User Reviews

Get your score card out as in this one everybody is fighting. The battle rises to such a pitch that Jerry has to get a Psychology professor from his college to come over and get everybody into a sensitivity session to try and sort things out.

This first fight is the newlyweds, Jerry & Suzie but leads to all the others. The fight is about which mother inter fears the most with them. Since both Eve & Kay are champs, I think it is a tie.

When Suzie comes home from her fight with Jerry, she fights with her dad and it goes on from there. Jerry fights with his mom. Eve fights with Herb. Roger fights with Kay.

The jungle telephone to set up the session is more complicated than most major government negotiations.

I have to classify this as a series that ALMOST achieves greatness (if greatness is defined as sitcom quality). Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard are great in the series as are the actors portraying their husbands. (Well, Kaye Ballard plays to the roof but she's terribly fun to watch). Herbert Rudley (who I'd never heard of before watching the series) is also good as is Roger Carmel (who I'd barely heard of). But it's the Eve and Kaye show all the way. But it's kept from being the best by what feels like Desi Arnaz's attempt to recreate the magic that was "I Love Lucy" with Eve and Kaye getting involved in outrageous situations that their long-suffering husbands have to get outraged about.

But you see hints of what the show could have been if the creators had been willing to vary just a bit more from the formula (ergo pull back on the pratfalls and musical numbers and up the tension between the two principals). This is one of those episodes that give us a glimpse of what might have been. The young couple have had a fight that embroils all three couples. Children are mad at parents, wives are mad at spouses, and, of course, Eve and Kaye are mad at each other. (We eventually discover that they were fighting about whose mother is most "interfering.") An "encounter" session with a psychologist (played by Arden's real life husband) requires Kaye and Eve to pretend to be each other (Is it possible that this is the first time that this worn out plot device is used?).

But here's the point, after expressing exaggerated versions of each other, the two mothers in law settle down and Eve wistfully reflects on how much she misses her daughter as a little girl and Kaye expresses the same feeling about her son. With dialogue lasting less than a minute, the entire episode is pulled together. And we discover that the source of their interference is not a desire to control, but rather an effort to recapture and hold onto a relationship that will never be again. Ultimately, the two women responsible for the conflict are the ones who ultimately resolve it. Sitcom gold, in my opinion.

It only took 21 episodes for newlyweds Jerry and Suzie to have a fight, and for good majority of this episode, nobody knows what it is all about. Their fight leads to a fight between Kay and Eve over their different mothering and cooking skills, and at Jerry's suggestion, they bring in a relationship counselor to fix everything, especially when Eve and Herb, Kay and Roger stop talking. Eve Arden's real life husband, Brooks West, guest stars as the counselor, getting a round of applause even though most people today who don't know much about Eve Arden personal life don't know who Brooks West was.

There are a lot of laughs as Eve begins to curse under her breath when Jerry refers to her as Mother Hubbard, Kay slams the door in Roger's face, and everybody scowls at the person they are mad at. Eve really scores when she analyzes the children's nursery rhyme of "Old Mother Hubbard", you do it and K gets a moment to shine when she begins to warble the popular standard "Second Hand Rose", then a hit sung by Kay's rival, Barbra Streisand. You don't want to give away the conclusion that reveals what brought on Jerry and Suzie's fight, but it really is very amusing. But the real highlight comes Wente and Eve began to imitate each other and reveal what annoys them about the other. With real conflict come real last, making this the best episode of the series thus far.