Ozzie quickly regrets advising David against allowing people to take advantage of his good nature.Ozzie quickly regrets advising David against allowing people to take advantage of his good nature.Ozzie quickly regrets advising David against allowing people to take advantage of his good nature.
Photos
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe sponsor for this show is Listerine.
- Quotes
David Nelson: I promised to help a couple of friends of mine.
Ricky Nelson: What about me? I'm your brother, you know.
David Nelson: Don't get maudlin.
Ricky Nelson: Oh, yeah? I suppose you think I don't know what that means.
David Nelson: Okay. What does it mean?
Ricky Nelson: Just for that, you can look it up yourself.
David Nelson: I told you, I promised to help a couple of friends of mine. A guy can have a couple of friends in this world, can't he?
Ricky Nelson: Oh, yeah? If it wasn't for me, you'd be an only child.
This is famous as the blandest show in TV history- in 14 years we never even found out what Ozzie does for a living! But it lasted for 14 years- as long as Bonanza or Dallas- so it had to have something going for it. It began the trend of the gentle family comedy featuring characters that looked like the ones we see in commercials- immaculately dressed housewives with cute children and loving husbands in a suburban setting dealing with minor day-to-day crises. They lived in Hillsdale or Springfield or some similar place. Their names were Nelson or Anderson or Brady. Early TV had family comedies that were full of ethnic characters, (Gertrude Berg, Mama, I Love Lucy, and Make Room for Daddy). The Honeymooners was ultimately about poverty. But Ozzie and Harriet were resolutely average. Subsequent generations have tended to view the show with contempt because it didn't show the "real" world.
But, of course, people do live in the suburbs and they do deal with the situations these people dealt with. These shows just wanted to present a form of gentle humor and a release from the day's problems. Unlike the father figures in the similar shows to follow, Ozzie allowed himself to be a sort of amiable klutz and most of the episodes were about his foibles. In this one, he castigates his kids for being upset they weren't invited to their neighbor's birthday party. (They have rigged up a practical joke involving a bucket of water to obtain revenge.) Then he learns that the party is for the kid's father who hasn't invited Ozzie! He reacts as badly as the boys but it's funnier coming from him. In the end, of course, he winds up falling, (literally), victim to the bucket of water, with the neighbor's birthday cake involved too. In the closing credits, Ozzie, (who directed the episodes), gives us a "slow-motion shot of the knockout", (an obvious reference to the ubiquitous boxing matches that dominated the airwaves at the time), and a reverse motion shot of David jumping out of a tree that makes it look as if he jumped from the ground into the tree. Who says he wasn't innovative?
- schappe1
- Feb 9, 2008
Details
- Runtime30 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1