The Lassie Channel on Roku

 

And nevertheless, with my husband's encouragement, she persisted 😊

So, during the day, we've taken to putting the Lassie Channel on Roku while I work, because the dogs love it (Brookie looking like Lassie) and it typically calms them.  Both the original "Jeff's Collie" and "Lassie" with Timmy are on all day, every day.

They watch every minute and sometimes appear to know what's going on!  Ziggy, in particular, knows when someone's a bad guy and growls, standing up on his hind legs to growl at them. 😂

Mark has always owned collies or shelties since childhood, and he never missed an episode, even as a teenager, which of course his hockey friends teased him about, to which he would respond in typical Detroit fashion, "Shut up, eff off, I'm watching my show.  I'll  be sure to hip check you into the boards next practice."  😂

I actually had never seen the show in my life, and being that I have some unexpected free time, I just started watching what these shows were actually about.

I expected to see a bunch of absurd, fantasy-family 1950s stuff, with no one's family ever really being like that.  Or women being spanked on national TV by their husbands.  No people of color anywhere, and their worst problem would be like someone had a new pimple or how Billy or Beaver, the teenage boy, was going to earn enough money to buy a swell hot rod to take his best girl to the soda shop on Friday and ask her to go steady. 

Yep, there's a bit of that  - and many times, I'm laughing at the show more than with it - BUT - a few things actually surprised me, particularly their light approach to tackling deeper societal issues, way before the social revolution that was the 1960s.

But first, a brief history of the evolution of the show ... 

So the original show in 1954 was called "Jeff's Collie," about a widowed mother, Ellen Miller, caring for a farm and raising her son along with the boy's grandfather, after her husband/Jeff's father is killed in WW2.

When George Cleveland playing "Gramps" died, Tommy Rettig, decided he would not renew his contract and try his luck at movies.

Thus, the show slowly transitioned into "Lassie," beginning with Ellen putting the farm up for sale after Gramps died, taking in an orphan in the meantime named Timmy (played by Jon Provost), who is later adopted by Ruth and Paul Martin, the couple who buy the farm.

For some reason I will never understand, Jeff leaves Lassie with Timmy and the Martins, when he and his mother, Ellen, move away.  They make a few guest appearances later, but that's it.

At first, in 1957, the Martins were played by George Shippod and Cloris Leachman - yes, that Cloris Leachman, comedic actress -  but they began losing viewers.  (Hilariously, George Shippod previously played a local milkman. I guess they expected no one to notice. 😂)

Then they tried bringing back in a cranky, old-man character to try to lift ratings, so they added Paul's Uncle Petrie - the Hayseed Hank looking guy, on the guitar above -  but the ratings didn't improve.

Soon, the Martins were soon replaced by Hugh Reilly and June Lockhart (the most famous Lassie parents), again, hoping we wouldn't notice 😂

Well, the show is about the dog, anyway, and Jon Provost played Timmy all the way through until 1964. 

I prefer Lassie rather than Jeff's Collie, because as Jeff got older, he became a snarky little brat. 😂

(Although I did still like his best friend, Porky, providing some of the best comedic lines.)

Regardless, I laughed at how much has changed since then.

"Gee whiz, that bike costs 1 whole dollar!"

I also have to laugh because there's no way that dog is that smart and those people are that dumb. 

I mean, why does someone fall in a well or start a fire due to their own negligence, like  every other day?

Man, if Timmy and Lassie came across that many fires, I'd start to wonder if little Timmy wasn't actually a serial arsonist. 

And what's with the zoo-animal escapees?

I've now seen a tiger, a seal, a monkey, and an elephant now, all escaped from the zoo, all ending up on the Miller/Martin farm. 

Oh, wait, I know the answer to that - Rudd Weatherwax, Lassie's trainer, provided all of the trained animals for Hollywood, back in the day, so it was a way to both earn an extra buck and provide a (ridiculous) story line.

Also, show creators? 

A word, please.

Because I can't tell you how many times they recycled the "dumb little girl lost" story line, getting lost in the woods or trapped in a cave or even absurdly down an aqueduct drain, so Lassie and little boys have to rescue her.

Of course, it's always a little girl, inexplicably wearing a short-little dress with white socks and shiny patent-leather shoes or sandals, wandering in the wilderness.

One time, a 14-year-old girl got her foot stuck in a "hole," which was actually just a loosened up bale of hay next to a small rock in a field, I'm not even kidding.

And she was looking up the sky, daydreaming, like "La la laaa..."

Who would do that?

No one. 

Well, maybe a 2-year-old of any gender, but not a 14-year-old girl.

So of course, she sat down and cried, yelling for help until Lassie and some little boys rescued her.

I'm like "Girrrrl, if you can't even get your own foot unstuck from between a small rock and a loose bale of hay at 14 years old, and have to wait for a dog and a bunch of  little boys to save you, then might I recommend you be placed placed in some sort of institution for your own safety, rather than walking around at all, anywhere." 😂

And the lines about women sometimes, sheesh.

When they're said, I just turn and look at my husband, cocking my head to the side, like "Look at my face, right now."

He's already looking at me, knowing it's bad himself, and then starts laughing hysterically over the look on my face. 😂

These things were particularly uttered by Gramps or Uncle Petrie, who would say things like "Oh, women don't understand these things."

Ellen and Ruth would usually just look at them with daggers in their eyes, while chopping vegetables with a giant butcher knife, now chopping harder, like "Sleep well, old man."  😂

Or if a cartoon bubble came up out of their heads, the look on their faces was like "Timmy, go to the barn and get me that strychnine your genius Gramps leaves down for children to reach and accidentally poisoned Lassie with earlier.  Just don't eat the pot roast later."  😂

JUST KIDDING, but the looks on their faces said a lot. 

Sometimes they would clap back at them, though.

Once, after Ellen wanted to get a refrigerator to replace the old icebox and has to ask Gramps for it, Gramps started going on about progress and "new-fangled ideas," women putting dreamy ideas into children's heads, and then he went into the whole "In my day" speech. 

Then Ellen, Jeff's mother, said "You know you're right?  Let's throw away these forks and eat with our hands.  Then, after dinner, we can all sleep out in the open, this winter night, with nothing but sticks to build a fire with or protect us from the mountain lions and coyotes. Won't that be fun!?!"

Hehehehe.

Geez, it's not like she was asking for a new string of pearls to wear with that housedress, she wanted a fridge to replace the icebox to keep the family food from spoiling longer,  which actually saves money in the long run.

Also, they portrayed the women roaming around with perfect hair in dresses and heels, on a farm - singing while they carried laundry baskets, sewed, and cooked.

Okay, I don't know how many farms the creators of this show were actually ever on, but farm women did those things - minus the perfect hair, pretty dresses, and heels -  AND - they milked cows, lopped off chicken's heads, slaughtered pigs, and shot foxes in henhouses with rifles themselves, sometimes in pants, especially in the winter.

Not because they wanted to, not because of some gender equality statement -  but because they had to, to survive.

Poorer farms didn't have the money or manpower, especially during the depression, to worry about any of that crap.

But on the plus side of this show, I will say, the one good portrayal of women were, in fact, the mothers.

In Jeff's Collie, it was Jan Clayton playing Ellen Miller, replaced originally by Cloris Leachman, then finally June Lockhart.

They were smart, level-headed, funny, and always dispensed wisdom - never hysterical or helpless.  (Well, Cloris Leachman was a bit too meek for my taste. Hard to believe with what she went on to do, but yes.)

Later in the show, I understand at June's urging, women did more for themselves.

In fact, later, June Lockhart herself is run off the road in a hit and run by an illegal bear hunter, then steps out of the car to fix her own flat (Go Ruth!).

As she goes to put it on, it rolls into the trees nearby, so she walks in the woods to get it, and her leg gets snapped in a bear trap the poacher left.

She talks Lassie through finding the exact tools in the car  - yes, knowing the correct name for all of the tools - to help get herself out  😊

There were also some super surprising social justice messages in the shows, especially surprising for the 1950s.

Messages about kindness to Roma (gypsies), Mexican migrant workers, Japanese (just after WW2) and even Russians!

Like when a little Russian girl was brought to America through UNICEF, seeking asylum in America, starts stealing/hiding food, terrified that she's going to be sent back to Russia, and when she does, will take the food with her as they were starving

When caught, the teachers and community explain to her that no one is going to send her back, she can have all the food she wants, just ask, and that they will do their best to bring her family here.

Or Mexican boy, whose migrant-worker father actually served in WW2 for the U.S., and yet people treated them badly anyway.

Or a Japanese foreign exchange student is beat up and rocks are thrown through the Miller's windows for housing him, calling them traitors.

Way ahead of it's time on these issues, but it also goes to show we just trade in one group for another to scapegoat for all our problems

And yet still, I think I only saw one black person on one show, one time.

Despite just a couple of those - erm - problematic moments - unlike other 50s shows that pretend life is equally wonderful for everybody, this show does surprisingly lightly tackle a few social-justice issues  way ahead of its time, including to a certain degree, racism -  by simply reiterating Jesus's commandments,  "Love they neighbor as thyself" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto to."

In fact, if you can overlook some of the more absurd storylines and occasional jabs at women (that are mostly just hilarious, nowadays), it worth a watch today, with current social issues not having changed much - just trading out the scapegoated groups for new ones (or bringing  old ones back).