The Bob Newhart Show

Last weekend I started watching The Bob Newhart Show through Netflix. You know the one, where Bob Newhart is a psychologist, newly married to a woman who looks just like Susanne Pleshette, and Marcia Wallace is his receptionist. I'm doing a bit of character/actor blending here. I had never actually seen the show before, and was thrilled to realize that Marcia Wallace does at least one of the voices on my dad's only favorite television show, The Simpsons. I wondered if Ms. Crabapple's figure may have been modeled on Marcia Wallace's.

With Marcia Wallace in mind, I took the DVD over to my parent's house on Sunday so that they could watch it too. Anna Grace was understandably shocked at some of the risque humor.

Long ago I noticed that Doris Day films tended to involve her character's engaging in a lot of questionable activity. And it seems that in some ways television of the 70's was much more sexually evocative than, for example, the more blatant sexual humor used on a show like Friends, even though it was suggestive rather than explicit. This is no new observation, I realize, but it does hit me anew from time to time. And if you consider the era in which these shows were written, it should come as no surprise.

I admit I am curious about the history of sexuality as portrayed on television.

The Bob Newhart Show brought up other questions for me. Do I really like British television so much, or is it just that I like shows that are old? Considering the wonderful literary adaptations the BBC has produced, and the degree to which I like British authors, I suppose it is safe to say that I like British television. But apparently I like old television as well. Perhaps the explanation is that the two were more similar in the past than they are today. One of the things I like about Bob Newhart, as opposed to simply Newhart, is some of the women's clothes, and the furnishings of the Hartley apartment.

The episodes of the show I saw over the weekend were very funny, and many of the characters were charming. I was distinctly uncomfortable, however, with the one where the receptionist considers moving in with her nearly divorced boyfriend, even though by the end of the show Bob had helped him realize that he needed to return to his wife.