We boomers have a kind of television-show DNA that the generations before and after do not. Our parents managed to live lives free of the talking box; people born later have more technology around them than the Apollo astronauts did. The TV personalities and shows of our childhoods are a currency that spends across geographical and class lines.
Say “Beatles” and we think “Ed Sullivan.” Only recently have we discarded “Walt Disney” and taken up “Pixar” as the name that comes to mind for all-things-animated.
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(Credit: SitcomsOnline.com)
News of actor John Forsythe’s death reminded me of this. Forsythe went to his reward being most remembered for his latter-day sex symbol role in “Dynasty,” a long-running series he starred in late in his long career. (“Dynasty,” you may recall, is the show that made women’s dresses and jackets sprout shoulder pads the size of terriers.)
When I saw the obit for Forsythe I also remembered his brief role as a retired Air Force major running a private school for girls. “The John Forsythe Show,” kept me riveted each week of the 1965-66 season that it ran. It convinced me that boarding school would save my life, and indeed it did a few years later.
Much is made of the mind-melting properties of too-much television. We all cluck and shake our heads when we read those stories about how many hours Americans–especially kids–spend in front of the tube. But now and then, an idea from a silly sitcom takes root and grows into something good. So, here’s hoping that Mr. Forsythe’s heirs live long and prosper with the fruits of his TV labors.
2 Responses to “TV as role model.”
I don’t have a television, but now that you mention it, TV programs in the 1950s had laudable values. Think The Dobie Gillis Show, Andy of Mayberry, Danny Thomas, That Girl, The Real McCoys, Branded, The Rifleman, and so on. What ties them together are really corny values: integrity, fairness, compassion, law and order, education, and good parenting. And while there were model, two-parent families, the father on The Rifleman was a single parent, and Grandpa in the Real McCoys were deferred to (not ridiculed or parodied) because he was older. Oh, I almost forgot, Andy Griffith was a single parent, too.
I don’t know what values TV promulgates now….
And don’t forget Bonanza. Although there was something a little strange about the fact that no one ever seemed to leave home…Surely Little Joe could have found a partner?
As for what TV promulgates now, I can only hope others are not watching the trash I’m tuning in for: 24 (Special Forces retiree breaking jaws in the fight against terrorism); Rescue Me (philandering drunken firefighters who see ghosts); Breaking Bad (cancer-ridden science teacher cooking meth); True Blood (title says it all) and Sons of Anarchy (multi-generational motorcycle gang breaking jaws, philandering, selling arms to meth cookers and fighting off white supremacy on the side).
All I can say in my own defense is that everything fell apart when Johnny Carson retired.