The one hundred and sixty-fourth TV show: #45 The Donna Reed Show
Watching The Donna Reed Show is an odd experience. For the most part, it's a sitcom squarely from the 1950s, with a proper housewife and a standard nuclear family. The kids are well behaved and willing to learn their lessons. The father is a pediatrician, dedicated to his job but with wise advice when it's needed. Donna Reed of course plays the stay at home mother, keeping the house clean, cooking well and keeping on top of the required social engagements. It's at its best when they can break the facade - when the kids can be sassy, the husband goofy and Donna Reed's character not be perfect. It feels like too often, though, they're restricted enough that they can't do so. It means that the joy is in the small moments, a gag in a scene and a comment here and there.
It's the fifties sentiments that constrain and limit the series and it needs a good plot to break through that - selling pickles, for example, rather than dealing with rejecting a boy as a dance partner for being too short - so the lessons don't matter as much. When you find that, it feels quite good to follow, but the series mostly just feels too outdated to keep me interested too often.