Category: TV Reviews

In this episode we are introduced to Ralph’s unending search for a gimmick to reach success in business.  He has been spreading a rumor at the bus company that the executive (Mr. Harper) who is choosing the new assistant traffic manager is a good friend of his and will pick Ralph for the job.

But when the other bus drivers realize that Ralph is the source of the rumors they break out into derisive laughter and one of them informs Ralph that Harper doesn’t even know that Ralph exists.  Ed Norton is having lunch with Ralph and hears about Ralph’s embarrassment.  Norton encourages Ralph to strike up a conversation with Harper and try to make a personal connection with the executive in order to increase his chances for the assistant traffic manager’s job.  So when Harper happens by Ralph tries out Norton’s advice and by lying about his golfing abilities (he has none but claims to be a pro) he catches Harper’s interest.

Norton erroneously assumes Ralph is serious about wanting to play Harper and backs Ralph into a corner that sets up a golf game between Ralph and Harper for the next morning.  When Harper leaves Ralph explodes at Norton for setting up the game.  He tells Norton that he can’t play at all and the game will expose Ralph as a complete fraud.  But Norton assures him that with a good book on learning golf and Norton’s help he should be able to convince Harper that he is a good golfer.

And this sets up the scene that is the highlight of the show Ralph and Norton trying to learn how to play golf in Ralph’s kitchen with an old golf club,  a round cloth pin cushion for the ball and Norton’s interpretation of the words of this “How to Play golf in One Easy Lesson” handbook.

And they get pretty good physical comedy mileage from that setup.  Ralph copying Norton’s hip gyrations while “addressing” the ball is enough to give Alice the best line of the show.  Alice arrives home just as Ralph is performing his limbering moves.  Seeing her he says, “I’m practicing golf.”  She replies, “Is that what it is?  The way your backfield was in motion I thought it was football.”

Alice’s discouraging words shake Ralph’s confidence and he comes to realize just how hopeless a situation he’s in.  But a miracle intervenes.  One of the other executives shows up at Ralph’s home and informs him that Harper injured himself and can’t play the next day.  But instead of gracefully accepting this stroke of luck he plays up how much he wanted to play Harper and of course the executive decides to take Harper’s place on the links with Ralph the next day.  After the executive walks out the door Ralph looks at Alice and says, “Well, Alice you’ve got to admit one thing.  I’ve got a biiiiig mouuuuth!”  End of episode.

So this whole episode is just an excuse for watching Ralph and Norton performing one of their desperate attempts to escape their working class limitations and end up on easy street.  And most of the fun is watching their expressions as they try to convince themselves that it is working.

But as always it’s the final interaction between Alice and Ralph that brings home the message that all of Ralph’s biggest problems stem from his desire to be more than he is.  I rat this episode highly because of the physical comedy between Ralph and Norton.  Well worth watching

Spoiler Alert – I review the plot.  Skip down to the last paragraph to get my take on the episode but avoid reading the detailed plot summary.

This episode involves a suitcase full of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills that is left on Ralph’s bus.  A gangster left it on the bus because of a cop he saw.  The mobsters can’t claim the suitcase because it would have to be opened and that would expose them to arrest.  Knowing that after a month the bus driver would be given the suitcase, they bide their time until Ralph is given the case by the bus company.  When Ralph gets home with the unopened suitcase, his mother-in-law is talking with Alice.  She insults Ralph several time about the impoverished state of their apartment and is thrown out by Ralph.

Ralph begs Alice and then Ed Norton to lend him some money to pay his back dues at the Raccoon Club.  But Alice refuses him and Norton has no money.  Right after this Ralph opens the suitcase and goes insane with the desire to spend the money.  He buys a new wardrobe, has telephones installed in every room including the bathroom and fire escape, buys a whole new set of kitchen appliances and negotiates to buy a boat with three propellors.  And to top it all off he insults his boss and quits his job at the bus company.  When his mother-in-law finds out about the money she tries buttering him up by calling him “sonny boy” and claiming he’s her favorite son-in-law.  It succeeds to the extent that Ralph gives her $200 for her and her husband to go to Florida so he doesn’t have to see them.  When Alice finds out about Ralph’s reckless spending, she warns him that something is very wrong with the whole situation and all this spending would lead to disaster.

Naturally everything comes crashing down when he finds out the money is counterfeit.  In order to avoid arrest Ralph puts the remaining money in the oven and burns it.  Immediately afterward the gangsters show up at his apartment and demand the cash.  But before they can shoot him for not having the money,  Ralph’s mother-in-law shows up with two policemen to arrest him for giving her counterfeit money.  Ralph and the gangsters are arrested and brought to the police station.  Ralph is able to convince the police that he had nothing to do with the counterfeit money other than finding it and so the mobsters are jailed and Ralph is freed.

The episode ends with Alice berating Ralph for how he went crazy and spent the money.  Ralph defends himself by saying that no harm was done and for a few days he got to live like a millionaire.  Then she reminds him that he has quit his job and the episode ends with Ralph realizing Alice was right and he was in deep trouble.

Review

This is a very odd episode.  Now, granted, in many cases the actions from one week don’t seamlessly continue into the following episodes.  But in this adventure Ralph pretty definitively quits his job followed by calling his boss a “bum.”  That’s kind of hard to ignore in the next episode.  And there is a sort of pointlessness and unlikeliness to the action in this episode.  But in defense of it, we do get to see Ralph’s ego given full rein.  It does show that if he actually had money, he would be a free spender so it does give us an insight into his true nature.  And there are a few good zingers thrown between Ralph and Alice’s mother.  But all in all, I’d say this was a minor episode.

I’ve always been a big fan of this show.  But nowadays the audience it was created for are either old or really old.  But, so what?  Shakespeare’s audience has been dead for over 350 years and his stuff is still plenty popular.  Am I saying Jackie Gleason compares to the Bard?  Maybe in comedy.  Have you ever watched “Taming of the Shrew?”  There really are an enormous number of similarities.  Kate and Alice Kramden are sisters under the skin.  And Beatrice from “Much Ado About Nothing” is right there too.  And Ralph Kramden and his buddy Ed Norton could be compared to Falstaff and Prince Hal.  Well, maybe not.  And Jackie Gleason and Art Carney had enormous chemistry together.  They were able to riff on whatever ridiculous plot device they were pursuing to incredible comic effect.  Physical comedy and clever dialog abound.  As clowns they stand up with anything Shakespeare produced.  And Alice Kramden’s aggrieved, long-suffering wife is perfection and provides the foil Ralph needs to justify his craziest schemes.  The weakest part of the cast is Trixie who really only acts as a plot device.  She’s a sounding board for both her friend Alice and as Ed’s wife whenever Ralph has gone so way overboard that Ed must rebel.

But anyway, there is an everyman or at least an every-Brooklyn-man of the mid-twentieth century in Ralph and Ed.  These are the guys who fought World War II and came back to Brooklyn and didn’t get to be the man in the grey flannel suit.  They’re the guys in the blue-collar uniform.  They don’t work in a Madison Avenue advertising office.  They work in the sewer or on a Madison Avenue bus and make awful wages and live in two room apartments in Bensonhurst and try to escape every chance they get to a game of pool or bowling or a Racoon Lodge Meeting to avoid their wives nagging them about the broken-down appliances, the bad plumbing and general lack of funds.

Ralph is the not-terribly-bright guy who thinks he is full of million-dollar ideas to get rich quick.  Norton is his best friend who follows Ralph’s lead and of course suffers the consequences constantly.  Their wives, Alice and Trixie are long suffering housewives who have more or less reconciled themselves to the marginal edge of the middle-class but not silently and often quite sarcastically.  The Kramdens and the Nortons are sort of the economic losers of the post-war economy.  But Ralph is always searching for that million-dollar idea and Alice and Norton and Trixie are right behind him being dragged along for the bumpy ride.

Jackie Gleason’s Ralph, Art Carney’s Ed and Audrey Meadows’ Alice are iconic characters that speak directly to Americans who believed in the American Dream.  Their striving and their frantic scramble to enjoy the American life of that time speaks to timeless pursuits of the human condition.  The Kramdens and the Nortons are a very lively spot in the history of fictional people.  The thirty-nine episodes produced in 1955 and 1956 are fine wine.  I like to watch them every once in a while, to remind myself of a happier time than our own.

The Kramden’s friends; the Nortons (Ed and Trixie) are getting their second tv set and Alice Kramden tries buttering up her husband Ralph to get their first set.  Ralph rants and raves about the dangers of buying “luxuries” as opposed to his “strategic” savings plan.  But she tells him he’s just cheap.

But Ed comes to Ralph to borrow money to buy the new set because he’s already bought so many appliances on credit that the store has turned him down for the tv set.  Ralph decides that if he and Ed split the cost, they can afford the set together.

Ralph tricks Ed into keeping the set in Ralph’s apartment and thus begins the war to control the channel.  Ed Norton is a devotee of the kid’s outer space serial “Captain Video” complete with his very own space suit helmet.  Ralph wants to watch movies and the prospect of Ed watching the inane space show drives Ralph insane.  And they battle for days until finally Alice admits at the end that Ralph’s instinct not to buy a tv was actually correct.

This first episode has already in place many of the characteristics of the Honeymooners’ set up.  When we first see Alice, she is trying to unclog the kitchen sink with a plunger.  And by the sound effects and Alice’s expression we can tell things didn’t go well.  This is the status quo of the Kramden household.  Ralph’s bus driver’s salary can’t seem to permit Alice’s dreams of a middle-class lifestyle to become reality.  But she never gives up reminding Ralph of these shortcomings.

When Trixie shows up and encourages Alice to use flattery to try and get Ralph to buy a tv set, we recognize the dynamic these two wives are always bumping up against.  Namely, while Ed Norton is somewhat accommodating to Trixie’s opinion, Ralph is vehemently opposed to any compromise on Alice’s requests, especially if they cost even the smallest amount of money.  And another characteristic of the Alice/Ralph dynamic is that after Ralph rejects her request for anything she falls back on mocking his weight.  And finally, the episode leans heavily on the trope that whatever joint venture Ralph and Ed embark on will result in anger, failure and embarrassment.

This is a good representative of the series and has several memorable laughs during the battles between Ralph and Alice but especially between Ralph and Ed.  And it is plain to see that no warm-up period was needed in order for the cast to hit their stride.  The Kramdens and the Nortons are already hitting on all cylinders.

Captain Video: Calling all space rangers, it’s time to blast off with Captain Video and his video rangers.  Hello out there rangers.  This is Captain Video.  Are you all, ready join me in our trip to outer space?

Ed Norton: I am ready O Captain Video!

Captain Video: Let us all put on our official Captain Video Space helmets, adjust disintegrator guns, and now we blast off for Pluto and the Moon!