Honeymooners

[dreadnut]

I've been on a Honeymooners binge lately. Jackie Gleason makes me bust out laughing, which is good for the body and soul. He and Art Carney are one of the best duos in comedy.

 

[DrumBob]

My favorite TV show of all time. I have seen all classic 39 episodes dozens of times, and also have a lot of the lost episodes on video tape.

If you have never seen Gleason with Brad Garrett, check it out. It's on Paramount cable channel now. Garrett does a great job and looks so much like Gleason, it's scary.

 

[GGJaguar]

Yup, still funny after all these years.

 

[Midnight Toker]

Loved The Great One. My dad weened me on Honeymooners, The Jackie Gleason Show, etc. He was a massive fan of all if his work. When I was a kid when Smokey and the Bandit came out, every Sunday for 5-6 weeks, my dad would tell my mom on Sunday morning that he's taking the boys to church....just to drive right by the church and hit the matinee showing at the local theater. To this day, I've never seen any movie in the theater more times than Bandit. I know every single Gleason line in it by heart.

Still one of my favorite bits was a Joe the Bartender...where he has 3 glasses in front of him, one w/ water, one w/ beer, and one w/ straight gin. He says," I'll put this worm in the water....look at it, swimming around, not a care in the world" <takes the worm and drops it in the beer> "Now look at it, happy as a clam, having the time of his life!" < grabs the worm, drops it in the gin> "Now, 3 seconds in the gin, that worm is dead as a doornail.....so what does that tell you????? Drink gin and you'll never have worms!!"

Likely my favorite Honeymooners is Art Carney trying to learn golf in Ralph's apartment. "Address the ball!" "Hello ball!"

 

[spoox]

When I was taking coin magic lessons back in the early '80s I infuriated the magician teaching me one routine when I would do the Norton thing of moving his elbows back and forth before beginning the trick. I wasn't doing it on purpose--I'd seen Carney doing so many times as a kid it just came naturally.
When I couldn't stop doing it I said "Hey! Hey! Sorry Ralphie boy!".

 

[Midnight Toker]

Also, young kids of the late 70's/80's who watched the Flintstones cartoon likely had no idea they were basically watching the prehistoric Honeymooners. I saw the connection right away.

 

[Teleguy61]

Likely my favorite Honeymooners is Art Carney trying to learn golf in Ralph's apartment. "Address the ball!" "Hello ball!"

The greatest line.
Art as a foil to Jackie --so brilliant.

Another favorite is the Hot Dog Stand, and Art says to their only customer," No, this is only part time for me--I work down the sewer!"
The customer sidles away.....

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Also, young kids of the late 70's/80's who watched the Flintstones cartoon likely had no idea they were basically watching the prehistoric Honeymooners. I saw the connection right away.

Yup!

The insufferable-head-of-household TV continuum:

- The Life of Riley
- The Honeymooners
- The Flintstones
- All In the Family
- The Simpsons

Never saw Family Guy. That might be the next one. Other candidates?

 

[walrus]

Yup!

The insufferable-head-of-household TV continuum:

- The Life of Riley
- The Honeymooners
- The Flintstones
- All In the Family
- The Simpsons

Never saw Family Guy. That might be the next one. Other candidates?

Agreed! Classic TV programming.

"The Jeffersons" is another great example.

Also, "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "King of Queens" probably fit except for the "loudness" of the male character. I'm sure there's more!

walrus

 

[Midnight Toker]

Yup!

The insufferable-head-of-household TV continuum:

- The Life of Riley
- The Honeymooners
- The Flintstones
- All In the Family
- The Simpsons

Never saw Family Guy. That might be the next one. Other candidates?

Sure there's the ongoing insufferable head of household theme that's mainstream in sitcoms......but with the Flintstones, it IS the Honeymooners. The characters, their voices, their wives, the lodge they belong to, the never ending schemes they get into that backfire....just to miraculously resolve unscathed. It was a direct facsimile of the Honeymooners, in a cartoon prehistoric setting. It's like the creators made no attempt to hide the direct connection.

 

[walrus]

Sure there's the ongoing insufferable head of household theme that's mainstream in sitcoms......but with the Flintstones, it IS the Honeymooners. The characters, their voices, their wives, the lodge they belong to, the never ending schemes they get into that backfire....just to miraculously resolve unscathed. It was a direct facsimile of the Honeymooners, in a cartoon prehistoric setting. It's like the creators made no attempt to hide the direct connection.

Agreed. Supposedly Gleason was thinking about suing them over it.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertai...ones-actually-based-on-the-honeymooners.html/

walrus

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Sure there's the ongoing insufferable head of household theme that's mainstream in sitcoms......but with the Flintstones, it IS the Honeymooners. . . .

Yup!

It's like lots of people don't know that Hogan's Heroes is Stalag 17 or that Bridget Jones is Pride and Prejudice or that West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet.

 

[Rocky]

Of course, The Jetsons = The Flintstones = The Honeymooners.

 

[Midnight Toker]

Of course, The Jetsons = The Flintstones = The Honeymooners.

Not really. George Jetson didn't have a neighbor best friend he always got into hyjinx with....while their wives lamented behind their backs over their never ending hair brained schemes. Or went bowling, or were members of a lodge w/ goofy animal hat mascots. The character details were just....too similar w/ Ralph/Ed-Fred/Barney (and all their wives)

In tv/film, there have been SO many rehashed plots it's not even funny. For every film that comes out today where people say, "that's just a rehash of "_____" film from the 60's-70's, I'd bet past generations said the exact same thing about those films being rehashes of films from the 40's-50's, and I'd bet they too were loosely based on plots from theatre productions from well before then. It's like there are but 15-20 really good stories that have been told 1000 times over in every way imaginable.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Of course, The Jetsons = The Flintstones = The Honeymooners.

I don't remember George being a blithering boob.

 

[Rocky]

I don't remember George being a blithering boob.

How many times did this interaction happen?

"But, but, Mr. Spacely....."

"Jet-SON! YOU'RE FIRED!"

 

[Rocky]

Not really. George Jetson didn't have a neighbor best friend he always got into hyjinx with....while their wives lamented behind their backs over their never ending hair brained schemes. Or went bowling, or were members of a lodge w/ goofy animal hat mascots. The character details were just....too similar w/ Ralph/Ed-Fred/Barney (and all their wives)

In tv/film, there have been SO many rehashed plots it's not even funny. For every film that comes out today where people say, "that's just a rehash of "_____" film from the 60's-70's, I'd bet past generations said the exact same thing about those films being rehashes of films from the 40's-50's, and I'd bet they too were loosely based on plots from theatre productions from well before then. It's like there are but 15-20 really good stories that have been told 1000 times over in every way imaginable.

It's not quite the xerox that Flintstones was, but virtually every sitcom/Western was identical to every other, with interchangeable parts. Ben Cartwright a widower? Add Hop Sing as the 'surrogate mother.' Ditto Uncle Charley in My Three Sons.

The big advance [yawn] in television was detective shows replacing cop shows.

 

[fronobulax]

Not really. George Jetson didn't have a neighbor best friend he always got into hyjinx with....while their wives lamented behind their backs over their never ending hair brained schemes. Or went bowling, or were members of a lodge w/ goofy animal hat mascots. The character details were just....too similar w/ Ralph/Ed-Fred/Barney (and all their wives)

In tv/film, there have been SO many rehashed plots it's not even funny. For every film that comes out today where people say, "that's just a rehash of "_____" film from the 60's-70's, I'd bet past generations said the exact same thing about those films being rehashes of films from the 40's-50's, and I'd bet they too were loosely based on plots from theatre productions from well before then. It's like there are but 15-20 really good stories that have been told 1000 times over in every way imaginable.

It is claimed that there are only seven basic plot types and with sufficient motivation any story can be deconstructed down to one of them. The academics I have seen who did so recognized that plot types could be blended and that (for example) The Quest may lead to an object that is used to Overcome the Monster with significant character Rebirth along the way.

"All models are wrong. Some models are useful." is attributed to George Box in reference to statistical models but it can be usefully applied in many areas. So if there are only seven basic plot types the similarity between various stories told in "TV series" and movies is to be expected and the interesting question is not the similarity but how the similarity is downplayed or obscured.

And for some people it just doesn't matter that "The Opening of Misty Beethoven" is merely a retelling of Pygmalion with different (or no) costumes

 

[Midnight Toker]

^ The seven basic plots may be somewhat accurate in the bulk of generic storytelling, but it certainly doesn't hold true for all. Some of the more critically acclaimed filmmakers have succeeded in telling a story in a way no one was ever used to. From Kubrick to Tarantino, we've gotten off the wall character studies that don't follow any traditional protagonist/antagonist plot line. (Likely why they are my two all time favorite filmmakers)

 

[fronobulax]

^ The seven basic plots may be somewhat accurate in the bulk of generic storytelling, but it certainly doesn't hold true for all. Some of the more critically acclaimed filmmakers have succeeded in telling a story in a way no one was ever used to. From Kubrick to Tarantino, we've gotten off the wall character studies that don't follow any traditional protagonist/antagonist plot line. (Likely why they are my two all time favorite filmmakers)

Well the people I know who studied this would disagree and have written and published papers showing how the unique story plot is not unique after all. Then their colleagues write papers disagreeing or correcting and the whole discussion spirals into a jargon laden discourse that assumes some specific definitions of terms. Keep in mind that the first time I heard of this the academics understood 14 plot types so your examples may be evidence that a 14 plot type model is "better" than a 7 type one.

Since I prefaced this with "all models are wrong, some are useful" the interesting discussion for me isn't necessarily that the model is wrong but that it is nevertheless useful. The similarities between TV shows don't always have to be explained by the later one ripping off the earlier one.