Yester Year Retro : "Hi Honey, I'm Home!"

[TMC]

https://www.yesteryearretro.com/2020...y-im-home.html

"Hi Honey, I'm Home!" was meant to spoof the classic shows of the 50s and 60s and did so fairly well. Even the casual viewer to classic television would have caught the references. The Nielsens were a TV family from the 50s that is more like I Love Lucy meets Leave it to Beaver. When their show is canceled and then removed from syndication, they move to suburban New Jersey in modern day 1991. Next door neighbor, teenaged Mike Duff (Peter Benson) discovers that the family is indeed the same family from a long-forgotten television show. As the only one who knows their secret, Mike helps the family adjust to modern times.

The Nielsen family is the perfect All-American family. Honey Nielsen (Charlotte Booker) is a homemaker, and along with her bumbling TV husband Lloyd (Stephen Bradbury) have two perfect children Babs (Julie Benz) and Chucky (Danny Gura.) They prefer living in the calmness of their black and white picture-perfect world. Using a device called the "Turner-izer," they can switch to living in color to fit in with the current world.

The picture-perfect Nielsen family is in stark contrast to their neighbors, the Duff family. What else describes the modern family other than a frazzled single mother named Elaine (Susan Cella), older son Mike, and juvenile delinquent little brother who goes by the nickname "Skunk" (Eric Kushnick)?

Honey and Elaine become fast friends even though modern feminist soccer mom Elaine is tough and sarcastic while Honey is the typical 50's housewife complete with catchphrase "Oh, pooh!" Elaine gets Honey to come out of her shell a bit while Honey helps Elaine realize that there are times in life where calm and simplicity still work. Mike looks to Honey as a surrogate mother because Elaine works full time and goes to night school and isn't home as much as he'd like. Honey is always there with warm loving advice, and a plate of freshly baked Snickerdoodle cookies.

Lloyd, the bumbling clueless television Dad, thinks of himself as the typical All-American. A man who thinks he can lift heavy objects, fix anything, and solve any problem is often wrong and can't keep a job for any length of time in modern suburbia. He constantly clashes with Elaine's rabid feminism.

Daughter Babs is the typical pretty, popular high school airhead. Chucky, the chubby Boy Scout and naive son of the Nielsen family, is often used as a pawn by mischievous Skunk.

Mike is a teenaged television junkie who realizes the identities of the Nielsens when they first move in next door. He has a crush on Babys but it's not reciprocated. Along with his mother Elaine, he tries to teach the Nielsens about living in the 90s. Mike's younger brother Skunk is a trouble maker who constantly wants to go live with his father, who left Elaine for another woman after Elaine worked two jobs to put him through night school.