Back when I was getting into blogging again, I forged an unshakeable alliance with photog, the proprietor of the blog Orion’s Cold Fire.  We used to cross-post on each other’s blogs a tad more frequently, but have not done so in awhile.

So I was thrilled when good ol’ photog reached out about the possibility of doing so.  At the time of writing, I’m still brainstorming what I will submit to him, but by the time you read this post, I’ll have done so (God Willing)!  Indeed, I imagine my post on his blog will publish in roughly the same timeframe as his submission here.

photog has a softness for classic television.  For example, in 2019 he did an episode-by-episode review of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), which is probably one of my favorite events in blogging history.  He did the same episode-by-episode reviews for Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969).  If you’re a fan of sci-fi and weird fiction, photog is your man.

He is continuing that fondness for 1950s and 1960s television with this complete series review of another classic, this time a comedy.  With that, here is photog of Orion’s Cold Fire with a complete series review of The Honeymooners (1955-1956):

I’ve always been a big fan of this show.  But nowadays the audience it was created for are either old or really old.  But, so what?  Shakespeare’s audience has been dead for over 350 years and his stuff is still plenty popular.  Am I saying Jackie Gleason compares to the Bard?  Maybe in comedy.  Have you ever watched The Taming of the Shrew?  There really are an enormous number of similarities.  Kate and Alice Kramden are sisters under the skin.  And Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing is right there, too.  And Ralph Kramden and his buddy Ed Norton could be compared to Falstaff and Prince Hal.  Well, maybe not.  And Jackie Gleason and Art Carney had enormous chemistry together.  They were able to riff on whatever ridiculous plot device they were pursuing to incredible comic effect.  Physical comedy and clever dialog abound.  As clowns they stand up with anything Shakespeare produced.  And Alice Kramden’s aggrieved, long-suffering wife is perfection and provides the foil Ralph needs to justify his craziest schemes.  The weakest part of the cast is Trixie, who really only acts as a plot device.  She’s a sounding board for both her friend Alice and as Ed’s wife whenever Ralph has gone so way overboard that Ed must rebel.

But anyway, there is an everyman or at least an every-Brooklyn-man of the mid-twentieth century in Ralph and Ed.  These are the guys who fought World War II and came back to Brooklyn and didn’t get to be the man in the grey flannel suit.  They’re the guys in the blue-collar uniform.  They don’t work in a Madison Avenue advertising office.  They work in the sewer or on a Madison Avenue bus and make awful wages and live in two-room apartments in Bensonhurst and try to escape every chance they get to a game of pool or bowling or a Racoon Lodge Meeting to avoid their wives nagging them about the broken-down appliances, the bad plumbing and general lack of funds.

Ralph is the not-terribly-bright guy who thinks he is full of million-dollar ideas to get rich quick.  Norton is his best friend who follows Ralph’s lead and of course suffers the consequences constantly.  Their wives, Alice and Trixie are long suffering housewives who have more or less reconciled themselves to the marginal edge of the middle-class but not silently and often quite sarcastically.  The Kramdens and the Nortons are sort of the economic losers of the post-war economy.  But Ralph is always searching for that million-dollar idea and Alice and Norton and Trixie are right behind him being dragged along for the bumpy ride.

Jackie Gleason’s Ralph, Art Carney’s Ed and Audrey Meadows’ Alice are iconic characters that speak directly to Americans who believed in the American Dream.  Their striving and their frantic scramble to enjoy the American life of that time speaks to timeless pursuits of the human condition.  The Kramdens and the Nortons are a very lively spot in the history of fictional people.  The thirty-nine episodes produced in 1955 and 1956 are fine wine.  I like to watch them every once in a while, to remind myself of a happier time than our own.