Mothers Day 2008 – Not The Mama

The second part of our Mothers Day post today is about people who aren't actually mothers (well with one sort of exception). Instead, these are people who have been thrust into the maternal role by circumstance. After all a staple of sitcoms, particularly in the 1960s was the single parent household where the single parent was a man, usually a widowed father, who needed someone to fill the role of a mother for his child or children. And that, with a couple of exceptions is what we're dealing with here.

Fran Fine – The Nanny: Okay, so Fran became the mother – or rather the step-mother – when she married Maxwell Sheffield, and then later had her own twins in the final episode of the series. That doesn't matter, because Fran really was the surrogate mother for the three Sheffield kids, Maggie, Brighton, and Gracie. She adapted her role to the child she was working with. She became a big sister/best friend to the eldest, Maggie; a motherly confidant to middle child Brighton who was the only son; and a replacement mother to the youngest, Gracie. And yet the role of Fran as mother replacement was not all consuming. She still had time and the inclination to deal with her own family and her friend Val, to work together with Niles the butler, to spar with her rival C.C. Babcock, and of course flirt shamelessly with her boss which eventually led to her actually becoming the mother of the kids that she already thought of as her own.

Aunt Bee Taylor – The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry RFD: Aunt Bee was the maiden aunt of Sheriff Andy Taylor who comes to live with her nephew and his six year-old son Opie, after their last housekeeper left to get married. Initially Opie didn't like Aunt Bee but by the end of the first episode he becomes reconciled to her and indeed very quickly comes to love her, or at the very least like a grandmother. Aunt Bee was actually a maternal figure for both Opie and Andy: for reasons which were never revealed in the show (this was after all made in the continuity sparse 1960s) she also raised Andy as a boy. While Aunt Bee had never married, it wasn`t as though she had given up. She had a number of romantic entanglements, although most of the early ones tended to be with unsuitable men. Aunt Bee was an excellent southern style cook, although less than successful in canning. Eventually, when Andy marries his long time sweetheart Helen Crump, Aunt Bee leaves the Taylor Home and became the housekeeper for another widowed father, farmer and town councillor Sam Jones and his young son Mike (played by Jodie Foster`s younger brother Mike; Jodie made her first appearances on Mayberry RFD). She stayed with Mayberry RFD for the first two seasons of that series, dispensing advice and fried chicken. There`s a bit of irony in that while Aunt Bee was a warm and loving woman, the actress who played her – Frances Bavier – is generally remembered by people who worked with her report that she was generally cool and frequently difficult to work with who felt that her acting abilities (she had been on Broadway and in a number of films) were underappreciated. In particular her relationship with series star Andy Griffith was often difficult to say the least.

"Granny" Daisy Moses – The Beverly Hillbillies: Although she's usually called "Granny Clampett" by those who don't know any better, Granny was really the mother of Jed Clampett's late wife Rose Ellen. According to producer Paul Henning this was done so that she could be overruled, which was something that he didn't think that they could do if she were Jed's mother and therefore the family matriarch. Even so she was still a matriarchal figure for the Clampett-Bodine young'uns and very much a "spare the rod and spoil the child" type at that. Her particular target was usually Jethro who was twice her size, but could still be brought to obedience with a hickory switch. She worried about Elly May being an old maid – why that gal was over 14 years old and not married – and feuded with her next door neighbour Mrs. Drysdale. She made moonshine – sorry "rheumatis medicine" – and fancied herself to be a fair country doctor and expert on herbal remedies. And her vittles, while they seemed far less appetizing that what Aunt Bee would cook up, were certainly satisfying for her kin folk. And if they repulsed the city folk, well that was just too bad.

Hazel Burke – Hazel: Veteran stage and screen actress Shirley Booth had won an Oscar and three Tony Awards before she first appeared on TV in 1954 and who first appeared on Broadway in 1925, but today is probably best remembered for her portrayal of Hazel on the show of the same name. Hazel wasn't a mother replacement – the Baxter family, for whom she worked as a live-in maid, had a full complement of parental units – she was a mother supplement. In fact many of the episodes feature Hazel in a conflict of wills with George Baxter (Hazel had worked for Dorothy Baxter's family before she married George, and knew enough not to do something that foolish). Still it was the relationship with the Baxters' son Harold where the right to be included in this list was earned. Harold basically worshipped Hazel, sometimes going to her before he went to his father, probably because Hazel usually seemed to know more than he did. And the kid may not have been far wrong – George may have had the book smarts but Hazel had the practical "kid's stuff." She could play ball, was a high average bowler, and in her spare time coached the New York Giants. Okay, she didn't actually coach the Giants, she just sent the plays (usually based on the Statue of Liberty play) one of which was actually used. When the series switched from CBS to NBC in its fifth season Don Defore and Whitney Blake (who played George and Dorothy Baxter) were dropped, with the explanation that they had been transferred to the Middle East. Hazel and Harold went to live with George's brother Steve, his wife Barbara, and their daughter Suzie, another child for Hazel to be idolized by. That version of the series lasted just one year.

Giles French – Family Affair: Okay, now I know that Mr. French lacks some of the attributes normally associated with a mother figure – specifically he's not a woman. Still when you look at the duration of Family Affair this "gentleman's gentleman" rather smoothly shifted into what amounted to the maternal role in the show. French cooked for the children made sure they did their homework, looked after them when they went to the park, cared for them when they were ill and made sure that Buffy had Mrs. Beasley. He was obviously always at home and present when they needed him. He rejected the concept that he was essentially a nanny but he was elated by and suffered with Buffy, Jody and Cissy in their various triumphs and setbacks. Most of all, while he probably would never admit it so overtly, he loved them like a parent.

Mothers Day 2008 – Moms In Odd Situations

It's that time of year again, and I'm not talking about Sweeps Weeks or Upfronts. No, it's Mothers Day which means that I usually write a couple of posts about Mothers on TV. Because after all who does a better job of portraying mothers than TV. I mean besides books, movies, plays, and country music. Certainly TV doesn't do the sort of job in portraying mothers that the PTC would want it to, but that's a subject for another time – or maybe not (if I can help it).

This year, I'll be doing two Mothers Day posts, the second one, ironically not about mothers but about people who have taken on the role of a mother without being mothers. This time though I'm focussing on mothers in "odd" situations. Some of them very very, odd.

99 – Get Smart: Agent 99 of CONTROL, played by the stylish and stunning Barbara Feldon, owed her pregnancy to corporate machinations. After its cancellation by NBC in April 1969, the show was picked up by CBS as part of a major campaign on their part to build up network ratings. But CBS felt that there needed to be a new gimmick to bring the show back, and since 99 was married to Maxwell Smart, the obvious gimmick was to have 99 pregnant! This of course was in the days before the general feeling was that having characters have babies – or even get married – was death for a sitcom. And after all this was CBS where one of their greatest hits had featured the first woman to be pregnant on network TV – I Love Lucy. What could be funnier than Maxwell Smart with babies (because if one baby is funny, two must be comedy gold – 99 would have twins, a boy and a girl)? And so, Barbara Feldon strapped on the "pregnancy belly" for what must be one of the shortest pregnancies ever, an eight episode arc that ran from the show's debut on CBS on September 26, 1969 until the birth of the babies on November 14, 1969. The idea of spies with one or more kids is intriguing (as the Dennis Quaid-Kathleen Turner movie Undercover Blues came close to showing), but we'd never know it from Get Smart because after the birth their existence was pretty much ignored. In fact the twins never did receive names. And the ploy of having Max and 99 becoming parents didn't save the show. It had great ratings for the episodes leading up to the birth of the twins, but once it became clear that they weren't going to do much new or innovative with the show once they had the babies – and in fact were going to pretty much ignore their existence – well the ratings sank like a stone. Over 25 years later Fox would produce a new Get Smart series with Don Adams and Barbara Feldon reprising their roles as Maxwell Smart and 99, now Chief of CONTROL and a member of congress respectively, and Andy Dick as their son Zach. Their daughter was never mentioned, and given that Zach inherited his father's brains but neither of his parent's good looks one can only hope that Zach was a third Smart child, this one adopted.

Claire Littleton – Lost: Claire did not have an easy road to motherhood, and the crash of Oceanic 815 was only part of it. She was the child of a single mother who only met her father once, after her own mother was so badly injured in a car accident that she was reduced to a vegetative state. They fought and she never even learned his name. Once she got pregnant her boyfriend was initially excited about fatherhood only to change his mind well along in the pregnancy. She was ready to give the unborn child up for adoption when a "psychic" tried to persuade her to keep it. When that didn't work, the "psychic" informed her that the baby would be adopted by a couple in California and provided her with a ticket on Oceanic 815. Except of course there was no couple in California. When the airplane crashed she survived and after a bunch of perils – a false labour, abduction, amnesia and an apparent threat to her baby's health, not to mention a strengthening bond to a heroin addicted one hit wonder rock star named Charlie, she gives birth to her son Aaron who is then kidnapped by Rousseau. And that's just in the first season! Talk about mothers in "odd" situations.

Martha Kent – Smallville: It's not every woman who has her baby delivered not by a doctor after hours of excruciating pain, or by an adoption agency after years of jumping through hoops, but by the kid himself while she is help upside down in an overturned truck by her seatbelt after a devastating meteor shower just minutes after she made a wish to a little girl dressed as a fairy princess. That's how Clark Kent entered Martha Kent's life in the TV series Smallville. From that point on, a big part of Martha's life as a mother is a mixture of hiding her son's abilities from others, helping him to discover and control those abilities, providing insight into problems that Clark is trying to resolve, and helping to soothe his angst at not being able to do a lot of the things that "normal" boys are able to do. This is in addition to all of the stuff that mothers of ordinary teenage boys have to deal with. It's a very different take on the character of Martha Kent than has been seen in other representations of the character. For most of the time that the comic books were published, Martha Kent was portrayed as elderly by the time that Clark was a teenager, and he was already out performing as a superhero in the guise of Superboy. By the time he became Superman the Kents had died. After John Byrne rebooted the character of Superman in the 1980s the Kents were (and are) still alive but dealing with him more as an adult. The whole teen angst thing was never really a part of this version of the Superman character, so when the characters were included in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman they didn't have to deal with the discovery and conflicts that plagued their son's life – they were past that phase. Thus, Annette O'Toole's portrayal of the mother of the future Superman adds a depth to the character that we haven't seen before.

Dr. Maureen Robinson – Lost In Space: Maureen Robinson was an educated woman who was also a housewife and a mother of three who lived in a mobile home and over a period of three years lived in a variety of different locations, most of them quite hostile. Added to this is the fact that she had three boarders, one of whom was not particularly welcome, and you'd be excused for thinking that this was some sort dysfunctional '80s or '90s sitcom. But when you add in that her mobile home was actually an interstellar space ship which had suffered a catastrophic navigational failure, that one of her star boarders was six foot tall robot , while the other was named Dr. Smith, and you realise that you've entered the realm of mid-60s TV Science Fiction, Irwin Allen style, where the women were reduced to the role of nurturing caregivers who also handed out advice but rarely got involved in real action. In the first episode of the show it is mentioned that she has a doctorate in Biochemistry, but for the rest of the series that's never mentioned. Instead, this pioneer of what really was a "Wagon Train to the stars" (the description that actually sold Star Trek)
she cooks, tends the garden, helps with light construction and serves as a mother to her three very different children, Judy (Marta Kristen), Penny (Angela Cartwright), and the genius Will (Bill Mumy), as well as a support for her heroic husband. It isn't the way that the character would have been portrayed today, but part of what made Lost In Space the show that it was is the portrayal of the group (the men had adventures, the women – Maureen and Judy – stayed at home, and the kids – including Dr. Smith – got into trouble) was such a '60s stereotype.

Major Kira Nerys – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Major Kyra never had sex with the father of her son although she did live with him for a time, was not genetically related to her son, and indeed wasn't even the same species as the baby. The whole situation with Major Kira came about as a result of the circumstances of the actress who played the character, Nana Visitor. She and her husband at the time, fellow cast member Alexander Siddiq were expecting their first child together and it was decided that, rather than trying to hide the pregnancy it would be written into the plot of the show since she was an essential part of the cast pretty visibly pregnant. The problem was how they would explain how Kira – who at the time wasn't romantically involved with anyone – became pregnant. Setting aside the obvious ploy of a previously unmentioned relationship or a one night stand with an accident, the writers and producers decided to use technobabble. So, when an accident on a runabout severely injured Keiko O'Brien, the pregnant (human) wife of Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien, Dr. Bashir had been forced to use the transporter to transfer the fetus into the womb of the only available humanoid, Major Kira. However Bajoran physiology meant that the baby couldn't be transported back to Keiko's body without killing it. Thus a very pregnant Major Kira stepped out of the runabout and – in order for the baby's parents to feel closer to him – into the O'Brien quarters where she lived until little Kirayoshi O'Brien was born.

TV Moms III – The Hybrid Mom

Had some Internet problems last night so here's the last, and possibly the most interesting and realistic of the classes of TV Moms, the Hybrid Mom. The Hybrid Mom mixes all the great qualities of the Motherly Mom and some of the sexiness of the Hot Mom. The Hybrid Mom tends to be in her late thirties or early forties, has kids in their teens – possibly even one in college – but is still sexually attractive to her spouse (if she has one) and maybe other men. She definitely has "MILFy" qualities. More to the point she still enjoys sex with her husband although she is frequently worried enough about conception that she'll insist that her husband have a vasectomy which he inevitably does after considerable protest. Here then are some of TV's great Hybrid Moms.

Carol Brady – The Brady Bunch: Here's the story of a lovely lady with three kids of her own who married a man with three sons. And for the life of me I can't understand why there wasn't a seventh little Brady. We never know why Carol was unattached until she married Mike Brady – producer Sherwood Schwartz wanted her to be a divorcee but that was apparently nixed by ABC – and it was generally assumed that like Mike she was widowed. Carol goes from raising three girls to managing a blended family of three girls and three boys and after a first season (well really just a few episodes) that at times is rough handles it without a noticeable hitch. One thing that is absolutely clear is that by changing Florence Henderson's hairstyle she actually gets hotter looking as she gets older.

Shirley Partridge – Partridge Family: Shirley Partridge had five kids so you have to figure that before her husband shuffled off this mortal coil she had to have had a pretty active sex life. She was also a spectacularly great mom. I mean being a single mom is never an easy job but on TV at least none of the Partridge kids smoked, drank, did drugs or had behavioural problems (off screen there was Danny Bonaduce – 'nuff said). The biggest problem a Partridge kid had was when Laurie (Susan Dey) got braces just before the boy she really really liked (played by a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill) was going to kiss her. And she did all that while the band was going on the road in that bus, usually driven by Shirley (at least until Keith got his license). Shirley dated occasionally, which with five kids at home in the early '70s was frankly amazing, but you always got the feeling that she was evaluating men based on her late husband and the guys she dated never really measured up.

Claire Huxtable – The Cosby Show: Also known as Superwoman and played by Phylicia Rashad. Let's look at Claire's qualifications for that title. She had five kids – Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, and Rudy – a step granddaughter (Olivia) that she had to raise after Denise and her naval officer husband Martin Kendall were posted overseas, two other grandchildren – Sondra's twins Nelson and Winnie. And in all this she not only managed to get a law degree, keep the house spotless without any sign of a maid or housekeeper, cook gourmet meals, and manage Heathcliff's diet – whether he likes it or not. Plus she could sing. Oh yeah, by the way, still gettin' it on! Superwoman indeed!

Jill Taylor – Home Improvement: Not quite the Superwoman that Claire Huxtable was, she still had some chops in that area. Jill (played by Patricia Richardson) had to deal with three kids (but they were all boys and all a lot like their father) plus Tim Taylor. And still she managed to get a degree in Psychology. She was far more level headed than her husband – but Gracie Allen would have been more level headed than Tim – and was able to manage her sons. Over time she revealed a bit of a wild side. As a college student she engaged in a bit of rebellion against her Army officer father by getting seriously into marijuana to the point where she had a problem that time helped her to cope with. Also in college she owned a water bed where she and Tim made waves. During the series Richardson lost weight which let the producers put her in more revealing clothes including nighties. She might be frustrated by Tim at times but she was willing to try out the rumble seat of his hot rod.

Joyce Summers – Buffy: the Vampire Slayer: I thought about this one for a while but finally decided that she fit in this category. Joyce – played by Kristine Sutherland – was a huge influence on her daughter to the point where after Joyce`s death Buffy tried to replicate a Thanksgiving meal exactly as her mother would have done it. Joyce is a very protective parent, concerned about her daughter and trying hard to set limits (which by the nature of her powers Buffy sometimes has to overstep) in the period when she doesn't know that Buffy is "The Slayer." There's a certain pride there too exemplified in the way that Joyce reacts to Snyder after Spike and his vampires attack the school. In turn Joyce`s opinion meant a lot to Buffy, and she leaves home when Joyce tells her, "If you walk out of this house right now, don't even think about coming back" because Buffy takes her mother at her word. Although Joyce didn`t date much, there's still a sexual attractiveness there – she's in full MILF mode in Xander's dream at the end of season 4. And who could forget Buffy reading her mother's mind about an encounter with Giles: "Twice? On the hood of a police car?!"

And the anti-Hybrid Mom:

Peg Bundy – Married With Children: It is entirely to the credit of Katey Sagal as an actress that she made herself as believable as she did playing Peg Bundy on Married With Children. Viewed by just about any standard Peg is the worst possible wife and mother in the world – she's lazy, doesn't cook clean or actually do anything that resembles work in or out of the home. She's a fashion disaster and while she's faithful to her husband he dreads even the possibility of intercourse with her unless he sees her doing actual physical labour.

TV Moms II – The Hot Mom

Well it`s more dignified than the term MILF but make no mistake about it the Hot Mom is the very definition of that term, all the more so because I`m doing the picking on this one based on my own prejudices!

Contrary to some expectations, the Hot Mom is not a modern development While I can`t think of any Hot Moms from the 1950s (maybe Dennis`s mom from Dennis The Menace) they do start to appear in the 1960s. They seem to be quite common today – just think of those shows where some fat schlub (like Jim Belushi) is married to some beautiful woman (say Courtney Thorne-Smith) who by all rights wouldn`t be seen dead with him unless he was worth a lot more than the schlub has any expectation of earning in his entire life. Anyway, here`s my highly subjective list of TV`s Hot Moms.

Laura Petrie – The Dick Van Dyke Show: Two words – Capri pants. Three more words – Mary Tyler Moore. While I realise that Moore can be hard to work with (Ken Levine has told some real horror stories about working with her: "Think Ordinary People but without the warmth.") but at the time of the Dick Van Dyke Show she was physically a very attractive woman with great legs, a toned body, and an ass that Rob Reiner said that as a teenager visiting the set he couldn't resist grabbing. This physical nature had a lot to do with the fact that Mary had been a professional dancer as well as an actress (and they made the character a dancer as well). It also helped that they dressed her in clothes that emphasised her physical qualities. Suffice it to say that it always amazed me that the Petries only had one child in those days before The Pill, because if I were Rob I wouldn't have let a little thing like twin beds get in my way.

Samantha Stevens – Bewitched: While Ozzie and Harriet may have been the first TV couple to sleep in a double bed, Samantha was the one who you knew used it for something other than sleeping in. The proof of that is found in the two kids that Samantha gave birth to during the show (necessitated by actress Elizabeth Montgomery's own pregnancies). Samantha had a great face which was where the character's attractiveness really lies since the show toned down Elizabeth Montgomery's body type by showing her in the sort of clothing that a young matron in the early to mid '60s would wear, except when she was in her more "witchy" attire. Some people say that the character of Serena was closer to the real character of Elizabeth Montgomery; certainly she wore sexier clothes than Samantha did. But Samantha was still pretty hot even dressed like a '60s mom.

Ann Romano – One Day at a Time: Bonnie Franklin's character of Ann Romano broke a lot of barriers when Norman Lear's One Day at a Time debuted. For one thing she was a single woman who wasn't a widow but rather a divorcee. Only a few years before CBS had balked at having Mary Richards be a divorcee on the more than slightly spurious grounds that people would think that Rob & Laura Petrie had gotten a divorce (after which Laura changed her name to Mary Richards and moved to Minnesota?). Ann was a woman who decided that she was going to be her own woman rather than just being someone's daughter, wife or mother, which in itself is a bit sexy. Franklin tended not to wear a bra – leading to some people calling her "bouncy Bonnie" – which was typical for a lot of women in the period. Most scandalous of all, Ann had sex. She wasn't as promiscuous as a lot of characters in a lot of today's series, but she was more chased than chaste. Most of all, when the character slept with a man she did it on her terms – she was engaged to – and slept with – her lawyer but broke off the relationship when he stated that he wanted kids and she was through with that part of her life, not for medical reasons but because she didn't want any more kids.

Beverly Crusher – Star Trek: The Next Generation: Okay, a lot of people probably don't get this one but it's my list and my preferences, and I have a fondness for redheads and dancers and Gates McFadden is both of these. Crusher was highly competent as a doctor (temporarily serving Star Fleet Medical she commanded the Enterprise in an encounter with the Borg and did it well. She also had to deal with a lot of things including Wesley as a son, and the fact that Captain Picard was clueless when it came to dealing with women who served him breakfast – it took temporary telepathic abilities for him to realise that Crusher was attracted to him and after she decided that she wasn't ready quite yet to explore the romantic side of their relationship he completely gives up on it! Not that Beverly wasn't getting some action because she was. There was an Irish ghost who had been keeping her grandmother happy for years and was ready to take up with Bev, and of course she had the resident Enterprise manwhore, Will Riker (admittedly his body was temporarily housing a Trill symbiote whose previous body had also been Beverly's lover).

Catherine Willows – CSI: Catherine is undoubtedly one of my favourite TV characters. She's smart, she's ambitious, she enjoys her sexuality and she's a mother, all of which are important parts of her character on the series. She was a former nude dancer (in an early episode she tells Greg Sanders "If you saw me, you'd remember me.") and has had several relationships that seem to have been primarily about sex during the period of the series. In fact at one point she tells her boss Gil Grissom about her frustrations with work and her family life ending by telling him how long it's been since she's had sex – it's measured in weeks rather than months. Her daughter, Lindsay, is one of the reasons why she stopped dancing and why she worked the night shift at the lab, so she can spend at least part of the day with her daughter. Later, Lindsay's rebellious behaviour is why Catherine seeks a day shift job only to be given command of the swing shift.

And the mom who is definitely not a hot mom:

Roseanne Conner – Roseanne: I could just as easily fit her in the Hybrid category, but that was a deliberate choice on the producers' part – they wanted to make the show the "anti-Cosby Show" and Roseanne Conner was about as far from Claire Huxtable as is possible. Then there's the fact that I have never been able to stand Roseanne Barr since the time she was doing her standup act, before she got her TV show. I wouldn't quite say that she made me nauseous, but it was close. So maybe I'm a bit prejudiced; all I know is I wouldn't touch her with a 10 foot pole – ten foot Poles wouldn't touch her with a 10 foot pole.

TV Mothers I – The Motherly Mom

Since tomorrow is Mothers Day I've decided to offer posts about some of my own favourite TV Moms. In my opinion there are really three types of TV Mom – the Motherly Mom, the Hot Mom, and a sort of mixture that I call the Hybrid Mom. I'm also going to offer at least one example of each that is the antithesis of the type. For this group of posts I'm not counting characters from soap operas (sorry Erica Kane), characters who became moms in the last episode of their shows (that's you Belanna Torres, you hot Klingon you, and you to Fran Fine) and shows that are currently on.

Let's start with the Motherly Mom. For years, particularly in the first couple of decades of television, the Motherly Mom was the standard. Their kids were older and basically you never thought of them in even the most mildly sexual circumstances. They might get an occasional kiss and that's it. They were always dressed stylishly but not elegantly – pearls were optional. So here is my list of Motherly Moms.

Margaret Anderson – Father Knows Best: The archetype done to perfection by Jane Wyatt, although in the original radio series the character was played first June Whitley and later by Jean Vanderpyl who went on to be the voice of another TV mom, Wilma Flintstone. She was grounded, with plenty of common sense which she usually needed. Contrary to the title of the show, the original premise was that Father (Jim Anderson, played by Robert Young) actually didn't know best and would get into various situations that Margaret in her level headed way would get him out of. Jane Wyatt gets extra "mom" points for also having played Amanda Grayson, mother of the most conflicted kid in the galaxy, Mr. Spock, on Star Trek.

June Cleaver – Leave it to Beaver: Almost as big an archetype as Margaret Anderson, June was played by Barbara Billingsley. She and husband Ward Cleaver (played to perfection by Hugh Beaumont), everyone remembers the pearls that she wore no matter what she was doing. She was almost always elegantly dressed and always there for her sons even though they almost always tended to go to their father for advice. And of course she was never fooled by anything that Eddie Haskell ever said – she knew exactly what he was. Billingsley reprised the role of June Cleaver over twenty years after the original show left the air in the revival Still the Beaver, which followed her great performance in Airplane as the "jive translator."

Harriet Nelson – The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet: The third example of the Fifties TV mom. It's a little difficult to evaluate Harriet Nelson because the character she was playing was a fictionalized version of herself, and she was acting with her real husband and children. In fact the wives of her two sons David and Ricky played their wives on the show. The series ran on TV from 1952 to 1966 and had run on radio for eight years before that, and there was an attempt at a revival called Ozzie's Girls without David or Ricky in 1973 that didn't last. The show probably portrayed a sanitized version of the Nelson family life – for one thing Harriet never smoked on TV despite being a two pack a day smoker in real life. Harriet was the level headed one in the family while Ozzie was prone to "great ideas" that inevitably fall through.

Kate Bradley – Petticoat Junction: Kate was different from the three women named above. She was a widow running her own business as well as she could. She was also raising her three daughters with the "help" of uncle, Joe Carson. While there was, of course, no suggestion of sex in the series, the mature Kate did have a couple of romantic entanglements, primarily with storekeeper Sam Drucker (Frank Cady) but it was also implied that C&FW Railroad President Norman Curtis was more than a little enamoured of her. Kate was smart – she had to be to deal with repeated encounters with C&FW Vice President Homer Bedloe not to mention her daughters' various unsuitable suitors. Bea Benedaret, who played Kate as well as Pearl Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies (mother of Jethro Bodine and his often forgotten twin sister Jethrine – both played by Max Baer although Jethrine's voice was done by Linda Henning, who played Betty Jo Bradley on Petticoat Junction) and Betty Rubble on The Flintstones, was the heart of the series in just about every way that counted and while the series continued following her extended illness and death of lung cancer, it was never the same after she left.

Marion Cunningham – Happy Days: Marion is a mid-'70s take on the Motherly Mom of the 1950s typified by Margaret, June and Harriet. She and her husband Howard are raising three kids (yeah, I'm counting Chuck, wanna make something of it) – four if you count Fonzie who regards "Mrs. C" as much a surrogate mother as his Grandma Nussbaum (who raised him). In a rather amazing way Marion Cunningham (played by the superb Marion Ross) is a bit more realistic than the three characters she's modelled on. Let's face it, it's hard to imagine June Cleaver telling Ward to "sit on it" and the image of Jim and Margaret Anderson even talking about "getting a little frisky" is enough to burn out certain areas of the brain. And yet Marion Cunningham is firmly rooted in the Motherly Mom sensibility.

The Un-Motherly Mom: Lucy Ricardo – I Love Lucy: I know I'm going to get some reaction to this one, but think about it. Set aside the smoking in front of the baby because everyone did that in the 1950s (I have a reference book on I Love Lucy around her someplace that I'm too lazy to bother digging up, but I'm pretty sure that Lucy Ricardo was never shown smoking while she was pregnant) there are other issues at play. The big one for me is the way that she essentially abandoned Little Ricky for extended periods of time. Take the time that they went out to California. The Mertzes and Ricardos travel by car but Little Ricky is left in New York under the care of his maternal grandmother for what seems to the viewer at least like an extended period of time. In California we rarely see Little Ricky – he's either having a nap or under the care of Grandma McGillicuddy. Then, no sooner are the Ricardos and Mertzes back in New York (at least this time the kid made the trip with them) than they're off to Europe. And even though they're travelling by ship, where's Little Ricky? Why he's back in New York with his grandmother. Hardly ideal parenting.