DASHING THROUGH THE FOURTH WALL

It’s Christmas Eve!  I hope it’s a joyous holiday season for all of Team Toobworld and for all of our readers and that you all have a great 2019!

In keeping with our usual Minutiae Mondays, we’re going low-key today with a simple Super Six List.

Last week, I had some splainin to do about serlinguism.  And every so often, ordinary citizens of Toobworld gain this ability to converse directly with the audience watching them back in the Trueniverse.  It’s not always a permanent condition and it appears to “afflict” TV characters only during the Christmas season.  Perhaps it’s similar to the myth that the animals can talk at midnight on Christmas Eve.

At this point, I’d like to give a big thanks to my fellow members of the Classic TV Lovers’ Haven on Facebook.  I had four examples of the main TV characters in TV shows turning to the cameras and wishing the home audience a Merry Christmas, but I needed two more for my Super Six List.  And the CTVLH members came through with more examples than I needed. 

Here are the examples I’ve chosen for my Super Six List:

1]  ‘Doctor Who’
The First Incarnation of the Doctor turned to the camera and wished the home audience a very happy Christmas.

2]  ‘The Honeymooners’
As Ralph and Alice Kramden experienced their own version of O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”, a stage curtain started sliding across the screen, but Ralph pulled it back to wave to the audience.  And then Jackie Gleason and his co-stars broke character and gathered on stage to address the audience. (But that first moment was definitely Ralph, being both a serlinguist and a tele-cognizant.)

3]  ‘The Doris Day Show’
Having her family come down from the farm to her apartment in San Francisco to celebrate the holiday with her co-workers at the magazine.  At one point as the episode ended, she turned to peer through the fourth wall and graced the Trueniverse audience with a smile full of holiday cheer.

4]  ‘The Patty Duke Show’
The episode ended on a cliff-hanger as Martin Lane’s twin brother Kenneth, Cathy’s father, was fired as a globe-trotting journalist at the same newspaper where Martin was employed as the city editor.  Patty turned to the audience and expressed concern over her uncle’s fate, but she also remembered to wish a Merry Christmas to everybody on Earth Prime.

5]  ‘Make Room For Daddy’
Sitting with his family and their friend Alfie Wingate around their Christmas tree, Danny Williams, holding his step-daughter Linda close to his side, wished the home audience a very Merry Christmas.  (I’m not really sure Linda could sense that there was another dimension beyond the fourth wall.)

6]  ‘I Love Lucy’
The Ricardos and the Mertzes were all dressed as Santa Claus (probably depleting the supply of Santa suits in the City’s costume shops) in order to please Little Ricky.  It turns out that all four of them were in the kitchen with the real St. Nick, who promptly vanished from sight.  That’s why they look so scared here as they say “Merry Christmas, Everybody” in unison.

And they did a variation of that scene as well:

Other suggestions that were offered up were from ‘The Partridge Family’, ‘Moonlighting’, ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’, and the various variety show hosts in their Christmas specials.

Once again, my thanks to fellow members of the Classic TV Lovers’ Haven page – John, David, Dan, Brad, Linda, William, Jane, Michael, Sally, Tina, Cheryl, Donald, and Mark.

BCnU!