The most memorable thing for me about this episode, where Rob and Laura try to play matchmaker for erudite bachelor lawyer Arthur Stanwyck, is usually cousin Donna's (Lyla Graham's) dress.

https://cmulrooney.tripod.com/parislawyer.jpg

I saw it again the night before last and was reminded of the troubling reason why Arthur is a bachelor. When he really likes a woman, he hits her.

I'm not one to impose contemporary standards and mores upon past generations, but I often wonder whether certain things that we find troubling (or "problematic" to use the vernacular) were also a problem then.

This episode aired in January 1964, and was shot in front of an audience. I wish I could go back in time and look at their faces during the revealing line. I can't imagine wife-beating was ever winked at, or that men who were known to hit women were not despised, but the manner in which Arthur's confession is handled, with Anthony Eisley's sort of sheepish admission, delivered and received with slight winces all around, still casts a pall. The episode's final scene, with Rob and Laura playfully boxing in the living room under the closing credits, suggests this matter wasn't taken nearly as seriously as we take it today.

So, why would the writers, Marshall, Belson and Reiner (according to IMDb) have made this particular problem the reason for Arthur's inability to choose Sally or Donna? They are careful to point out that Arthur is under a psychiatrist's care and that he knows he has a problem.

Was calling attention to wife-beating as a mental health issue the point? Or was it simply a device employed to resolve the plot? And if it was merely a device, what might they have substituted for it to make things less disturbing? I can't think of anything that's not an overtly sexual problem that certainly would have been off limits.

Thoughts?

I think it's stronger in early episodes, but the show has a bit of dark-side-of-the-idyllic suburbs aspect to it. So I'd guess it was something Reiner had encountered and wanted to use in some way. They obviously couldn't resolve it by having Arthur turn out to be gay. I guess they could have made him divorced five times or something.

The episode where Laura rescues Rob from the guy in the bar sort-of rubs up against this one, because Rob really does want to knock Laura around. They defuse the situation, though, by telling it in flashback so that the audience knows it's Rob who ends up in the hospital.

Andy Griffith Show talked about spouse beating pretty casually, although I think it was usually mutual.

I'd guess it was something Reiner had encountered and wanted to use in some way.

As I wrote the post, I could feel my mind coming to that conclusion. This had to be by design. Reiner wanted to deal with this specifically. A nice guy, intelligent, funny, a professional, not a drunk, not a slob, not a moron, but the kind of guy we'd all like to know, or maybe even be, hits women. And he gets help for it.

Good points about Andy, too. I remember the Jesse White ("Mornin' dear - Mornin' honey") episode, where it turned out the couple was happier abusing each other.

I think it's stronger in early episodes, but the show has a bit of dark-side-of-the-idyllic suburbs aspect to it. So I'd guess it was something Reiner had encountered and wanted to use in some way. They obviously couldn't resolve it by having Arthur turn out to be gay. I guess they could have made him divorced five times or something.

The episode where Laura rescues Rob from the guy in the bar sort-of rubs up against this one, because Rob really does want to knock Laura around. They defuse the situation, though, by telling it in flashback so that the audience knows it's Rob who ends up in the hospital.

Andy Griffith Show talked about spouse beating pretty casually, although I think it was usually mutual.

I Love Lucy has an episode where Ricky takes her over his knee and pseudo-spanks her at the end. Not a good look, even in the 1950s.