At an airport, we see a plane on the ground and passengers boarding, including Steve. Right behind him is a woman and a girl, said later to be 8 years old. They are seated right across the aisle from Steve, who quickly sees that the woman is someone he knows well, having worked with her husband years ago. She informs that the two are on their way to Brazil where he husband is living. The mother is to give a speech on home economics in Bryant Park. When Steve hears that her plans are to get a hotel just for the day and use a hotel babysitter for the daughter, Jeannie, for the day, then they will fly to Brazil that evening, he invites her to come to the house, skip the hotel, and she can be with his family all day before flying south.
We then see the household on this Saturday morning, and learn that everyone has plans to be away for the day, including Chip, who's going on a boy scout hike. When Steve and friends arrive, Bub is on the way out for a lodge picnic and the only one still inside is Chip, who will be leaving with pal Sudsy shortly.
Steve introduces Chip to Jeannie and directs him to "play" with her until he needs to leave for the hike. Sudsy comes over minutes later and the two aren't thrilled with entertaining a girl, but find her stories about living around the world interesting to hear, especially about her having a pet baby elephant while in Africa.
But a few minutes later, it's time for them to leave. This sets up most of the episode-Steve has to entertain the girl for the day. Apparently the Douglas clan has no board games-rare in those days. Jeannie gets him to agree to play "House," and gets him to put on a scarf over his head as she insists he has to be the mother, while she is the little girl. I'm figuring someone will ring the doorbell shortly after he puts on the scarf and will have some funny comment when he answers the door. Nope.
She insists he can't be the father because she only visits him half the year because her parents are divorced. I'm sure this was the serious focal point of the show, but the subject wasn't discussed any further.
We move on to them heading to the kitchen to "bake cookies." Later they enjoy chocolate sodas at the drugstore and we see that Steve is having fun with the girl.
We then jump ahead to later in the day when the family comes home and meets Jeannie. Everyone is gathered in the living room when the kid's mother returns, saying she didn't know she'd be so late. They are running late to get to the airport so there's only enough time to say goodbye. Everyone says goodbye to Jeannie nicely and she tells Steve that now she knows what a real family is like.
This was another episode that didn't really have anything funny. Other than Steve wearing the scarf for half a minute, the only other funny part was his quip about having made cookies when Bub finds the leftovers from the game of house in the kitchen.
They didn't really have any talk about divorce, just a mention of it. Jeannie's mention about the "real family" had nothing to do with having both parents-not in widower Steve's all-male house. It was only in connection to having other kids instead of just one adult around. She could have made the same point had she simply been an only child with married parents.
There were two parts that didn't make much sense. The girl's mother was supposed to be giving a speech. Since she flew into town for this, I could see the organization having planned to take her out to lunch before the speech-something like that. But why would she need to be gone from sometime in the morning when they arrived until past suppertime in the evening? Even politicians in the 19th Century didn't give speeches that long.
The other thing that made the whole setup seem rather foolish was Steve's expectations that his family would all be at home that Saturday and that any of them would have any notion of how to entertain an 8-year-old girl. The college son and high school son would likely only be home all day if they had serious schoolwork to finish.
He really thought his 9-year-old son would be happy to play most of the day with her? When I was around Chip's age, I didn't have any cousins near my age, male or female. Most of the activities I engaged in would not have likely been fun for a girl, had I been in Chip's expected position that day. Playing board games, cards, or watching TV would have been all I could think of to do with her. I can imagine spending most of the time arguing with her, like Dennis and Margaret on Dennis the Menace. It sure would have seemed like punishment to give up a whole Saturday to play with some girl.
I also point out five months before this episode aired, in season two, they had an episode about Chip having a birthday party for his 10th birthday. Yet in this show, Steve states that Chip was only 9. Also, when the girl's mother comes to pick up her daughter, Steve introduces his three sons, as "Robbie, Robbie, and Chip." He blew the line and didn't say Mike's name, but said Robbie twice. (No wonder once he got married, Mike moved away and never came back to visit.) The writer, Shirley Gordon, could have made this a fun episode by having a neighbor come by and see Steve in his scarf, playing with a girl. Someone else could have come by and seen him playing with the girl in some other way-perhaps skipping in the back yard. Perhaps some friends could have stopped by asking Steve to be a fourth for a golf outing that day and seen him in some comical activity with the little girl. Instead, there was simply nothing at all funny in anything they did beyond donning the scarf. I would never have been a good script writer for a comedy show, but I honestly think if someone gave me this premise, I could have written a funnier script-almost anyone could, since it was so devoid of laughs.
There wasn't anything serious discussed. The mother wasn't doing anything wrong-she didn't learn a lesson from seeing what the Douglas's do, nothing like that. Jeannie just needed to have friends her age to play with, but her life wasn't going to be changed in any way by this one-day visit with strangers.
I just cannot find any reason anyone would think this episode was worth 25 minutes of their time. I wish I had overslept today. It only gets a 3 out of 10.
We then see the household on this Saturday morning, and learn that everyone has plans to be away for the day, including Chip, who's going on a boy scout hike. When Steve and friends arrive, Bub is on the way out for a lodge picnic and the only one still inside is Chip, who will be leaving with pal Sudsy shortly.
Steve introduces Chip to Jeannie and directs him to "play" with her until he needs to leave for the hike. Sudsy comes over minutes later and the two aren't thrilled with entertaining a girl, but find her stories about living around the world interesting to hear, especially about her having a pet baby elephant while in Africa.
But a few minutes later, it's time for them to leave. This sets up most of the episode-Steve has to entertain the girl for the day. Apparently the Douglas clan has no board games-rare in those days. Jeannie gets him to agree to play "House," and gets him to put on a scarf over his head as she insists he has to be the mother, while she is the little girl. I'm figuring someone will ring the doorbell shortly after he puts on the scarf and will have some funny comment when he answers the door. Nope.
She insists he can't be the father because she only visits him half the year because her parents are divorced. I'm sure this was the serious focal point of the show, but the subject wasn't discussed any further.
We move on to them heading to the kitchen to "bake cookies." Later they enjoy chocolate sodas at the drugstore and we see that Steve is having fun with the girl.
We then jump ahead to later in the day when the family comes home and meets Jeannie. Everyone is gathered in the living room when the kid's mother returns, saying she didn't know she'd be so late. They are running late to get to the airport so there's only enough time to say goodbye. Everyone says goodbye to Jeannie nicely and she tells Steve that now she knows what a real family is like.
This was another episode that didn't really have anything funny. Other than Steve wearing the scarf for half a minute, the only other funny part was his quip about having made cookies when Bub finds the leftovers from the game of house in the kitchen.
They didn't really have any talk about divorce, just a mention of it. Jeannie's mention about the "real family" had nothing to do with having both parents-not in widower Steve's all-male house. It was only in connection to having other kids instead of just one adult around. She could have made the same point had she simply been an only child with married parents.
There were two parts that didn't make much sense. The girl's mother was supposed to be giving a speech. Since she flew into town for this, I could see the organization having planned to take her out to lunch before the speech-something like that. But why would she need to be gone from sometime in the morning when they arrived until past suppertime in the evening? Even politicians in the 19th Century didn't give speeches that long.
The other thing that made the whole setup seem rather foolish was Steve's expectations that his family would all be at home that Saturday and that any of them would have any notion of how to entertain an 8-year-old girl. The college son and high school son would likely only be home all day if they had serious schoolwork to finish.
He really thought his 9-year-old son would be happy to play most of the day with her? When I was around Chip's age, I didn't have any cousins near my age, male or female. Most of the activities I engaged in would not have likely been fun for a girl, had I been in Chip's expected position that day. Playing board games, cards, or watching TV would have been all I could think of to do with her. I can imagine spending most of the time arguing with her, like Dennis and Margaret on Dennis the Menace. It sure would have seemed like punishment to give up a whole Saturday to play with some girl.
I also point out five months before this episode aired, in season two, they had an episode about Chip having a birthday party for his 10th birthday. Yet in this show, Steve states that Chip was only 9. Also, when the girl's mother comes to pick up her daughter, Steve introduces his three sons, as "Robbie, Robbie, and Chip." He blew the line and didn't say Mike's name, but said Robbie twice. (No wonder once he got married, Mike moved away and never came back to visit.) The writer, Shirley Gordon, could have made this a fun episode by having a neighbor come by and see Steve in his scarf, playing with a girl. Someone else could have come by and seen him playing with the girl in some other way-perhaps skipping in the back yard. Perhaps some friends could have stopped by asking Steve to be a fourth for a golf outing that day and seen him in some comical activity with the little girl. Instead, there was simply nothing at all funny in anything they did beyond donning the scarf. I would never have been a good script writer for a comedy show, but I honestly think if someone gave me this premise, I could have written a funnier script-almost anyone could, since it was so devoid of laughs.
There wasn't anything serious discussed. The mother wasn't doing anything wrong-she didn't learn a lesson from seeing what the Douglas's do, nothing like that. Jeannie just needed to have friends her age to play with, but her life wasn't going to be changed in any way by this one-day visit with strangers.
I just cannot find any reason anyone would think this episode was worth 25 minutes of their time. I wish I had overslept today. It only gets a 3 out of 10.
