‘MAMA’S FAMILY’: UNDERDOG SITCOM A FLYOVER COUNTRY FAVORITE

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https://drunktv.net/2020/09/04/mamas...ies-tv-review/

The set-up for the first incarnation of Mama’s Family had bustling, bosomy, sharp-tongued, mule-headed Thelma “Mama” Harper (Vicki Lawrence, expertly hoeing a tough row, keeping Mama annoying and lovable) living in tiny Raytown, Missouri, along with her prissy, socially-correct sister, Fran (Rue McClanahan, beautifully frazzled), who paid rent for a room in Mama’s modest house. Enter Thelma’s divorced, homeless son, Vint (beatific Ken Berry, perfect as a befuddled dunce), a none-too-bright locksmith whose wife left him to become a Vegas showgirl, and who now has two teenaged kids in tow: Buzz and Sonja (Eric Brown and Karin Argoud).

Thelma’s next-door-neighbor, “that tramp” Naomi Oates (hot pistol Dorothy Lyman, all long legs and sexy shoulders, and funny as hell), takes an instant liking to Vint and they soon marry. A bad business move, however, finds Naomi homeless, as well, and the couple eventually move into Mama’s basement—an arrangement that neither Mama nor Fran particularly like. Infrequent visitors to Mama’s house include her desperately unhappy (and possibly deranged) daughter, Eunice (Carol Burnett), her good-natured dolt of a husband, Ed Higgins (Harvey Korman), and Thelma’s other daughter, the snobbish, fake Ellen (Betty White).

In Mama’s Family‘s second series go-around (for syndication), Mama’s sister Fran has died (choking on a toothpick at the Bigger Jigger bar), daughter Ellen is nowhere to be seen, and daughter Eunice and son-in-law Ed have moved to Florida…leaving behind Bubba Higgins (Allan Kayser, the “dumb blonde” of the show and agreeably peppy), who is forced by juvie court order to live with his grandmother Thelma. Vin and Naomi are still living with Mama…but their kids Buzz and Sonja are gone. New prudish, starchy next-door-neighbor Iola Boylan (Beverely Archer, delightfully restricted) is around, though, to add to the laughs as Mama battles with anyone more stupid than her…which is everyone.

A very long time ago (during the Punic Wars), I wrote for a hopelessly outdated, now-comically irrelevant DVD review site (how should I politely put this? Oh, yes: may they all get cancer and rot in hell over there), I penned a review of Warner Bros’ “complete” first season set of Mama’s Family that pretty much started the ball rolling with that site’s regular readers hating my guts (despising living goblin Daniel Craig as James Bond and preferring The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning over Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi sealed the deal). The fact that I, a reviewer who went to “film school” (that’s a trade you can really market in the Midwest…) and who had a book published (it makes a nice doorstop), had dared write a positive review of such utterly mindless sitcom crap as Mama’s Family, was akin to sacrilege to these humorless, puffed-up drones—a development that tickled me to no end (I live for hate mail).

Well, those days are long gone, thank god. Most of those verkakte readers (and lots of others…) have long since abandoned DVDWalk, while a new crop of fascinating, intelligent—and might I add quite good-looking—readers like yourself now flock to Drunk TV. Today, I write secure in the knowledge that since my reviews are far too long to flip through on a cell phone, most of the dopes who don’t know sh*t from Shinola about TV anyway won’t be bugging me anymore about my reviews. Only you, dear Drunk TV reader, matter to me.

Back to the discs at hand. Putting it upfront: do I think of Mama’s Family when I’m mentally making out a list of television’s best sitcoms? Well, no…but it does makes me laugh every time I catch it, and frankly, what sitcom needs more validation than that?

Mama’s Family is amusing, and enjoyably crass, and frequently zany and slapstick-y, with an underlying sweetness to it that I find endearing. Its quasi-rural Southern humor (which, amusingly, always makes the so-called “intelligentsia” out there so nervous), blown up to broad, farcical proportions, has a quixotic, almost surreal, Capra-esque tone that’s really quite charming. I like that Mama’s Family is loud and obnoxious and vulgar, at times, particularly since it’s aimed at general audiences: self-impressed pop culture snobs and painfully ironic little sniffs who like their comedy “relevant” need not apply here (and good riddance to their sorry asses, too…particularly the two invidious scribes out there who still surreptitiously peruse my reviews for, um…”helpful hints”).

The mention of Mama’s Family during its commercial heyday—and there was a commercial heyday for the series, when it was the most successful first-run syndication strip during its initial offering—was (and still is) a sure-fire instant punch-line for any uninformed slave-to-current-pop culture comedian or writer who wanted to get across a cheap shot at one of television’s perceived bottom-feeders. Elitist critics seemed to agree that Mama’s Family occupied some kind of low point in TV comedy, appealing only to the unsophisticated rubes and yokels out there who didn’t know any better (being cancelled at the more “prestigious” network level, and then coming back stronger in hard-scrabble first-run syndication, probably aided that impression for biased urban bubble critics who don’t much cotton—then or now—to “regular folks” on television, anyway).

Well, Mama’s Family ain’t exactly All in the Family, that’s true. But it’s also not She’s the Sheriff, either, with a pedigree (and many of the same creative crew) from the iconic The Carol Burnett Show, that any new sitcom would crave. Fans of The Carol Burnett Show remember one of its funniest—and most poignant—recurring skits was informally called “The Family,” featuring Carol as Eunice Higgins, a raging, desperately unhappy and unsatisfied housewife, saddled with a dunce failure of a husband (Harvey Korman), and an insulting, mocking, degrading shrew of a mother (Vicki Lawrence’s “Mama”). These frequently brilliant skits were memorable in that the comedy came in direct proportion to the misery and humiliation that Eunice suffered, becoming at times quite uncomfortable to watch: the truths expressed in the disappointments and hopelessness of Eunice’s life came, perhaps, unpleasantly close to the lives of the viewers watching at home.

Not long after The Carol Burnett Show was cancelled in 1978, there were initial talks with Lawrence to spin-off “The Family” and specifically the “Mama” character into a regular series of its own, a proposition that Lawrence rejected without the participation of Korman and Burnett, both of whom stated they wouldn’t participate on a weekly basis. When Burnett, who owed CBS several “specials,” produced the 90-minute Eunice skit/playlette, it was eventually aired during 1982’s spring “sweeps,” with ratings that were good enough for third-placed NBC, desperate for any kind of hit, to chance a pilot-less order of 13-episodes of Mama’s Family as a mid-season replacement for their 1982-1983 season (legend has it that NBC’s CEO Grant Tinker bought it sight-unseen on the golf course). Produced by The Carol Burnett Show‘s Joe Hamilton (soon-to-be the ex-Mr. Carol Burnett), who legally owned “The Family” characters and concept, and initially co-written by original “Family” scribes Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon, Mama’s Family premiered in January, 1983, on Saturday nights at 9:00pm, with lead-ins Diff’rent Strokes and Silver Spoons, and lead-outs Taxi (in its last, sad year after being dumped by ABC) and flop The Family Tree.

Despite formidable competition from The Love Boat over on ABC (9th for the year) and The CBS Saturday Night Movie, Mama’s Family managed to eek out respectable-enough ratings (below the coveted Nielsen Top Thirty) for desperate NBC to okay a full season order for the following 1983-1984 year. Typical of NBC’s ineptness at this time, Mama’s Family‘s timeslot was changed several times, eventually to Thursdays at 8:30 (following weak lead-in, Gimme a Break!), in a futile attempt at counterprogramming against ratings juggernaut, Magnum, P.I., over on CBS. Mama’s Family took a sickening nosedive in the ratings and, even with a last-minute switch back to family-friendly Saturday nights, was subsequently canceled in the spring of 1984…something Vicki Lawrence suspected was in the cards all along (Lawrence claims, probably correctly, that the new boys at NBC, including Brandon Tartikoff, misunderstood and hated the show, and had no intention of keeping the previous regime’s leftovers around with the likes of so-called “classier” fare like The Cosby Show and Family Ties). And that was the end of Mama’s Family.

Or was it? According to Vicki Lawrence, NBC’s out-of-the-blue reruns of Mama’s Family in the summer of 1985 were so successful that she was then approached by producer Joe Hamilton to headline a reboot of the series for the potentially lucrative first-run syndication market (an effort encouraged by Lorimar Telepictures, which believed the series didn’t get a fair shake on NBC). This coincided not only with Hamilton’s very public, very messy divorce from Carol Burnett, but also with, according to Lawrence, Burnett’s unsuccessful proposal to Lawrence to do her own reboot of the “The Family” with Burnett headlining—clearly Burnett, who was in a career low point, knew her Eunice character was a missed opportunity (apparently, these painful negotiations dealt a years-long blow to the two women’s close friendship).

Retooled by Hamilton to eliminate Burnett, Korman, Betty White and Rue McClanahan (the latter two were scoring major success on The Golden Girls at that point), Mama’s Family returned in syndication with Lawrence, Ken Berry and Dorothy Lyman, and that’s all, with new cast members Allan Kayser and Beverly Archer along for the ride. With little fanfare, and contrary to many critics’ estimations (if they were even aware it was on), the syndicated Mama’s Family turned into a little ratings gold mine, popping up here and there all over the dial in small and big cities across the country, scrabbling together enough loyal viewers to become the number one comedy strip in first-run syndication during its four years of production. Why Lorimar and Hamilton ended the series in 1990 is subject to debate (some say Lawrence grew tired of the role and ended the series voluntarily, while Lawrence insists Hamilton and Lorimar only needed and wanted 100 episodes for syndication purposes). Regardless, Mama’s Family continued to be sold in syndication for years and years afterwards, generating many new fans in the process.

Which brings us to the Mama’s Family: The Complete Collection set. When Warner Bros.’ released a first season set of DVDs for Mama’s Family, there were a whole lot of pissed-off fans who didn’t like the WB putting out the edited, syndicated versions of those NBC episodes (Harvey Korman’s funny Alistair Cooke Masterpiece Theatre spoof intros, featuring his “Alistair Quince,” were eliminated, along with other small cuts). Apparently, licensing issues were at the bottom of this compromised decision, but finally, after almost seven years, the Joe Hamilton estate was able to broker a deal with Time Life and StarVista Entertainment to not only restore those episodes to their full run times, but to gather the entire series into one mammoth boxed set and give the fans what they really wanted: all 130 network and syndication episodes plus almost everything else related to Mama (not all of “The Family” skits from The Carol Burnett Show are included here…but that may be due to a rights issue, or a space factor).

Fans of the series already know it’s not the greatest looking show, having originally been shot on cheap video (I believe I once wrote that Mama’s Family made Sanford and Son look like it was shot by Gregg Toland). And StarVista, aware of the state of the original materials, puts a disclaimer up at the beginning of each disc, letting us know that the best possible sources were utilized (I’m suspicious, however, of those “restored” claims). However, fans of the show also know that that grimy, grainy look only makes the show seem more homey (or is it homelier?), giving it a bit of nostalgic grit that doesn’t detract from “the funny” at all. As for the remarkable amount of extras included in this set, I’ll detail those down in the “Extras” section.

As for reviewing Mama’s Family itself…yes, I have watched all 130 episodes of the series numerous times over the years (I’ll even leave it on when it pops up on MeTV), and no, I’m not going to give a huge, detailed look at every episode and every season (my editor allows me only so much on my expense account for booze and pills). Fulfilling the only requirement any sitcom need fill, I found myself laughing consistently during this delightfully tacky, undeniably funny (and frequently bizarre) sitcom. Mama’s Family is straight-ahead farce with no apologies for its obviousness or crudeness…or its frequent moments of unvarnished sentimentality.

There’s a poignancy to aspects of Mama’s Family, particularly when it shows up the constant pain/pleasure dynamics of its dysfunctional Harper family—an unexpected element that is probably the secret to its long-term success with viewers. Sure, Mama’s Family is silly and funny…but it has heart, too. The fact that this unabashed, unashamed sentimentality is melded successfully with broad farce, makes it in some ways far more palatable than the cynical, phony, often unbearably ironic, pseudo-hip mush that passes for many TV comedy-dramas today. Mama’s Family isn’t asking you to sneer at anybody—just laugh at them.

I’m sure there are viewers and other critics out there who, once having found out what Mama’s Family is about (gasp!…lower income Southerners who aren’t particularly well-spoken, and who drink beer, and yell at each other), will be genetically predisposed to hating this show (after all, our “betters” in pop culture have now neatly cataloged all shows into two categories—acceptable and unacceptable—merely by the predominant characters’ skin color. The Harpers are White, so…they’re “cancelled”). Owing its lower middle-class “comedy of deprivation” lineage to shows like The Honeymooners and All in the Family, Mama’s Family at least has the gumption to show, with affection and allowance, TV’s most neglected members of society: average “flyover country” Americans.

Before the ratings’ juggernaut Roseanne (you can bet your ass she watched Mama’s Family), Mama’s Family gave us a glimpse into the workings of an average family of underperformers who, amid the slapstick and one-liners, worried about money, about finding love, and about getting some respect in a world that basically didn’t want to hear from them. I like that underdog quality to Mama’s Family, especially today, since that particular demographic has been so routinely vilified as of late (years ago, I wrote at this line of the review, “It’s only going to get worse, folks.” Well guess what…). You root for the silly, sweet people in Mama’s Family, and in a weird, shaggy dog sort of way, for the little homely show itself.