of his children's souls. A panicked Jim offers Beal his own soul in exchange for theirs. The harrowing parts of the tale are played straighter than you might expect. 


“The Bus to Nowhere”
Whatever joys and sorrows are felt by fifties sitcom characters, they still maintain a basic contentment with their lives and their place in the universe. They hold on to certain bedrock values formed by their faith and Midwestern common sense. And then there’s “The Bus to Nowhere,” in which Betty Anderson experiences full-tilt existential angst that shakes her to her core. Nothing matters to her, not even dances and dates and hayrides (man, they loved their hayrides in the ‘50s). Her family dismisses her anguish as “just a mood” and “rubbish,” but Betty is disconsolate – “I don’t know anything anymore,” she confesses. In the climax she’s at the bus station ready to go wherever her savings will take her. I won’t spoil the ending and how she finds her way back, but “The Bus to Nowhere” is worthy of study and debate in college classes devoted to philosophy and theology. It’s one of the most profound and extraordinary episodes in 1950s television.