(no subject)

[neuralclone]

I discovered that someone has uploaded the complete episodes of My Favorite Martian to YouTube.  Well, I was in the mood for rediscovering a nearly-forgotten part of my childhood so I've been watching them--and enjoying them too!

However it occurred to me that there were a hell of a lot of sitcoms made in the sixties about "ordinary" middle-class suburban blokes concealing a secret from their spouses, neighbours and employers--Mr Ed, My Favorite Martian, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie.  All good fun, but I can't help wondering if they were a metaphor for something (even if unconsciously!)  At the very least, I think they're commenting on suburban repression in post-war America.

Comments

[astrogirl]

I remember spending a surprising amount of time wondering the same thing, watching those shows as a kid/teenager. It was always some entity with powers of some kind they were hiding, too. It seems like there ought to be some deep and interesting meaning there. But, thinking about it a few decades later, it occurs to me that it might really just be that one show with that sort of plot got really successful, so, everybody just started imitating it.

I think My Favorite Martian was the best of them, though. Or at least, I thought that when I was young. I almost don't want to go back and watch it again, lest I be disillusioned. :)

[neuralclone]

Taken all in all, the 1960s was a fantastic era for fantasy television. :) There were not only the shows I mentioned above, but The Addams Family, The Munsters, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek, Dark Shadows, and Irwin Allen's entire output just to name a few of the other far out things on TV. And that's not even getting into the stuff that was being produced on British television. There must have been something in the air around then! In the 1970s almost everything seemed to fall back to Earth with a thud.

I won't try and predict what you'd think if you went back and rewatched My Favorite Martian. I only know that I probably last watched it before my age reached double figures and I'm enjoying it now--though probably not with the same guileless suspension of belief as back then!