The mild world of "Topper"

[johnbasalla]

I have a number of "Topper" episodes on DVD. I've noticed that the comedy is very mild as is the understated laugh track. "Topper's" writers included Stephen Sonheim and they never seem to draw stark adversarial characters so that when the ghosts go about their business of helping Topper, the comic effect would be stronger. Case in point: They have a guy go on a camping trip with Mr. and Mrs. Topper. The gag seems to be that this guy is supposed to be a big, egotisitical, know-it-all blow hard. The ghosts refer to him that way and say how they're going to help Topper get even with him. First of all, the guy isn't being all that annoying and Topper never shows any disgust with him whether he's in the room or not. Mrs. Topper is also oblivious to this guys bad streak. The only indication we have that the guy is actually a "bad" guy is the ghosts reaction to him. So, when they go about doing their ghostly comic business, it's only mildly funny and seems a bit undeserved.

The same can be said for an episode where the set-up is an immoral store owner who is trying to take advantage of Mrs. Topper. As it plays out, he's not as big of a despicable snake you'd expect from the episode description I just provided.
Still, "Topper" is my favorite series from the 1950s as it is the strangest sitcom of the decade.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

I too enjoyed Topper. My best take is that Topper's "oblivious" response is typical of his role in other episodes. Leo G. Carroll never impressed me as a terribly engergetic actor on Topper, nor on Man From U.N.C.L.E. His response to aggitation on Topper was kind of a roll-of-the-eyes patience. His character could be more forceful on U.N.C.L.E., where he never raised his voice, though he never had to; his eye expressions offered all the persuasion needed to drive his point.

 

[FredLeonard]

In the movies, Topper was mousey, quiet, shy, repressed banker and George and Marian's assignment (they knew Topper, he was their banker before they died in a car crash - not a skiing accident) and to get Topper to loosen up and get some fun out of life. Not sure if that concept could have been extended for 39 episodes a season, so I guess they decided to invent some villains.

 

[RicoGregg]

In 1979, an appallingly unfunny TV movie of Topper was made, starring Kate Jackson and her first husband Andrew Stevens, son of Stella, as the Kerbys, and Jack Warden, who deserved better, as Cosmo Topper.

It was actually a proposed series at the time. Thankfully, it got nowhere. If you haven't seen this version, trust me, you've missed next-to-nothing.

 

[johnbasalla]

The "villains" aren't very villainous, at least on the episodes I've seen.

Another thing I've noticed... On the DVD's, the fade-out to what would have been a commercial break, and the fade back in is always clipped. The picture starts fading out, and then an abrupt cut takes you to the beginning of the next scene where you're lucky to see a trace of the fade back in to the episode. Looks a lot like a bad splice in a broken film.

 

[landtuna]

Someone mentioned the general banality of 50's sitcom's earlier. In general, since real society problems weren't addressed by the sitcom genre, all sitcoms tended to be unrealistic situations. I Married Joan, Meet Corliss Archer, December Bride, Ozzie & Harriett, I Love Lucy, Burns & Allen and many more dwelt upon the impossible or improbable as opposed to the later and much more realistic sitcoms such as All In The Family or Cosby. A very few that spanned the transition, such as Leave It To Beaver touched on real issues but not the divisive problems in real life.

 

[FredLeonard]

Someone mentioned the general banality of 50's sitcom's earlier. In general, since real society problems weren't addressed by the sitcom genre, all sitcoms tended to be unrealistic situations. I Married Joan, Meet Corliss Archer, December Bride, Ozzie & Harriett, I Love Lucy, Burns & Allen and many more dwelt upon the impossible or improbable as opposed to the later and much more realistic sitcoms such as All In The Family or Cosby. A very few that spanned the transition, such as Leave It To Beaver touched on real issues but not the divisive problems in real life.

Most sitcoms deal with family life. A few deal with on-the-job life. They are not about social problems. I wouldn't consider this unrealistic because most of us don't go through life focused on social problems. I think the case can be made that December Bride was ahead of its time in focusing on issues affecting the elderly, especially the recently single elderly.

And Ozzie and Harriet dealt with issues of unemployment. :

 

[bpatrick]

Perhaps if you look deeply you'll find issues buried in some
of those old sitcoms: Lucy Ricardo is a bored housewife looking
for a career and a way out of that apartment, Ralph Kramden
schemes and schemes to find that one thing that will make him
rich and get him out of that Brooklyn slum. Commentaries on
women and blue-collar workers in the '50s? Maybe. But neither
Lucy nor Gleason would say they were making conscious statements
about either. Asked on "60 Minutes" why he thought "The Honeymooners"
had remained popular for decades, Gleason had a two-word answer:
"They're funny."

But so many of the sitcoms of the '60s were so ridiculous, out of touch
with the times, or unfunny (Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke, "Get Smart"
and maybe "Green Acres" were at least funny) that the Norman Lear/MTM
shows of the '70s were like a breath of fresh air. (To belabor a point,
compare "Gomer Pyle, USMC" and "M*A*S*H.") And it's interesting that
two failed '60s sitcoms--"He & She" and "Love On A Rooftop"--were rerun
in the early '70s and got better ratings than they did originally, a sign, perhaps,
that those shows were ahead of their time when they originally aired, as both
presented believable married couples, and in the case of "He & She," a wife with
a job. Now if somebody had thought to give "Good Morning World" (about a pair
of morning DJs) a second look (especially in light of the success of "WKRP In Cincinnati"
a few years later).

And how significant is it that, after the Martians, witches, and genies of the '60s,
only two sitcoms involving sci-fi-type characters have been really successful since:
"Mork & Mindy" and "ALF," and "Mork" basically because of Robin Williams' routines,
not because of any great desire to see interplanetary beings? ("Sabrina The Teenage
Witch" and "Small Wonder" are aimed too much at kids, IMO.)

 

[johnbasalla]

"The Andy Griffith Show" dealt quite powerfully with a number of family issues. There are a couple of great moral teaching episodes, most notably the respect-for-life episode where Opie kills a bird and Andy points out that the crying chirp of a baby bird is the sound of a bird calling for its mother who isn't coming home. Powerful stuff (imo). It wasn't all fun and games on Griffiths sitcom.

 

[Gregg]

Certainly The Andy Griffith Show has stood the test of time. It was running in afternoons or early evenings in most Southern markets till around 2000, as the last black-and-white program on a regular broadcast schedule.

But I wouldn't say the writing was realistic, aside from the dead bird episode. Let's remember, Mayberry was a Southern town with no black people. There was an episode where Andy was away and Barney locked nearly everyone up for some small legal violation. There must have been 30 people in the jail and everyone was white. I was amazed one day to see an episode where Opie's football coach was black. The actor was an ex-NFL player I think.

It's true that Lucy Riccardo was trying to get out of the house and have a career. But her effort was always portrayed as silly. She was doing it for fame, not because she needed or wanted a job. Ironic that the real Lucille Ball was not only a performer but a studio owner and producer of her show, along with her husband. She negotiated the terms of her CBS employment directly with William Paley.

By the way, speaking of Topper, that may have been the last black-and-white TV show, other than The Honeymooners, to have a regular airing on a major NYC TV station. WABC-TV 7 ran it at 4:30 on Sunday mornings into the early 2000s. By then, WNYW 5 had stopped airing I Love Lucy. The only survivor from the black-and-white era is The Honeymooners, which WPIX 11 continues to air weekend overnights to this day.

 

[johnbasalla]

I think that there were a number of Andy Griffith show episodes that were realistic or fairly realistic (not all of them, of course). Another realistic one came in the color era, and is as deeply moving as the bird episode. Mayberry has a contest for the best flower. Neighbor Clara often wins. Aunt Bea and Clara are in deep competition for the prize, and their friendship is suffering as Clara is being kind of snooty. Bea has the best flower she's ever grown and takes a picture of it. Unfortunately, while playing baseball in the backyard with a friend, the ball Opie hits smashes the flower. Bea decides not to say anything and quietly withdraw from the competition. Clara wins.
At the awards ceremony, Clara finds out what actually happened, and after seeing the picture of the flower, graciously turns the award over to Aunt Bea. Another great morality tale.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

"The Andy Griffith Show" dealt quite powerfully with a number of family issues. There are a couple of great moral teaching episodes, most notably the respect-for-life episode where Opie kills a bird and Andy points out that the crying chirp of a baby bird is the sound of a bird calling for its mother who isn't coming home. Powerful stuff (imo). It wasn't all fun and games on Griffiths sitcom.

Then there was that Aunt-Bee's-friend-dies episode. America's favorite Aunt retreats into 20-something minutes of grief and depression, struggling with not just the loss itself, but it's greater meaning-of-life and mortality issues.