The Donna Reed Show

Although it only lasted eight seasons on ABC, The Donna Reed Show was your typical sitcoms with all the trimmings. Unlike it counterparts back then(like "My Three Sons", "Ozzie and Harriet", "Leave It To Beaver") this show was about a housewife who was always into something and usually helps out and usually solve all situations within a half-hour(even within a family crisis along with her husband Dr. Stone to help out around the house). The show did have two of it stars to make it big: Paul Peterson(who is now a advocate for child actors)had a hit record back in the early 1960's with "My Dad"(for which he sang that song on one of the episodes),and Shelley Fabares who had a #1 hit record with "Johnny Angel",which stay on the top-ten charts for a record five weeks back in 1963,and had two more hit TV series after Donna with here own sitcom back in the 1970's("The Shelley Fabares Show"),and again in the 1990's with "Coach" opposite Craig T. Nelson. However,the show did manage to make the transition from black and white to color in the show's final season(those color episodes are rarely seen),and afterwards it's re-runs usually appear on TV's Nick-at-Nite if you get the chance to see them. A TV classic.

I too would rather live next door to the Stones and not the Conners! I've heard people say that this show was "syrupy", "unrealistic", etc. My reply is "have you ever sat and watched an episode?" Anyone who watched the show knows that Donna and Alex had their quarrels and so did Mary and Jeff. They even quarreled with their parents. But in the end, they all made up with one another, and kept the family unit in tact. Having come from a terribly unstable "dysfunctional" family, I loved to watch this show; I always believed that when I had a family of my own it would be like the Stones. Friends told me that this was unrealistic and I said why? If other families can live trashy, unstable lives, then why can't I have a stable, moralistic life? Why can't I have a stable family that I love, and take care of? They had no reply to this. Anyway, when times are difficult, and the world seems so chaotic & cold, I put in a tape of the Donna Reed Show, and things don't seem quite so bad-it gives me hope. I still believe in the family unit and I most certainly do not believe that we have to live like Roseanne. I know that life does not have to be like the Conners or the Bundy's--and anyone who thinks that these shows are normal and funny needs to take a long hard look at their own lives. These are not funny--they are sad.

I loved this show when it was on nearly two decades ago. It's wholesome, but not nauseatingly so. It's funny, but not frenetically. One of the funnier episodes was when the household is visited by a pollster who embarrasses Donna by predicting her every move, as she is the "average" housewife. This brand of humor is obviously more subtle than Lucy. And because it is, there is little appreciation. Donna Reed was also a great lady in real life.

Although it lasted in the Sixties, this was the typical family Pleasantiville-style sitcom of the Fifties, along with Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons, and Father Knows Best. Reed's career was on a downturn, so this series was designed as a vehicle for her - and hence the uniquely egocentric title! Can you imagine "Beaver" being called "The Barbara Billingsley Show"? Donna was, admittedly, in the center of things more, and solved all manner of family crisis. The son, Paul Peterson, is now an advocate for child actors, and Shelley Fabares, who had a hit song during this series' run ("Johnny Angel"), had a career that went from teen idol to mature beauty in "Coach". The father was a doctor - at least he had a job unlike the goofy Ozzie! A somewhat contrived and formula show even by Fifties standards, but still a pleasant and wholesome series - unlike the smutty, cynical, and mean-spirited sitcoms of more recent times of which I have little use.

I was five when the show made its debut in 1958 and at a later point, was a regular viewer. I remember that I really enjoyed the show, along with "Leave It To Beaver", "My Three Sons", "Ozzie and Harriet", "Dick Van Dyke", reruns of "I Love Lucy", "The Real McCoys", etc. I am now enjoying the first season of "Donna Reed" on DVD and have watched the first two episodes. Donna Stone is shown to be an intelligent, well-mannered, problem-solving, serene, stay-at-home mom, similar to June Cleaver and in contrast to Lucy Ricardo. In episode 2, I especially like how Ms. Reed becomes a surrogate dad, trading in her dress for sweats and boxing gloves, while teaching her son how to defend himself physically against a much larger bully. While none of the mothers in the neighborhood I grew up in, including my own, exactly met the idealistic standards portrayed by Ms. Reed, it is refreshing to see good manners and intelligent decision-making prevail at the end of the day, in contrast to today's accepted standards of vulgarity, selfishness and indifference among one's neighbors. I cannot imagine Jeff and Mary Stone being told by their parents that trespassing in their neighbors' yards is okay, leaving a dog outside to bark all day is acceptable, or telling their mother to "shut up" in a supermarket in front of everyone.