Don't Go to Bed Mad

Sometimes this show really seems dated. It hasn't stood the test of time when it comes to relationships. I know it is coming at some point where Bob's patients come into play. They were the heartbeat of this show. Here it is the dawn of Monday Night Football. Bob invites Jerry over to watch. Emily thinks it's a regular dinner invitation. For her, it's more and more sports and less time with her husband. It leads to a silly argument over who whether Bob is overdosing on football. He uses the old I'm the king of my castle bit and they stay up all night arguing about who's right. It's not all that funny. Bob comes off worse in the long run.

A below average episode at best. No big laughs or anything even mildly humorous. The fighting bit was pounded for most of the episode that got old fast. At first iinteresting to see the happy couple quarreling but it didn't create laughs.

The early days of Monday night football. It was must see television back then. Even people on the east coast when the game started at 9:00 pm would stay up and watch the game in it's entirety on a work day night well past midnight it was so riveting. Back then sports wasn't flooded everywhere like it is now without cable TV and streaming in the 70s.

Interesting trivia that we get to see the Hartley's apartment pinpointed with the only lights on in the building.

Chicago grammar school teacher Emily Hartley (Suzanne Pleshette) is always delighted to have orthodontist Jerry Robinson (Peter Bonerz) over to her apartment to visit. Jerry is a friend and practices on the same floor of offices that Emily's psychologist husband Bob (Bob Newhart) works at. Sports fan Jerry is known to steal Bob away for Bulls and White Sox games. But Emily puts her foot down when Jerry and Bob make a habit of watching Monday Night Football games at their place.

Wives across America lost the attention (About three hours worth give or take) of their husbands on Monday nights after the debut of ABC's Game of the Week compromise that put the NFL in prime-time in September 1970. In MNF's third season it was enough of a phenomenon that this show on another network (CBS) was giving it proper attention for how it changed television as well as impacted the lives of football fans. Whether it was being shown in a private home or at sports bars, MNF bored generations of wives and girlfriends.

Bob and Emily are happily married and agree on most things (Evidently including horrific taste in wallpaper, drapes and modern art). But they have their disagreements and issues which have added up for Emily. She doesn't like football and Bob knows it. But Bob loves football. The same time every year this is gonna come up but since the sport is so far out of her orbit she finds it unexpected and. is thus unprepared, each time.

Emily hates it that during every football season Bob watches games on Saturday (College) and Sunday (Pros) and wonders why she should then be asked to give up on an evening of quality time on Monday so that her husband can watch a sport she has never understood or seen much to take an interest in. She goes on work-to-rule in their marriage only creating more friction. The resulting brinkmanship is hilarious whilst offering a true to life resolution.

The humour lies in how mature and adult these characters are even when they get into a trivial dispute. Emily shows the kind of passive-aggressive recalcitrance stereo-typically attributed to women in arguments with the men in their lives. But Bob's reaction is more uniquely Bob than a typical guy's reaction. Ultra-calm and sedate (The kind of mindset that a PhD in psychology might carry with him everywhere) he maintains his reserve but also his resolve as he has with evidently no less than 46 concurrent arguments he is having with the love of his life that haven't made HIM a candidate for a strait-jacket.

So what is there here to see? It is mature comedy but also a form of wish fulfillment. This episode, and the series, suggested that a nice guy didn't have to finish last or get walked all over. Bob Hartley (Not Bob Redford, nor absurdly portrayed by a glamorous actor like him) quietly built a successful practice doing something that helped people. He also maintained a happy (Though hardly argument-free) marriage to Emily - a beautiful and loving grammar school teacher and dedicated life-partner who, from all subtle indications, was a spectacular lay. He did all of it at a time when the divorce-rate was sky-rocketing.

The ultimate message of the show is a pretty conservative one to give North American TV audiences in the 1970s i.e. if you work hard, put in the time, maintain your commitments, manage your expectations and keep your head about you, things should be pretty good for you. It isn't only Bob's character who is telling us that. It is Emily's character - a dedicated teacher who does all those things and is happy, particularly when the man she loves is there (Unless he is watching football).

Whether or not you would view their living as high (A fifth floor apartment in an upscale building, they take the L-train to work back and forth every weekday, they both deal with people in need of guidance which is sometimes nerve-wracking, he employs a secretary but shares her with an orthodontist on the same floor as his office) these are good people who have done their best. They don't have so much but they don't need so much and, given that they're still together when fewer and fewer could make it work, appear to be happy i.e. successful where it matters.

These are but some of the elements of one of the most sophisticated and urbane romantic comedies in network TV history. It offered validation to a lifestyle ordinary people could relate to. At it's best, the show celebrated the intelligent, industrious and altruistic family people of North American society who are at it's bulwark.