(New Year’s Day was made to watch The Honeymooners marathon on the classic station, WPIX.)
How many Television shows that air new episodes right now in 2010 will still be aired 50-60 years from now? How many will be considered classics? Off the top of my head I can think of Cheers, Seinfeld, South Park and early seasons of The Simpson’s, but all of those shows were created in the 80’s and 90’s. The point is that not many will make the cut and become apart the elite club of Timeless Television.
Jackie Gleason’s sitcom, The Honeymooners, was produced in the mid 1950’s and is still ranked as one of the best sitcoms of all time. The Show was based around a New York City Bus Driver named Ralph Kramden and his wife, Alice, who live in a small apartment in Brooklyn. Mr. Gleason is one of the true kings of comedy (along with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, and Mel Brooks).
There were only 39 episodes of The Honeymooners produced…yet Ralph Kramden and his buddy, Ed Norton, are recognized as some of the best characters ever in comedy. Ralph’s get-rich-quick schemes were a re-accruing theme on the show; it was always the catalyst for some ridicules situation they would get themselves into. Aspects of the production find themselves being recycled over and over again in shows like All in the Family (1971) and The King of Queens (1998) (Both of the characters that Carroll O’Conner and Kevin James depict are based off Ralph Kramden).
The show illustrates another time, long gone. Certainly not politically correct to our society now but they are still pretty damn funny…you can’t take that away from it. The amazing thing about Jackie Gleason is that he would take things that wouldn’t be considered funny in real life (like raising your fist to your wife) but would make it hysterical with the face he would give and a “Zap, bam, boom…to the moon, Alice”.
Like all great shows, The Honeymooners was pretty cutting edge for the time. During this era all of the other shows had “TV wives” that wore pearls and aprons and stayed as the background homemaker, never questioning the husband and always trying to make him happy. On the contrary, Alice Kramden, played by Audrey Meadows, was constantly challenging her husband on who was the head of the household, not afraid to speak her mind…she represented the progressive woman. Whenever she was presented with one of Ralph’s schemes she always shot it down with practicality in mind but was there at the end to help him when things didn’t go as planed. Alice often didn’t need rescuing; it was she who rescued Ralph. Lets keep in mind Alice was doing all of this a decade before the Women’s Liberation movement in the 1960’s, she was way ahead of her time.
The Honeymooners Marathon on WPIX will always be a favorite of mine on New Year’s Day. I hope you got to watch, Happy New Year to you.
Check out the videos below, a different time when TV actually mattered.
A Tribute to the Great One – Jackie Gleason
Trah Bonus Clip of Classicness - Jackie Gleason on the Johnny Carson Show Circa 1986
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