Papá lo sabe todo

I was so pleased today, being a baby boomer, to turn on TV land and see three hours of 50's television. From 9am to 12pm I saw, Burns and Allen, the Honeymooners, an hour episode of the Lucy-Desi comedy hour, Hazel, and last but not least an episode of Father Knows Best. Kudos to TV land for this three hour bonus which is supposedly going to happen every sunday morning all summer long. Why does it only have to happen on Sunday mornings? I want more of these shows from my childhood.

Father knows Best was one of my favorites. As has already been said by others, the show had wonderful values, laughter and pathos. Jane Wyatt was always my favorite TV mother. Why has she never been included in specials about favorite tv moms? Yes, she always dressed nice and wore pearls but I remember the particular episode when she was wearing a long shirt and pants to clean the house and she had a smudge of dirt on her face. That was when Jim was bringing home a women who was a famous author, someone he had been friends with. You never would have seen June Cleaver with a smudge of dirt on HER face. Jane (Margaret) was always there for her kids but she was so very human too. She lost her temper several times and once told her kids that they were brats. She made faces behind their backs once when she wanted to clobber them. She did what I never saw any other tv mother do, but what our own real mothers would do.

The whole cast was pretty wonderful. Bring back this show to tv again. There are plenty of baby boomers who would like to see it again and maybe it would be nice for it to get a whole new audience of a new generation.

Critics of this type of show are quick to point out how "unrealistic" it was. After all no episode dealt with drug addiction, teen pregnancy,dropping out of school, or any of the other "relevant" topics that pass for entertainment today. Instead this program concentrated on the, now passe, issues of family love, warmth, charity, and decency. I challenge any parent, of whatever generation, to contrast an episode of this show with any "Married with Children" or the majority of today's teen oriented sitcoms and decide which world view they would wish for their children. Perhaps this show and others of its era (e.g. Andy Griffith) was overly hopeful in its portrayal of family and community, but isn't it better to aspire to the values of Father Knows Best than succumb to the spirit of the age we live in?

It's ironic that culture commentators today, including many teachers, who seem never to have seen a single episode of this series, will refer to it as a frightening illustration of fifties complacency, patriarchal dominance, and even racism. In fact many of the episodes explore issues of male egotism, parental arrogance, and conformist nastiness in an effective way. Of course, it all ends well because it is a comic drama about a tolerant and loving family with solid values (and Father was often the one who had to be reminded of this). Robert Young in frustration complained that it was never meant to be a sermon or sociology lesson -- but this carefully written and popular series was bound to tell us something about our values, and despite current malcontents, the values illustrated by Father Knows Best were generally very good.

I was just thinking about the series and wondered why it has yet to be on the Nick or TV Land channels. This series was truly among the very best. Many of the episodes dealt with many issues that are still very relevant today. I especially liked the episode where the mother decides to take a day off from all the housework and cooking and treat herself to some new sights and sounds and how shocked the family is that the "routine" of things is upset. I saw Elinor on E! the other night by the way. I am looking forward to seeing this series air again somewhere.

The town was Springfield but we were never told the state. I always pictured the setting to be a very long way from either coast. Maybe Ohio, Indiana or Iowa. Wherever it was, it was far away from any of the country's real problems of the time.

There were no civil rights issues, no murders and no rapes in Springfield. Everyone was white, which was the norm for television of this era. Springfield was a make-believe fantasy by today's standards, but back then, it was the majority of real America.

With that said, I watched the show every week and wished I was a member of the Anderson family. Having belonged to a somewhat volatile family, I had the 30-minute escape every week to be a part of a caring, loving clan.

The kids had the normal 1950s problems of a white, middle-class family. Robert Young as the patriarch, Jim Anderson, showed an understanding that was not only appreciated by the rest of the family, but by the viewers, too. He was right up there with Andy Taylor and Ward Cleaver as the fathers America loved at the time.

Corny? To some it might be, but to many others, including myself, it was the family we wanted but never had.