Television Dads “Cross Time” On A Father Knows Best Episode

In very sad 2016, among the celebrated who passed were Florence Henderson best known as a television mom, “Carol Brady” on the “Brady Bunch” and t.v. father, Alan Thicke, best known for his role on “Growing Pains.”

Additionally, I recall Mr. Thicke as being the host I believe, and certainly in attendance at the 1988 Sports Emmy Awards, the first such event in which Bob Costas won an award.

It was still a hopeful time for me, though still, as seemingly always, sans the “point a” needed, for any inroad toward gainful employment.

I was the first to interview Bob Costas that night and remember sitting opposite Alan Thicke after the show. There was a big magnum of champagne on a table surrounded by a number of people, as Thicke “hosted” and talked about hockey.

This past Friday, as the holiday gloom really started to wash over me, more intensely this year than most before, not because both Christmas and Chanukkah are on the same day, but for other reasons, including the inescapable fact Donald J. Trump has ascended to the U.S. presidency, I watched a convergence of “television dads” on the show, “Father Knows Best.”

Of course Robert Young was the father, “Jim Anderson,” a man who came home and as comedian Gabe Kaplan said, changed sports jackets, eventually appearing in one with patches on the sleeves.

He usually did “know better,” if not “best,” and by the way, as stated here before, check Mr. Young’s performance in the film,”Crossfire,” and you will see he had, as they say, “the chops,” in the acting profession.

Courting the show’s/Anderson family’s older, beautiful daughter “Betty” played by Elinor Donahue, (someone write/type in with the famed movie with a character named “Betty Anderson”) or attempting to do so, was future t.v. dad/”Mike Brady,” Robert Reed. (check him out as “Teddy Boylan” in “Rich Man Poor Man” and know he would have the “utensils”/chops for the meal many Jewish people ate yesterday, or does that journey for Christmas day Chinese food change because it is also Chanukkah–I would not know, as I have no family).

On “Father Knows Best,” Mr. Reed’s character is courting Betty. On the “Brady Bunch,” his character weds a second time, marrying a woman also taking the vows a second time, “Carol,” played by Florence Henderson. “It” is in many ways a “circle,” surely as outgoing U.S. president Barack Obama and this year’s election reminded us, “it”/history is NOT a straight line.

Actor Robert Reed, whose “Teddy Boylan” bought Susan Blakeley’s  “Julie Prescott” (it was Rudy and Tom Jordache’s sister Gretchen, who received that daiquiri and other “firsts,” in Irwin Shaw’s epic novel) her “first daiquiri” in “Rich Man, Poor Man,” is flanked by Ann B. Davis to his right and Florence Henderson to his left, pictured and now all, likely “above.”