A while back I made a list my my top ten favorite TV shows of the 20th century.

The criteria were pretty simple and pretty arbitrary.

They had to be TV series that I watched when they were originally broadcast, not in syndication or on DVD (so that eliminated shows like Buffy and Friends).

They had to be shows that made me come back week after week (or day after day) to watch them. In other words, I had to love them at the time they were on, not years after the fact in retrospect.

They had to have at least two seasons. Boy, did that eliminate a lot of shows; networks seemed to zero in on programs that I enjoyed and cancel them quickly, often after only a few episodes.

And no more than ten shows could make the list.

And, of course, the shows all had to at least begin broadcasting before 2001.

With those criteria in place, I drew up my list. A few years later I made one adjustment by eliminating one show and adding a different one. I’m going to go through that list in roughly chronological order. This will be an occasional series as I haven’t written the other pieces yet.

First, up: Howdy Doody.

Perhaps it’s not fair to include a show that I barely recall, as I mostly watched it when I was a toddler, but my parents always reminded me how much I used to love the show.

And in fact, I can remember watching it. It actually taught me how to count to two. Before I understood just what a week was, I knew that there were a bunch of days where The Howdy Doody Show was one every day, and then there were two days in a row were it wasn’t. I kept track of those two days.

More important, though, was the effect that Buffalo Bob had on me.

Every episode Buffalo Bob would start the show by asking the Peanut Gallery what time it was and then launch into “It’s Howdy Doody Time” sung to the tune of “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay”. The Peanut Gallery was composed of children of about five or six years of age, give or take a year or two. They couldn’t sing very well, but they could sure scream their little heads off.

Buffalo Bob used to talk directly to the audience and he’d wander in and out of the stories that were performed by the marionettes of which Howdy was one. So Buffalo Bob was sort of a narrator but he also took part in the action himself.

And I tried to imitate that. Where other kids might have imaginary playmates, I had an imaginary camera because I was the host of my own imaginary TV show. I’d talk to an imaginary camera (when nobody was looking). I did this for years, and as far as I know, nobody ever caught me at it, because I was pretty careful about not letting anyone see me.

At first when I lived on the farm I actually talked to the camera, but later on when we moved to town and there were other kids around, I was reduced to just glancing at the camera from time to time or as I walked back home I’d summarize what had happened. Even into high school I’d occasionally mug to an imaginary camera from time to time, and it occurs to me now that in a way I was performing as if there was a pseudo-documentary being filmed, much in the way of The Office or Parks and Recreation. I guess I was a bit ahead of my time.

So Howdy Doody, or at least Buffalo Bob, was a pretty big influence on me.

Why did I love it so much? Perhaps because it was the first national TV show that was aimed directly at kids. In the early 50s TV was still a new medium and there weren’t yet a lot of options for children, but once it became popular, other kids’ shows began to spring up.

I can still recall some of the other marionette characters such as Phineas T. Bluster, the mayor of Doodyville (not a very nice guy as you can probably tell from the name), and Dilly Dally, and of course, Flub-a-dub.

At some point my cousin Kathy told me about the Mickey Mouse Club and said it was a much better show, but I remained loyal to Howdy; I’d watch the half hour Howdy Doody Show, and then switch over for the concluding hour of the Mouse Club, which I had to admit was a better show.

While Howdy started out as a weekday show, in its last few years, it was moved to Saturday mornings (because other kids were not as loyal to it as I was; the Mouse was killing it), so I could watch the entire Mouse Club without feeling disloyal to Howdy. I can’t remember if I saw its final episode where Clarabell the clown finally spoke. I was older than its target audience by then, but I think I still tuned in from time to time.

Sometime in the late 50s, my mother asked me if I remembered Princess Summerfall Winterspring. She had been one of the characters who was portrayed by a live actor on the show, and while I recalled the name, I didn’t really remember the woman who played her.

 

Anyway, I just answered yes. According to my mother, the actress who had played her had just been killed in a car crash. 

There are DVDs of selected episodes floating around, and I’ve bought a few of them, just to remind myself of what the show was like, and I’ve found them to be practically unwatchable. The Mickey Mouse Club really was a better show.