Mourning Harriet--and the Modern Family of Sitcoms

“Homer, Marge and the kids visit Itchy and Scratchy Land, a violent theme park.” “A thief infiltrates a neighborhood watch meeting.”

“Al ejects a customer for nursing her baby.”

“A gunshot is heard at school.”

All four of those scenes are taken from this week’s TV listings. All four are from programs depicting family life in America.

And you wonder why Harriet Nelson’s death was front-page news?

Long before she died last Sunday at 85, Harriet Nelson had passed into the hallowed realm of Americana.

No matter that we don’t remember much about her as a TV star, in the way we remember Lucille Ball or Mary Tyler Moore. No matter that no single scene comes to mind when we think of her; no memorable line or signature bit. No matter, either, that we hadn’t heard much from her in the nearly 30 years since her TV show went off the air.

You could say that Harriet Nelson disappeared. Which is precisely why she was front-page news when she died.

She disappeared and took the traditional American family with her, or so the storyline goes. She and Ozzie and Ricky and David left, and we haven’t had a moment’s peace since.

The Nelsons moved out, and the Bunkers and the Bundys moved in. There went the neighborhood.

For some of us who grew up watching “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” and are now middle-aged ourselves, the family sitcoms of the late 1950s and early ‘60s pose a dilemma.

Was it really good for us to watch Ozzie and Jim Anderson and Ward Cleaver never get madder than a mild snit? How did that square with our own fathers flying off the handle over nothing, lying to our mothers and killing off six-packs when things went wrong? If Ozzie came home late, it was because the PTA meeting ran long, not because he was shooting pool. Did Ward Cleaver ever have to stand in the unemployment line?

And why couldn’t our mothers handle our fathers like Harriet handled Ozzie? How could she disarm his mood swings (some mood swings!) and restore harmony to the household, while our mothers only seemed capable of inflaming our fathers and making matters worse? I don’t remember Harriet or Donna Reed ever grappling with the complexities of life outside the home.

We were told we were watching families that were just like ours. After a while, we were forced to ask ourselves the question: What’s wrong with my family!

Oh, sure, some of us eventually figured out that they were just TV shows. We realized that it was fiction, just like a novel or a movie. But when is the right age for reality to start setting in? Is it too late by the time you’re a teen-ager and already convinced you’re living in the only screwed-up family in America?

That’s where the dilemma comes in. I doubt that many teens in America today who watch “Roseanne” or “Married . . . With Children” entertain any thoughts that their family is overly weird. If you had to guess, wouldn’t you surmise that watching TV today would make most kids feel pretty good about their parents, if only by comparison to Al Bundy?

And yet, good ol’ Al is the guy at the top of the column who ejected the nursing mother in this week’s episode. That’s reality, but is it entertainment?

The thief who disrupts the neighborhood watch meeting on “Dave’s World.” Was there ever a crime on Ozzie and Harriet’s block?

The gunshot is heard on “My So-Called Life.” The kids at Ricky Nelson’s high school heard him sing “Hello, Mary Lou,” not the sound of gunshots.

And even if they had violent theme parks in the ‘50s, could you imagine Ozzie taking Ricky and David, as lovable Homer Simpson did with his kids?

Aargh.

Watching the near-perfect TV families of the late ‘50s probably goofed up lots of kids or, at least, set up their parents for failure to meet unreasonable standards. Lots of rebellious ‘60s teen-agers turned on their parents because they didn’t turn out to be Ozzie and Harriet, after all.

On the other hand, would you rather have your mom act like Harriet or Peg Bundy?

By the end of her life, it probably seemed odd to Harriet Nelson that she became an icon to middle America. She was a singer who married a bandleader. You can’t get much more show-bizzy than that and, yet, helped by the passage of time, she become part of our folklore.

I’m sure Dan Quayle misses Harriet Nelson--and Ozzie too. He must hate “The Simpsons” and “Married . . . With Children.”

I miss Harriet too. I miss the whole Nelson family on TV, no matter how much they in 1960 didn’t resemble any family I knew.

Someday maybe I’ll figure out just how much reality I really want.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.