There was a time when only certain holidays qualified for special TV programming.
Now, it seems, most channels schedule special programming on most holidays — even if government offices, schools and other such places remain open.
Memorial Day is kinda like that.
When I was a child, I don't remember much of a fuss being made about Memorial Day. School had already dismissed for the summer. I have no memory of any offices being closed — but my family lived in the country so there really wouldn't have been any reason for me to notice something like that.
There may not have been any postal delivery. I really don't remember.
The summer holiday that was important then — and, I presume, is still important today — was the Fourth of July.
Television choices are far more extensive now than they were then. When I was a kid, we only had the three major networks and that was it.
Maybe the sheer number of choices has changed the game. I don't know.
Anyway, there are at least three really good options awaiting you tomorrow night:
At 7 p.m. (Central), you can see a really spectacular examination of three war veterans trying to put their lives back together in "The Best Years of Our Lives" on Turner Classic Movies.
Also at 7, you can see the now–legendary finale of the M*A*S*H TV series from 1983 on TVLand.
It's hard to believe it has been nearly 30 years since most of those people have been on TV regularly — but on the night they called it quits as an ensemble unlike any other in TV history, more people tuned in than have ever tuned in for the final episode of a TV series.
And that was appropriate.
If you have never seen it before, you owe it to yourself to see it — and then get caught up on 11 years' worth of remarkable television.
On The History Channel, you can see a documentary on the Battle of Gettysburg at 8 p.m.
"GETTYSBURG strips away the romanticized veneer of the Civil War to present the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in a new light," says The History Channel. It's hard to see how a three–day battle that claimed nearly 8,000 lives and left more than 27,000 wounded and more than 10,000 missing could be regarded as "romanticized," but it should be interesting to see what The History Channel has to say.
I know people who will tell anyone who will listen that the Andy Griffith Show was the greatest TV show in history.
Maybe it was. But, really, who can say?
I think it's a sucker's argument, frankly — like quarreling over who was the best home run hitter, Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds. They played in different eras in different ballparks and against different kinds of pitchers. If Ruth ever played night games, it was at the end of his career, but doubleheaders were more common in his day. Bonds, on the other hand, played most of his games at night, but the double dip was mostly a relic of the past when he arrived on the scene. Aaron was in between — didn't play in as many doubleheaders as Ruth, but they were still being scheduled, and he played in both day and night games.
It's like comparing apples and oranges ... and peaches.
Most baseball fans would probably agree that all three were talented. And that's probably as far as an argument over the merits of each (in relation to the others) should go.
That's kind of how I feel about TV shows. Some people came of age in the 1950s, when some very talented performers and writers and directors were pioneering this emerging technology. There were only three networks in those days, so things were more concentrated — and the viewership level that was achieved by some programs probably never will be duplicated in the fragmented modern environment of cable and satellite programming.
Were the shows better than the ones being produced today? Some were, some weren't. But the people who came of age in those days have a fierce loyalty to the programs of that time.
It was much the same way in the 1960s, when Andy Griffith made its debut. The writing was often excellent, the characters were very natural and believable (if flawed) people and many of the stories dealing with things like parenting and friendship still resonate today.
The show, in its color incarnation, was still on prime time when I was a child, but afternoon television in those days often featured reruns of the earlier black–and–white episodes. I remember watching those early episodes in the afternoons after school.
But there is no getting around the fact that much has changed in half a century. We live in an age of high–definition television and streaming video on lightweight computers and pocket–sized gadgets you can carry with you wherever you go, and the filming techniques of the 1960s, especially in the seasons before color became prevalent, may seem primitive to 21st century viewers, no matter the delivery system.
And such a series probably wouldn't have as much relevance today as it did in 1960, when a larger percentage of Americans lived in rural communities.
But that won't keep millions of Andy Griffith fans from marking the 50th anniversary of the show's debut a week from tomorrow. TVLand has been getting a jump on the festivities with its "50 Days of Andy" promotion, spotlighting the top 50 episodes in the series as chosen in online voting by the series' fans.
Perhaps the quality of the series, even if the technology was lacking by contemporary standards, was helped by the fact that it was filmed by Desilu, the production company that was formed in 1950 by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Gulf+Western bought the company in 1967, and it was renamed Paramount Television, where it enjoyed limited success, but Desilu seemed to have its fingers in every pie in its heyday.
Well, whether Desilu had anything to do with it, the show was quite popular, and it's hard to imagine it without its now–iconic cast, but if you watched the very first episode (see clip above), Andy's Aunt Bee — without whom the series certainly wouldn't have been the same — almost didn't pass Opie's test to replace the housekeeper he had (presumably) known all his life when she married and moved away.
But she did, and generations of Andy Griffith fans will forever be grateful.
Aunt Bee reminded me of my own childhood in central Arkansas. Did you ever notice that just about everyone in Mayberry called her Aunt Bee, even though no one — other than Andy and Opie — was actually related to her? There was a woman in my hometown who had no relatives living nearby but everyone called her "aunt."
I guess it was part of the logic of the culture of Mayberry.
Some of the original cast members were gone by the time a TV reunion was held in the form of a special movie, "Return to Mayberry," nearly 25 years ago. Frances Bavier, the actress who played Aunt Bee, was still living, but her health was not good so she did not participate in the film, and her character was said to be deceased.
And she did die more than three years later — about a week before her 87th birthday.
There were other familiar faces who were gone by the time the reunion movie aired, but more than a dozen of the show's original cast did participate. Some of them are gone now, too, like ...
Don Knotts, who played Barney Fife for five seasons and won Emmy Awards in three of them plus two more for guest appearances after he left the show in the mid–1960s.
Only Candice Bergen — as "Murphy Brown" — was honored for playing the same character in the same series as many times as Knotts.
And that was fitting, I guess. Can anyone really imagine the Andy Griffith Show without him?
Actually, the public got a chance to see what the show was like without him. The Barney–less shows haven't been too popular with fans since the show went into reruns, but when it was part of the prime–time lineup, its ratings actually improved in those later years.
Knotts, by the way, was 81 when he died in 2006.
... or Hal Smith, who played Otis the lovable drunk.
I always felt one of the great mistakes in the production of the reunion movie was the decision to make Otis a reformed alcoholic. Maybe it was a concession to the "Just say no" hysteria of the 1980s, but a non–alcoholic Otis lacked the comedic value of the alcoholic version.
If you're an Andy Griffith fan, don't you owe Otis a debt of gratitude? He was responsible, after all, for one of Barney's most memorable lines — "Pipe down, Otis!" — which I have seen on bumper stickers and T–shirts decades after it was spoken.
Smith was 77 when he died of a heart attack in 1994.
... or Howard McNear, who played Floyd, the affable barber.
I'm not sure, but McNear may have been the first Andy Griffith cast member to die. He had a stroke during the show's third season that permanently impaired his ability to walk, but he could still speak so, when he returned to the show, the writers managed to write his character seated — and he delivered his lines while seated on a bench outside his barbershop or in the chair in his shop.
McNear had been dead for more than 15 years when the reunion film was aired, and I don't recall if he was mentioned in the movie — unlike Aunt Bee, whose absence was addressed in the story (Andy even visited her "grave").
The thing about Floyd that caught my attention when I was a child was his tendency to give Calvin Coolidge credit for every wise saying that had ever been uttered. I was something of a student of the presidency, even at a young age, and I knew that Coolidge had a nickname, "Silent Cal," that summed up his reluctance to speak in public.
(In fact, there is a story about Coolidge that he was seated next to a lovely and flirtatious young woman at some sort of dinner. The woman told the president that she had made a bet with someone that she could make him say more than two words. Coolidge replied, "You lose.")
Andy seemed to be aware of that, too, because, at one point, when Floyd tried to give Coolidge credit for something that someone else had said, Andy gently scolded him and admonished him, "Calvin Coolidge didn't say everything."
And then Floyd replied with the one thing that the history books all agree that Coolidge said: "I do not choose to run."
Andy had to admit that Coolidge did say that.
"I knew he must have said something," Floyd said, "or else he wouldn't have become president."
I guess that, too, was the logic of Mayberry.
Sometimes that logic made little or no sense — except in the context of the universe of the fictitious Mayberry. But Mayberry was and remains a place where life was/is more relaxed.
When I was an adolescent, I had a crush on Valerie Bertinelli. I guess she was cuter when she was 15. Or maybe I was more easily stimulated then.
In the '90s, I guess I kinda liked Jane Leeves. I enjoyed the Frasier series — still do — but I felt more attracted to the character of Roz (Peri Gilpin).
Wendie Malick? Never gave her much thought.
Well, anyway, the three of them are co–stars with Betty White (who was way before my time) in a new "sitcom" on TVLand. The show made its debut last night.
Now, I know that a series' first episode is seldom one of its best. Its primary purpose is to introduce the audience to the main characters and, perhaps, lay the groundwork for running jokes. In what I suppose could be called best–case scenarios, folks who are involved in the production of a new series hope viewers will continue to tune in because they are intrigued.
If that was the objective, they missed the target with me, I'm afraid. The premiere episode was aired twice, and I watched it twice — but I haven't decided if I will watch it again. Most of the "humor" came across as a lot of man–bashing — when it wasn't cliched humor about age and promiscuity.
Not that there would be anything wrong with that ... except that it lacks much of a context. The whole premise of the show is that the three younger women, who appear to have been relatively untouched by the economy, are on the way from Los Angeles to France for a vacation when their plane is forced to make an emergency landing in Cleveland.
Instead of simply waiting in the airport for the next available flight, they wander into the city and find themselves at a working–class bar — where the men think they're hot and are convinced they're light eaters because they only order chili fries.
Ultimately — and inexplicably — they decide to rent a house in Cleveland instead of going to Paris for the month. Along the way, many jokes were made, none of which struck me as particularly funny. But perhaps that's just a matter of personal taste.
Maybe Hot in Cleveland will be a smash hit. All four of the women who star in it have been involved, in one way or another, with hit shows before.
Actress Rue McClanahan died today. She was the third of the four principle characters on the sitcom The Golden Girls to pass away, leaving only Betty White.
White is more than 88 years old now, and, arguably, she has never been more in demand than she has been lately. Last month, she hosted Saturday Night Live. In a couple of weeks, she will appear in a brand–new sitcom on TVLand — Hot in Cleveland — in which her co–stars (Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Malick and Jane Leeves) are between 29 and 39 years younger than she is.
In all, White's career has lasted 70 years. It outlived her three marriages, and now it has outlived her three Golden Girls co–stars.
McClanahan was never the star of her own show. Her career could best be summed up as a collection of supporting roles ...
... at least until she was cast as Blanche Devereaux in The Golden Girls. She had been Bea Arthur's co–star on Maude in the 1970s, but, on The Golden Girls, she was one of four equals. And it earned her an Emmy Award in 1987.
White won an Emmy for The Golden Girls, too, and five others between 1952 and 1996 — and who knows? There may be another one in her future.
I guess we'll need to wait a few weeks to see what kind of response Hot in Cleveland receives.
But we already know that, to borrow a line currently being used in TVLand's promotions for its new show, Betty White is "white hot."
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
