Live HistoricSee what matters.

Series · CBS · 1951

Pass it on

The Red Skelton Show

46Watch it awake.

A craft in a living room. Watch it for the work, not for a story it does not pretend to have.

The review

It began in 1951 and was still, through a good part of this decade, one of the hours the country actually sat for. He plays the same characters until they are worn in: a tramp, a deputy, a fool who means well. There is no story to score across a season. There is a craft. The craft is making a living room laugh without making the laugh depend on somebody's humiliation.

That is a limited good and a real one. I will not invent a moral the sketches do not have. I will say a child can watch him work and see that comedy is something a person does on purpose, not a mood. If a later guest or a later year turns mean, turn it off. The inheritance from the years people still speak of is the tramp and the refusal to kick him.

Journal

Keep The Red Skelton Show in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 46. Yours can differ.

The glance

Household and Piety and Courage and Republic are the thin ones.

Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

All in the Family

60 instead of 46

All in the Family is still a comedy show, and it scores 60 instead of 46. What you gain is household: Edith stays, and the daughter and son-in-law live there and argue.

The eight

7
Industry
He does a character until the character works, and the doing is the craft.
4
Household
No ongoing household. The audience at home is treated as company, not as a target.
3
Piety
A gentleness at the edge of the joke is as close as the hour comes to reverence.
3
Courage
The risk is that a sketch fails in front of the country, and he stays on the mark.
4
Republic
A variety hour is a public square of a kind, shared and then gone.
6
Temperance
The jokes of this era of the show are broad without being a lesson in cruelty.
5
Truth
A sketch is a sketch. He does not pretend the tramp is a documentary.
5
Stewardship
A house can inherit a man working, which is cleaner than a lot of the laughter around him.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · The Red Skelton Show · 46IMDb

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Series · ABC · 1964

Pass it on

Bewitched

46Watch it awake.

The marriage is real. The magic is the shortcut the show cannot quite give up.

The review

A man marries a woman who can rearrange the world with a gesture, and she agrees not to. The agreement is the marriage. Her mother thinks the agreement is absurd, and most episodes prove the mother tactically right and morally beside the point: the gesture is faster, and the faster thing is not what she promised. Darrin is sometimes a thin character. The vow is not thin.

It was near the top of the ratings in the middle of the decade, a country's joke about power in a suburban kitchen. I would let a child watch one and then say the sentence the laugh skips: the magic is the cheat, and the cheat is funny because we want it. Do not let the twitch become the way a house thinks problems end. One evening is plenty to see the pattern.

Journal

Keep Bewitched in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 46. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety and Courage and Republic are the thin ones.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

58 instead of 46

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is still a comedy show, and it scores 58 instead of 46. What you gain is republic: A neighborhood with a name and a history.