Customer Reviews

Honeymooners 29: Big Happy Family / Lost Baby [VHS]

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The episode "One Big Happy Family" have quite a bit in common with the Odd Couple: the compulsory, the routine person versus the complainer, sort of the live let live persona. I do confess wondering whether Neil Simon saw it before deciding to use Art Carney as the original Felix Unger in his play "The Odd Couple." Like Felix, Ed Norton is compulsive (though not a neurotic). He sticks to his routine and things are planned ahead. This is especially true in the middle part of the episode when he decides to take a bath at 8 o'clock in the morning on his day off (knowing that Ralph is patiently though angrily waiting for over twenty minutes to take his before going to work). Of course, Ed could have allow Ralph to take his first, but ohh well. But Ed, unlike Felix, can be self-absorbed and loud (in a childlike, robustious way). Ed's wife, Trixi Norton (poor Trixi), is patient, outspoken, and tough-minded, but very observant.

Ralph Kramden is a loud complainer very much like Oscar Madison. Slightly more so than Oscar, Ralph also sticks to his routine and screams when that routine gets interrupted. Of course Ralph is more of a yeller than Oscar, but they speak their minds, sometimes without thinking. But I feel for Alice, who carries the weight in mediating the arguments between Ed and Ralph and did everything possible to not allow things to boil over. But the landlord (George Pretre) had enough of the screaming and told the couples to "vacate the premises."

The episode is very funny and highly original for its time (it was aired on April 9th, 1955). I'm not sure of the build-up of the sharing an apartment idea in the first half of the episode, when Ralph and Ed were working on their tax returns and figuring out their deductions and how to save more of their earnings. The idea seems too sudden (though Ralph tend to not think for the long-term). Nevertheless, the second half is among the finest of the great sitcom and is certainly worth watching over and over again (though you should watch the first half to see how Ralph came up with the idea in the first place). In syndication, though, the first half is often omitted and the apartment scene (a setting in Queens) tends to be broadcasted by itself.

A much shorter episode "Lost Baby" (aired on November 11th, 1952) is an effective precursor to the more substantial episode "The Adoption" (vol. 32); which is compelling, controversial, touching, and again, somewhat ahead of its time.