“There is an old saying that blood is thicker than water.”
We’ve had Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Gene Simmons with his Family Jewels, and even Snoop Dog’s Father Hood. It’s become a bit of a trend to follow these celebrity families around and watch the drama of their privileged lives unfold on our television screens. You might think it’s a relatively recent phenomenon, but would you believe they were doing it back in the infant days of television when we followed around a musician named Ozzie and his wife way back in 1952? No, we’re not talking about Ozzie Osbourne and his family. I’m talking about Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. They were television’s darling family before we ever heard about Lucy and Desi. The show actually started on radio like many of the fledgling industry’s early hits including the likes of Gunsmoke. Four years after the radio brought us The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, they moved to television. While their two sons were played by actors on the radio, both David and Ricky Nelson joined the television show, and it went on to make television history, breaking records, some still held today. It was the first television series to ever hit 10 seasons, finishing with 14 still a sitcom record. It lasted from 1952 to 1966, with 436 episodes. Until The Simpsons, it was the longest running scripted television comedy and remains still the longest live-action scripted comedy ever on television. And while the stories were, of course, fictional, most aspects of the show were quite real. Their television home was modeled after their real home. Many of the family’s life stories found their way to the series. The four family members were quite real, and you just couldn’t fake these relationships.
As time went on, the series would change. In the 60’s, now-teenaged Ricky would go from the little brother to the star of the show and become television’s first teen idol. Long before David Cassidy or Davey Jones, there was Ricky Nelson. The show started to take advantage of his status and began to work his performances of his own music into the episodes. Ricky would have a pretty solid career. He was in the middle of a 1980’s comeback after a hit with Garden Party when his airplane crashed and killed him and his wife, who would also be a part of the show as Ricky’s wife toward the end of the series. The series found a new life in syndication in the 1970’s, which is where I first encountered the series. The syndication packages often ignored the early shows before Ricky took off for stardom, so I only got to see those episodes, and that was many years ago.
Ozzie and Harriet’s grandson and Ricky’s son, Sam Nelson, went on a seven-year journey to hunt down the original elements to all 436 episodes and begin to restore them. He found them often in horrible climate conditions and in great need of restoration, so he took on that task as well. I had a chance to talk to Sam about that process, and you can listen to that conversation Here. That process is about 50% complete, and through MPI they are now being released. The first six seasons of episodes are already out, and now seasons 7-8 are available on DVD, and it’s a big part of television history that you can now add to your home video shelves.
The family is seldom depicted together anymore. With David it started the last couple of seasons. While he doesn’t often get included in the other stories, there are many episodes that pretty much deal with his married life and now becoming a full lawyer at his firm. Those stories ended up being some of the best. It might have made an interesting spin-off series. There is less of Ricky playing music in both of these seasons. All of the performances hinge on about four or five songs that do get repeated. From week to week that might not have been so bad, but from 20 minutes to 20 minutes, I ended up skipping past those repeated performances. The beginning of the 11th season saw many episodes ending with various characters doing the Twist. Not sure how that played in.
In the 12th season Rick gets married, and just as David’s real-life marriage to June Blair saw the characters reflect reality, so does Rick’s marrying Kris Harmon in real life get reflected on the show. Rick’s nuptials didn’t change his show character as much as David’s did. He’s still in school and at the frat, and the stories about Wally and the misadventures of the frat continue to dominate the his participation. Kris doesn’t show up as often as June and is mostly referenced until later in the season. Kris Harmon is the older sister of NCIS’s Mark Harmon, and when I spoke to Sam, he acknowledged that he grew up more with the Harmons than the Nelsons influence. I found the 12th season to be one of the more awkward years of the show. It’s like they lost their footing for a while and found themselves repeating a lot of ideas. By the end of the year it seemed to have found its footing again, and that leaves hope for the final two seasons to come. “There’s nothing like a happy ending.”
