Doris marathon on MeTV Sunday, 4-6-14

[MichaelKeith]

Just saw a Doris promo on MeTV where she says she picks her favorite episodes from her series to be shown on her 90th b-day Sunday, April 6.

[dakert]

from 3-7pm est

[dougiezerts]

That's good. I've been wanting to see this show for a long time.

[ThisLittlePiggy]

Doris Day Day! I'm looking forward to it!

[Ohio8]

In the episode where Doris gets hired at the magazine, she says "With five you get egg roll."

[mets82]

Saw some of the episodes. Nice to see ME-TV do off the clock programming for a good reason!! I'm not being sarcastic or anything, its just that if you noticed some of the episodes started off the clock which was fine with me because at least you getting some info. on her show. I will say, how come she wasnt on camera?

[Coffeecup]

I saw a few episodes on the METV afternoon marathon. It was quite a while since I last saw the show. The episode where Doris Martin meet Doris Day was cute. The two personalities were so different. I like the clutzy Doris better. The glamour Doris seemed so stiff. As for Doris not appearing on the METV promos, I guess she may not want to be seen. It was good she made the voice over. She could have done nothing.

[mets82]

BTW, why did they retool the show? I noticed that Bernie Kopell and his wife who were in the show were dropped as well as her kids.

[jehobden]

Originally Posted by Ohio8

In the episode where Doris gets hired at the magazine, she says "With five you get egg roll."

This was obviously a joke in reference to her film With Six You Get Eggroll. Since I've never seen all of that movie, with her quote at the end of this show, I finally understand what the movie title probably meant.

I almost had to groan about Doris' speech preceding this final line, referring to how she told her new boss how proud she was of her sons and never wanted to deny their existence (This is a paraphrase of her actual words, which I don't recall off the top of my head.) in light of how they disappeared from her life & the show altogether less than 2 years later.

[missy's pop pop]

Originally Posted by Coffeecup

I saw a few episodes on the METV afternoon marathon. It was quite a while since I last saw the show. The episode where Doris Martin meet Doris Day was cute. The two personalities were so different. I like the clutzy Doris better. The glamour Doris seemed so stiff. As for Doris not appearing on the METV promos, I guess she may not want to be seen. It was good she made the voice over. She could have done nothing.

Considering Doris Day just celebrated her 90th birthday, if I were her, I'd be a little reluctant to show my current face. No put-down of Doris, but considering she was in her late 40s when the show was produced, she would not at all look like the Doris Day we loved back then!

And note that Doris Day the actress was shot was in that gauzy "Vaseline shot" style that older actresses used back in the day to hid creeping wrinkles, etc. Standard issue for Hollywood stars before Botox and Restylane!

Doris Martin looked like the Doris Day I loved with James Garner in "The Thrill of it All!" (one of my favorite movies ever) ...

[missy's pop pop]

Originally Posted by mets82

BTW, why did they retool the show? I noticed that Bernie Kopell and his wife who were in the show were dropped as well as her kids.

Three words: Mary. Tyler. Moore.

The first two seasons were almost an extension of the down-on-the-farm comedy CBS was famous for ("Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction," "Green Acres," "Mayberry RFD," etc. Then CBS decided to drop all the rural shows (which skewed to older audiences and included "The Ed Sullivan Show" as well) to focus on new, younger, more contemporary shows.

Doris Martin was a widow. Mary Richards broke up with her boyfriend. CBS was nervous back then about a divorcee as the main character of a comedy. (Truth was, Vivian Vance as Vivian Bagley on "The Lucy Show" was made a divorcee because CBS was equally nervous about Lucy Carmichael being a divorcee after Lucy and Desi divorced.)

Doris had two growing kids (sort of like "Leave it to Beaver"). Mary did not. There are only so many plot lines you could do with small kids, so gradually the kids were phased out and zany ensemble characters (Rose Marie, Bernie Kopell, Kaye Ballard, etc.) phased in. Also Mary lived in an apartment. Doris, at least not until S3.

Then you had a pain-in-the neck boss. Mary had Ed Asner. Doris had McLean Stevenson.

The difference was that Doris Martin was trying to do in five years what Mary Richards did in one year: Become a free-swinging career "girl."

And, by the end of the fifth year, Doris Day decided she didn't want to see the future (read she quit the show at the end of five years), even though "the future (was) not 'hers' to see."

[mets82]

You would think that Doris Day would want her own identity instead of trying to rip off Mary Tyler Moore.

[MichaelKeith]

My favorite seasons of TDDS are in this order:

S3
S2
S1

I didn't care for seasons four or five. I don't like Peter Lawford and didn't like Doris living the single life dating a lot of different men. She was tailor made for having two kids and a dog to take care of.

I prefer Doris in season 3 living in the apartment with managers Bernie Kopell and Kay Ballard and having Billy DeWolfe as a neighbor and the two kids. To me this is the best format for the show. A close second is season two where she still worked in San Francisco but lived at home with the boys and dad Denver Pyle.

Wish they had used either the season 3 or season 2 formats throughout the run of the show.

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by missy's pop pop

Three words: Mary. Tyler. Moore.

Or two words: Doris. Day.

When production began on S3 of The Doris Day Show, with Doris Martin moving to her apartment, it was 1970 and The Mary Tyler Moore Show had not even aired yet. "Doris Finds an Apartment" first aired on September 14, 1970, five days before The Mary Tyler Moore Show premiered. And of course the episode was filmed months earlier. So it doesn't make a lot of sense that the producers of The Doris Day Show were trying to move the format in the direction of a show that hadn't gone on the air yet, and which they had never even seen. A season later when the kids disappeared from TDDS, this was after only one season of TMTMS had aired. And the fact is TDDS had pulled basically the same ratings as TMTMS during the 1970-71 season (TDDS ranked #20 for the year; TMTMS was #22). The fact is, Doris Day's late husband had committed her to a CBS sitcom in 1968, which she apparently was unaware of until his death. She was equally unaware of the rural format developed for the show, which she hated. From the very beginning, she wanted to make changes. And the changes that were made over the years were really in the direction of some of the movies Doris Day was known for in the '60s, where she sometimes played a single working woman (e.g., Caprice, Lover Come Back, Pillow Talk, That Touch of Mink). The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and perhaps the earlier That Girl, may well have been partly inspired by a few Doris Day films.

[mets82]

Beware when they do wholesale changes on a show. I never like when they do that. To me, disrupts the whole flow of the series.