One Day at a Time

How can a four year old remember the pilot episode of a show? I don't know, but I do. Groundbreaking at the time, it actually featured a divorced mother with her two kids. Very topical, and sedate by today's standards, this show was a huge hit. Of all the people on this show who would have thought Valerie Bertenelli would have the biggest career? And who knew McKenzie Phillips was on heroin? Totally watched during the seventies but everyone pretty much was over it by the early eighties. Still one of the coolest shows of the seventies.

Just like Ann Romano (Franklin), this show's a survivor.

"One Day at a Time" is one of those great shows that came out in the '70s that showed how far women had come in TV terms. In the '60s, you'd never have seen a show about a divorced woman who moved to Indianapolis with her daughters (Phillips, Bertinelli) to start a new life for themselves.

And what a great character they had in Ann Romano: spirited, opinionated, a fighter and someone who didn't take the bull that men fed her and fought tooth and nail for everything she had. A lot of that strength was from anger, naturally, but she modulated it well.

Then there was always Schneider (Harrington), the apartment super where she lived. Something of a ladies' man, he was always around to fix someone's pipes (if you know what I mean), but Ann wisely kept her distance. She knew a goof when she saw one, and Schneider's scenes were largely played for laughs. Good choice.

In fact, the whole series had a great run and never lacked for story lines (women's rights, divorce, suicide, runaways) but was a real showcase for Franklin, who was terrific. Hey, TV suits; give her another series as good as this one!

Ten stars for "One Day at a Time", a TV series whose "Time"-ing was perfect.

This series was okay but I find it hard to watch for one reason: Bonnie Franklin. She is utterly charmless. In episode after episode, men all her irresistible. She is the opposite of attractive; she is repellent. I am not only referring to he negligible looks but her personality and her delivery.Every time she would utter her signature line "Oh my Gawd " stretching out "g-a -w-d ", i wanted to scream. And the ridiculous jokes about her having dyed her hair. She was obviously a redhead with her skin pigmentation. Why bother ?; it is not like Lucille Ball who was not a natural redhead. She is just so obnoxious.During the course of the original run she was reported to have held out for extra money because she was the "star "; this is one case where not only could she have been replaced by another actress, I wish she had been.

This is one of my all-time favorites except for the last couple of seasons. The early years were great, funny, insightful, and pretty original. Ann dealt with some pretty heavy problems with her kids, found work she liked, and became an old pro at the dating game. It was neat to watch the character mature along with her daughters.

However, like a lot of shows with children/teenagers, they had to come up with a way to keep things going after the kids had grown too old for the story lines. In this case, they brought in a little boy with a pretty contrived plot line to be the new "son". It didn't work well.

I use to watch this when it was on TV. Recently its back on LOGO so I have been catching up on it. I forgot had bad Bonnie Franklin was in this show! Valerie Bertinelli was the reason I watched this show back when it was on she is still good in this show. They should have replaced the Bonnie Franklin with someone else.