User Reviews

Ken (Johnny Carson) is a mama's boy, through and through. While he plans on spending his vacation with his mega-hot girlfriend, Pam (Anne Francis), when Ken's mom asks him to drop everything and come there instead, he does....and disappoints Pam...as they had plans. Pam shocks him when she shows up at his parents' house...and she really impresses Ken's dad (Frank McHugh)...but his mother (Glenda Farrell) hates him because....well...she'd hate anyone who 'stole her baby away from her'! Although Pam makes a terrific meal and is a lovely houseguest, she eventually gets tired of Ken's indifference and his mother's antagonism...and she leaves. Soon after, one of Ken's mother's friends brings by a beautiful girl for him to meet.

When you look at Johnny Carson and see what a weasel he is, you wonder what ANY woman would want in this guy. And, in the meantime, you feel really bad for Pam as she's much like Mary Poppins....practically perfect in every way! This is a deficit in this teleplay....she's wonderful and he's just a big knucklehead and you can't see any sane woman wanting him. Overall, interesting...but flawed.

Ken is a young NYC advertising copywriter born and raised in Rochester, NY who is a hometown square "moma's boy." He is dating Pam, a free-thinking, independent, working woman Kindergarden teacher who for some reason, pretends to be a Greenwich Village 'beatnik' artist because that's what's hip and what she thinks will make her attractive to Ken. Pam wants a serious relationship, but Ken only deems her worthy of 'friends with benefits' status. Ken and Pam plan to spend an upcoming weeks' vacation together exploring NYC, but when Ken's mother calls him and pressures him to spend the vacation back home in Rochester with family, he easily capitulates and cancels his plans with Pam - whom he deems unworthy of meeting his family.

Although Ken is disrespectful to Pam and is a spineless moma's boy, Pam spends most of the program pursuing and chasing after him, as if he is some kind of prize catch - even following him uninvited to his Mom's home in Rochester to try to win he and his family over. In the end, Pam is made to admit she was lying about being a 'beatnik' and had to apologize and acquiesce to moma's boy Ken to save their relationship. Comical.

This 1960 program is one of many during the time period that to different degrees, painted unflattering portraits of the beat generation, its movement, and its critical- thinking people. Dozens of TV shows and movies of this period - Dobie Gillis, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and especially the movie 'The Subterraneans' (1960) among many others, literally lined up to take humorous pot shots, presenting 'beat' characters who were often homogeneous, superficial, idiotic, and perjoratively labeled 'counter-culture.' In "Queen of the Orange Bowl," you get such a portrait in the character, Pam, who despite her obvious superior attributes is made to disavow the beatnik life for someone half her worth. Any social movement that questions the status quo will always be attacked - coyly or not so - by the media outlets owned by the status quo. Its inevitable.