Caught this episode today. Story is about Jeff feeling left out of the church Father-and-Son Banquet because his father is deceased, and being teased about his Gramps being a poor substitute for his father. Seeing Jeff moping about the house, Ellen skillfully gets Jeff to open up to reveal what is troubling him. Now Jeff was quite reluctant to tell her, and she said "You don't HAVE to tell me, but I wish you would." Time and again in this series they have realistic depictions of just how parents should treat their children with Ellen giving great demonstrations on how to parent properly.
I particularly liked how she didn't ignore his feelings, nor put him down for worrying about something that wasn't important, like some mothers-on TV and in real life-do. Jeff insists he doesn't want to go to the event at all, but after listening to Mom, agrees that he wouldn't mind going-but all by himself.
Ellen comes inside to drop off some food for the event, then surprises Jeff by deciding to stay-"It's not fair she does all the work (f preparing food) and not have any fun. Jeff is quite upset, but doesn't make a scene. As the games begin, Ellen and Jeff win some events and Jeff gets to see that the fathers in the room, and his schoolmates, are not troubled by her standing in for his father, and they all wind up having a really good time.
To appreciate this series, one needs to understand that the length of episodes in a series weren't the automatic keys to whether or not the show was a comedy or a drama, and that much more so than today, some shows were truly sometimes drama and sometimes comedy. Virtually all series involving regular characters that run for a half hour in the last 50 years are strictly comedy series. If they involve kids very much, they may have a couple of minutes of serious plot lines, but the focus in each episode-or almost every one-is on comedy.
In the 1950s, when the Lassie's with Jeff were made, there were far more half-hour dramas. There were also more shows that did have mostly humorous episodes, and other episodes that were virtually all drama. If you tune in the "Jeff" years of Lassie expecting comedy, you'll be disappointed most of the time. They had marvelous comedy episodes, but many others, like this one, that were almost all straight drama. Not catch-the-crooks type drama, but realistic family-related drama.
I don't know of any series that more realistically depicted the life of a normal boy than the Lassie years featuring Tommy Rettig as Jeff. I must add, that if you are familiar with the later years of Lassie, either the silly, unrealistic ones with Timmy, or post-Timmy when Lassie became "Superdog" in terms of how many ways she was shown to be able to do almost everything short of writing notes to let people know where she was going, you might be quite disappointed in this episode in that it truly didn't feature Lassie at all.
But if you enjoy the "Adventures of Jeff Miller" you can find this to be a most satisfying way to spend a half hour.
I particularly liked how she didn't ignore his feelings, nor put him down for worrying about something that wasn't important, like some mothers-on TV and in real life-do. Jeff insists he doesn't want to go to the event at all, but after listening to Mom, agrees that he wouldn't mind going-but all by himself.
Ellen comes inside to drop off some food for the event, then surprises Jeff by deciding to stay-"It's not fair she does all the work (f preparing food) and not have any fun. Jeff is quite upset, but doesn't make a scene. As the games begin, Ellen and Jeff win some events and Jeff gets to see that the fathers in the room, and his schoolmates, are not troubled by her standing in for his father, and they all wind up having a really good time.
To appreciate this series, one needs to understand that the length of episodes in a series weren't the automatic keys to whether or not the show was a comedy or a drama, and that much more so than today, some shows were truly sometimes drama and sometimes comedy. Virtually all series involving regular characters that run for a half hour in the last 50 years are strictly comedy series. If they involve kids very much, they may have a couple of minutes of serious plot lines, but the focus in each episode-or almost every one-is on comedy.
In the 1950s, when the Lassie's with Jeff were made, there were far more half-hour dramas. There were also more shows that did have mostly humorous episodes, and other episodes that were virtually all drama. If you tune in the "Jeff" years of Lassie expecting comedy, you'll be disappointed most of the time. They had marvelous comedy episodes, but many others, like this one, that were almost all straight drama. Not catch-the-crooks type drama, but realistic family-related drama.
I don't know of any series that more realistically depicted the life of a normal boy than the Lassie years featuring Tommy Rettig as Jeff. I must add, that if you are familiar with the later years of Lassie, either the silly, unrealistic ones with Timmy, or post-Timmy when Lassie became "Superdog" in terms of how many ways she was shown to be able to do almost everything short of writing notes to let people know where she was going, you might be quite disappointed in this episode in that it truly didn't feature Lassie at all.
But if you enjoy the "Adventures of Jeff Miller" you can find this to be a most satisfying way to spend a half hour.
