The Donna Reed Show

I loved this show when it was on nearly two decades ago. It's wholesome, but not nauseatingly so. It's funny, but not frenetically. One of the funnier episodes was when the household is visited by a pollster who embarrasses Donna by predicting her every move, as she is the "average" housewife. This brand of humor is obviously more subtle than Lucy. And because it is, there is little appreciation. Donna Reed was also a great lady in real life.

I watched It's a Wonderful Life last week and missed watching The Donna Reed Show playing on Nick at Nite in the 80s. I grew up on old shows from the 50s through 70s when television was still admirable and CLEAN.

I remember watching this show sometimes when it was on Nick at Nite back in the 80s. I was a kid at the time and I remember Donna Stone just being so nice. She always solved any problem in such a sweet, wholesome and sensible manner. Sure it's another example of that 'perfect picturesque fifties family lifestyle' but it's part of television heritage. Just like those messages imbedded in the show telling you to have good manners, drink more milk and marry a doctor. Still, the theme song brings back memories that are warm and endearing. Donna Reed will always be there to give us our milk and cookies.

Although it lasted in the Sixties, this was the typical family Pleasantiville-style sitcom of the Fifties, along with Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons, and Father Knows Best. Reed's career was on a downturn, so this series was designed as a vehicle for her - and hence the uniquely egocentric title! Can you imagine "Beaver" being called "The Barbara Billingsley Show"? Donna was, admittedly, in the center of things more, and solved all manner of family crisis. The son, Paul Peterson, is now an advocate for child actors, and Shelley Fabares, who had a hit song during this series' run ("Johnny Angel"), had a career that went from teen idol to mature beauty in "Coach". The father was a doctor - at least he had a job unlike the goofy Ozzie! A somewhat contrived and formula show even by Fifties standards, but still a pleasant and wholesome series - unlike the smutty, cynical, and mean-spirited sitcoms of more recent times of which I have little use.

I too would rather live next door to the Stones and not the Conners! I've heard people say that this show was "syrupy", "unrealistic", etc. My reply is "have you ever sat and watched an episode?" Anyone who watched the show knows that Donna and Alex had their quarrels and so did Mary and Jeff. They even quarreled with their parents. But in the end, they all made up with one another, and kept the family unit in tact. Having come from a terribly unstable "dysfunctional" family, I loved to watch this show; I always believed that when I had a family of my own it would be like the Stones. Friends told me that this was unrealistic and I said why? If other families can live trashy, unstable lives, then why can't I have a stable, moralistic life? Why can't I have a stable family that I love, and take care of? They had no reply to this. Anyway, when times are difficult, and the world seems so chaotic & cold, I put in a tape of the Donna Reed Show, and things don't seem quite so bad-it gives me hope. I still believe in the family unit and I most certainly do not believe that we have to live like Roseanne. I know that life does not have to be like the Conners or the Bundy's--and anyone who thinks that these shows are normal and funny needs to take a long hard look at their own lives. These are not funny--they are sad.