I\u2019ve always been a big fan of this show.\u00a0 But nowadays the audience it was created for are either old or really old.\u00a0 But, so what?\u00a0 Shakespeare\u2019s audience has been dead for over 350 years and his stuff is still plenty popular.\u00a0 Am I saying Jackie Gleason compares to the Bard?\u00a0 Maybe in comedy.\u00a0 Have you ever watched \u201cTaming of the Shrew?\u201d\u00a0 There really are an enormous number of similarities.\u00a0 Kate and Alice Kramden are sisters under the skin.\u00a0 And Beatrice from \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing\u201d is right there too.\u00a0 And Ralph Kramden and his buddy Ed Norton could be compared to Falstaff and Prince Hal.\u00a0 Well, maybe not.\u00a0 And Jackie Gleason and Art Carney had enormous chemistry together.\u00a0 They were able to riff on whatever ridiculous plot device they were pursuing to incredible comic effect.\u00a0 Physical comedy and clever dialog abound.\u00a0 As clowns they stand up with anything Shakespeare produced.\u00a0 And Alice Kramden\u2019s aggrieved, long-suffering wife is perfection and provides the foil Ralph needs to justify his craziest schemes.\u00a0 The weakest part of the cast is Trixie who really only acts as a plot device.\u00a0 She\u2019s a sounding board for both her friend Alice and as Ed\u2019s wife whenever Ralph has gone so way overboard that Ed must rebel.<\/p>\n
But anyway, there is an everyman or at least an every-Brooklyn-man of the mid-twentieth century in Ralph and Ed.\u00a0 These are the guys who fought World War II and came back to Brooklyn and didn\u2019t get to be the man in the grey flannel suit.\u00a0 They\u2019re the guys in the blue-collar uniform.\u00a0 They don\u2019t work in a Madison Avenue advertising office.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Ralph is the not-terribly-bright guy who thinks he is full of million-dollar ideas to get rich quick.\u00a0 Norton is his best friend who follows Ralph\u2019s lead and of course suffers the consequences constantly.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The Kramdens and the Nortons are sort of the economic losers of the post-war economy.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Jackie Gleason\u2019s Ralph, Art Carney\u2019s Ed and Audrey Meadows\u2019 Alice are iconic characters that speak directly to Americans who believed in the American Dream.\u00a0 Their striving and their frantic scramble to enjoy the American life of that time speaks to timeless pursuits of the human condition.\u00a0 The Kramdens and the Nortons are a very lively spot in the history of fictional people.\u00a0 The thirty-nine episodes produced in 1955 and 1956 are fine wine.\u00a0 I like to watch them every once in a while, to remind myself of a happier time than our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve always been a big fan of this show.\u00a0 But nowadays the audience it was created for are either old or really old.\u00a0 But, so<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4601,240],"tags":[735,734,733,731,447,38,1355,732,154,1692],"class_list":["post-29322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-the-honeymooners","category-tv-reviews","tag-alice-kramden","tag-art-carney","tag-ed-norton","tag-jackie-gleason","tag-ralph-kramden","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-the-honeymooners","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n