With apologies to the two viewers here who liked the show, I just bought a bare-bones DVD with three episodes at a dollar store, and had the hardest time sitting through them.
Watching these vignettes, I came to have an even greater respect for terrific pioneering shows like "Our Miss Brooks" and especially "The Honeymooners". While the repartee in those shows was fresh and snappy (and still is), LWE's is as stiff and contrived as Betty White's 1950's hairdo. This show tried to portray the title character as a loose cannon, but in fact she didn't stray too far from the Happy Homemaker mold. Even "My Little Margie" was more edgy!
Betty White's appearance was so polished in every episode, I got the feeling her character would look the other way if Alice Kramden came walking past her on the street. (This was an era when as soon as you became a legal adult, you had to dress and act like you were forty.) With her sprayed on smile and oh-so-sweet lilting voice, thank goodness she broke out of it to play the conniving Sue Ann Nivens on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" twenty years later. Maybe at the time Betty wanted to appear as pure as possible, after having posed nude for a naughty deck of cards before her acting career took off. Del Moore played the husband, and even though he primarily worked as an announcer in his career, the show still felt the need to have another blandly handsome person introduce the scenes. Go figure.
There was hardly a full laugh in any of the three episodes I watched (#'s 4, 8, and 12), but I was glad I got to see them anyway. One thing I learned is that from the very beginning of her career, White's hair has never moved. It only cost me a buck to find that out.
Watching these vignettes, I came to have an even greater respect for terrific pioneering shows like "Our Miss Brooks" and especially "The Honeymooners". While the repartee in those shows was fresh and snappy (and still is), LWE's is as stiff and contrived as Betty White's 1950's hairdo. This show tried to portray the title character as a loose cannon, but in fact she didn't stray too far from the Happy Homemaker mold. Even "My Little Margie" was more edgy!
Betty White's appearance was so polished in every episode, I got the feeling her character would look the other way if Alice Kramden came walking past her on the street. (This was an era when as soon as you became a legal adult, you had to dress and act like you were forty.) With her sprayed on smile and oh-so-sweet lilting voice, thank goodness she broke out of it to play the conniving Sue Ann Nivens on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" twenty years later. Maybe at the time Betty wanted to appear as pure as possible, after having posed nude for a naughty deck of cards before her acting career took off. Del Moore played the husband, and even though he primarily worked as an announcer in his career, the show still felt the need to have another blandly handsome person introduce the scenes. Go figure.
There was hardly a full laugh in any of the three episodes I watched (#'s 4, 8, and 12), but I was glad I got to see them anyway. One thing I learned is that from the very beginning of her career, White's hair has never moved. It only cost me a buck to find that out.