Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Sitcom degree zero

Yesterday I found a half-dozen episodes of Les Paul and Mary Ford's charming 1953 syndicated 5-minute TV series, "At Home With. . ." (and actually shot there) on youtube. In the first one, Mary is seen putting groceries into the refrigerator only to learn that the appliance is not working. Les plays an instrumental while Mary phones the repairman. Les finishes the song and Mary tells him that no one anawered. Commercial break (for Listerine). Mary then sings a song, after which she discovers that Les has inadvertently unplugged the fridge while fixing the iron. She is mildly miffed, but he explains that she has "got two for the price of one": An iron that works and a defrosted icebox. Another commercial. The End. All in the space of five minutes. In another episode, Mary buys a barometer and predicts sunny weather, but it rains. There are 138 more where these came from. Slightly more than 11 hours in toto. Not exactly the Moscow Art Theatre, but I love this stuff. The original show about (vide "Seinfeld") nothing.

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