Family Home Theater

Grade: C+/B-
Entire family: Yes
1977-78, 662 min. (26 episodes), Color
CBS Home Entertainment
Not rated (would be G)
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Featured audio: Dolby Digital Mono
Bonus features: C (4^th Anniv. Special)
Theme song

Entertainment is one thing, but there are times when, if something out of Hollywood has become part of our vocabulary or is frequently alluded to, you need to see a film or TV show just to be culturally literate.

That’s the case with Happy Days: Season 5. Maybe you’ve heard of the expression “jumped the shark”—the precise moment when a TV series gets a little too wonky and begins to go downhill? That phrase comes from a triple episode that launched the fifth season of Happy Days, a popular series created by Garry Marshall and set in Milwaukee, circa the 1950s and early ‘60s. This season in California, Fonzie (Henry Winkler)—whose trademark catchphrase “Heyyyyyy” had already become a part of pop culture—is faced with a water skiing challenge and must jump over a man-eating shark that’s penned in an enclosure near the beach.

For most of America, Happy Days felt like the TV version of American Graffiti, especially because Ron Howard also starred in that coming-of-age film about teenagers cruising around on the eve of their separate departures for college. This series from Garry Marshall is a fun, wholesome one that hit its stride in Season 2 and, as many believe, started to decline in Season 5 when Fonzie paraded around the beach in his leather jacket, shorts, and motorcycle boots.  More

Grade:  B-
Entire family:  Yes
1965-66, 811 min., Color
Unrated (would be G)
Paramount
Aspect ratio:  1.33:1
Featured audio:  Dolby Digital Mono
Bonus features:  None

From the git-go, The Beverly Hillbillies was a silly situational comedy—an often preposterous riff on bumpkin and rube humor that nonetheless (or maybe consequentially?) made it the #1 TV series in America its first two years. It fell to #12 its third season, but bounced back slightly this fourth season to finish tied with Bewitched for 7^th place.

Season 4 was the show’s first in color, which will make it the place to start for many families whose young ones are put off by black-and-white. The premise is clear enough from the title song, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett”:

Come and listen to a story ‘bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shootin’ at some food,
And up through the ground came a bubblin’ crude.
Oil, that is—black gold, Texas tea.

Well the first thing you know ol’ Jed’s a millionaire,
The kinfolk said “Jed move away from there,”
They said “Californy is the place you oughta be”
So they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.
Hills, that is—swimmin’ pools, movie stars.

Jed (Buddy Ebsen) was talked into putting his money into a bank run by Milburn Drysdale, but surprised the Drysdales by buying the house right next door—a mansion that had a “ce-ment pond” and everything. His daughter, the beautiful tomboy Elly May (Donna Douglas) made good use of the pool for her “critters,” while Granny (Irene Ryan) spend most of her time in the kitchen cooking “vittles” and brewing up potions.  Also living with them is Jethro (Max Baer), the dim-witted son of Jed’s Cousin Pearl. Episode after episode it was the same, story, really: the Clampetts’ misunderstanding Beverly Hills life or else bringing their own hill culture into sharp clashes with the local highbrows.  More

Grade:  A
Entire family:  Yes
1964-65, 800 min. (32 episodes), B&W
Not rated (would be G)
Image Entertainment
Aspect ratio:  1.33:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD MA Mono
Bonus features:  B+

Comedy of character never gets old—one reason why The Dick Van Dyke Show remains as fresh and funny today as it was when Season 4 aired in 1964-65.

It’s all about chemistry and personality, and this black-and-white series had plenty of both. Creator Carl Reiner surrounded Van Dyke with people he could play off of, but who could also react to him. It was comedic give-and-take, with the humor ranging from physical comedy (mostly Van Dyke, as head TV comedy writer Rob Petrie), Lucy-style situations (Mary Tyler Moore, as Laura Petrie, often with neighbor Millie) snappy one-liners (mostly provided by vaudeville vets Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie as Rob’s co-writers), and the kind of simple situational humor that derives from everyday family life and a not-so-everyday work environment.   More

Grade:  A-
Entire family:  Yes
1963-64, 800 min. (32 episodes), B&W
Not rated (would be G)
Image Entertainment
Aspect ratio:  1.33:1
Featured audio:  DTS-HD MA Mono
Bonus features:  B

Did you hear the one about the comedy writer for a top variety show who made a sitcom pilot about his life that was rejected by the network, only to have a producer recast the show so it worked so spectacularly it won 15 Primetime Emmys over five seasons and earned 13^th place on TV Guide’s Top 50 TV Shows of All Time?

The joke was almost on Carl Reiner, who decided to draw on his experience writing jokes and skits for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and put all of his best material into a pilot that he starred in—only to be rejected. But producer Sheldon Leonard told Reiner he wanted to cast Dick Van Dyke in the lead and also bring seasoned entertainers Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie onboard. Despite disappointing ratings the first season, sponsor Procter & Gamble liked the show so much that they threatened to pull all advertising from CBS daytime programming if the show wasn’t given a second season.

That did the trick, and the public grew to love writer Rob Petrie (Van Dyke), his writing pals Buddy and Sally, his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), son Ritchie (Jerry Mathews), and quirky neighbors Millie (Ann Morgan Guilbert) and Jerry (Jerry Paris) Halper.

Part of the show’s broad appeal comes from its ingenious blending of two sitcom types:  the domestic sitcom, with an I Love Lucy pairing of neighbors, and the workplace sitcom, with Reiner appearing as Alan Brady, the star whose variety show employed Rob and his co-writers. That greatly expanded the range of jokes, and The Dick Van Dyke Show was one smartly written comedy. But Van Dyke’s natural talent for physical comedy and Laura’s knack for getting into her own “Lucy” predicaments make it a sitcom that appeals, even now, to family members of all ages.  More