Why Didn’t "Please Don’t Eat the Daisies" Work?

 

A few months ago I decided I had waited long enough for some TV shows to be released on DVD. Life is too short and with certain short-lived series, the likelihood of an official release seems more unlikely with each passing year. It was time to seek other sources. My first acquisition was Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, which debuted in 1965 and lasted two seasons. 

 

 

My hopes were high because I’ve always liked Pat Crowley, whether she was breaking Little Joe’s heart on Bonanza or seducing Bosley on Charlie’s Angels. Plus, the source material (a novel by Jean Kerr) had already been adapted into a delightful movie starring Doris Day and David Niven.

 

I expected more of the same – smart, witty comedy about the adventures of Jim and Joan Nash (Mark Miller and Pat Crowley) who pack up their sons and sheepdog and relocate from a chic Manhattan apartment to a ramshackle country estate. But something was sadly lost in the translation. 

 

 

Start with this: you can’t have a family situation comedy when the dog has more personality than the four Nash boys – Kyle (Kim Tyler), Joel (Brian Nash) and twins Trevor and Tracey (Jeff and Joe Fithian).

 

From Beaver Cleaver to Alex P. Keaton, the children in TV families must be developed as real characters with personalities that impact how stories unfold. But the Nash boys are non-entities.

 

Granted, that was true in the movie as well – the boys were either rambunctious or rotten depending on your general view of kids, and seemed to exist only to cause trouble. But that won’t suffice on a weekly series – nor would the banter of their exasperated parents. David Niven’s reflections on how elementary school only exists to give adults a break from their children was a sentiment you’d never hear Jim Anderson or Mike Brady express. And Doris Day’s reaction to a commotion in the next room – “If they broke any important bones, they’ll yell” – is something Donna Stone wouldn’t dream of saying. 

 

 

Once Roseanne and the Bundys hit TV, those rules changed. But in 1965 parents couldn’t trade such bon mots over martinis like Nick and Nora Charles. The Nashes had to be domesticated.

 

And this was not the only change from the film. Jim Nash was no longer a feared New York theater critic, which had him crossing paths with eccentric actresses and angry producers and cab drivers who wanted him to read their plays. Instead, he teaches theater at a small college. Joan is a writer, which makes sense as Jean Kerr based this story on her own family. 

 

 

They didn’t go there in the movie but it was a good idea for the series – or at least it would have been had that actually committed to it. But not enough scripts revolve around her getting a story published, or working to write one.

 

Crowley and Miller are both likable and are believable as a married couple. But I rarely found it interesting to follow them into the same sitcom plots I enjoyed on other shows. What was missing? Why did my mind keep wandering to how, if you closed your eyes, Miller sounds exactly like Carl Betz on The Donna Reed Show, and when Crowley tries to inject some life into a tired punch line, her voice goes up an octave and she sounds like Eve Arden?

 

The most obvious culprit is the writing, which is surprising since scripts were submitted by such prominent and respected folks as Paul West, Lee Erwin, Austin and Irma Kalish, Bill Freedman and Ben Gershman.

 

Take Jack Raymond’s “The Holdouts”, which should have been a standout episode. The kids realize that Mom is selling stories to magazines based on the cute and funny stuff they do around the house, and decide they should get a share of the profits. That was a great idea that was tailored for the specific attributes of this TV family – but the standoff is not well developed and the resolution falls flat.

 

There were a few bright spots along the way. Burgess Meredith guest stars as a Shakespeare-quoting hobo in “The Magnificent Muldoon,” written by Mark Miller. And there’s an out-of-left-field crossover with The Man From UNCLE (“Say UNCLE”) featuring appearances from Robert Vaughn and David McCallum. Once in a while in an otherwise mundane episode there will be a smart dialogue exchange that reveals the potential that was here and went undeveloped.

 

More than anything else, watching all 58 episodes of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies served as a reminder of how we shouldn’t take the classic shows from the Comfort TV era for granted. Creating a series that can still entertain audiences 50 or 60 years later doesn’t happen easily. Even when you combine blue-chip source material with talented actors and talented writers and directors, success is not a sure thing. There is another component that must also be present but is harder to define, and that either happens almost as if by magic, or it doesn’t. Your mileage may vary, but for me it just didn’t happen here.