Whenever I’m scanning the hundreds of useless channels on my Comcast digital DVR box, I can’t help but stop and watch if I see an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show, or Dick Van Dyke. I have seen every episode hundreds of time and they can still make me laugh out loud even if I’m watching it all alone.
It never fails, after watching it I always wonder, how do they make me laugh? Nobody dropped the F-bomb, no jokes about unnatural sex acts, no mention about sex at all. The married couples didn’t ever sleep in the same bed until Ozzie and Harriet. There were many good shows from the black and white days, I Love Lucy was a stop and watcher too. 
I believe it was a combination of two key ingredients, really great comedy writers and incredible comedy actors. I Love Lucy was a great show not so much because of great writing, I think it was more the acting that carried that show. More specific, Lucy O’Ball; I think you could have put dozens of actresses in the scenes of trying to keep up with the candy line or the Vitameatavegamin commercial and it just wouldn’t have the same magic. The rest of the cast on that show were great also, but Lucy carried the day. The Desilu production company also revolutionized sitcom filming, becoming the standard.
Some of the sitcoms of the late 70’s that are on my stop watch list; Barney Miller and Taxi. Though not quite as innocent as the black and white days. These two shows had me staying home and out of the bars on Thursday night back then.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not exactly a prude; there are many really funny new shows that I watch every week, that is when they have new episodes. My new favorite is Men of A Certain Age; the Ray Ramono’s show. I love this show mainly because it doesn’t need a laugh track of dead people to remind me when something is funny. It’s a lot like the Wonder Years, not ha ha funny, but clever funny. There are also some new shows I watch that are downright crude but they still make me laugh.
I do miss the old shows from back in the day that you can watch hundreds of times and never get tired of.
It’s almost a black and white thing and I do not mean that in a racial way, what I mean is whenever I remember the late 50’ or early 60’s my memory is in black in white, I guess that is because all the family photos from that time are in black in white and all the shows and all our TV’s were in black in white. When we were little kids life was black and white as far as dad was concerned, either you did what he told you to do the first time or your “ ass would belong to Joe Hayes” as mom or dad put when you were pushing your luck. ‘I didn’t know who Joe Hayes was, all I knew was, when he had your ass, it was always dad who beat the hell out of. I figured dad leased a time-share on my ass from Joe.
Today is a different story things aren't as clearly defined as they used to be, television technology has improved in inverse proportion with civilization in general; the Don Henley song "In The Garden Of Allah" expresses this well, in the song, the devil laments that he longs for the time “when good was good and evil was evil, before things got so fuzzy”.
I remember the day when dad brought home our first color TV. We were way behind on that technological upgrade; we had seen color TV at our aunt Rita’s house a few years before and were transfixed watching even the commercials. We never whined to dad about getting one. We knew better than to gripe about what we didn’t have around dad, or else you know what would belong to you know who and dad would collect the taxes on it. Well this one particular day we were all sitting around watching our cartoons on our lame-assed black and white TV and dad walks in with another TV. We were trying to figure out why dad was swapping our set when this one was working just fine, the blacks were black, the whites were white and the grays were gray, what the hell? He plugged in the new set which was a portable vacuum unit about a 13” that weighed a metric ton. After several minutes of tube warm up time, it came to life in living color! Wow, the last black and white family in the free world finally has a color TV!
The last 40 some odd years of TV upgrades has led me to a nice 52” DLP High Def 1080 I, which gave me an incredible picture. Who could want for more? Me, after my baby sister got a huge LED 1080 P, damn! Now I have to start praying that my DLP’s light engine goes to hell and I will be forced to upgrade again. Then I will be able to watch the world going to hell in a hand basket in perfect 1080 I, clarity.
You know, I really wouldn’t want to go back to the old days, but I do still kind of miss the times when TV’s and life were in perfect black and white.
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