ONE SEASON WONDERS: My Mother the Car

MY MOTHER THE CAR

Programming Details:
September 14, 1965 - April 5, 1966
30 episodes
NBC

Starring: Jerry Van Dyke, Maggie Pierce, Also Starring Ann Sothern, Featuring Avery Schreiber, Cindy Eilbacher, Randy Whipple
Created by: Allan Burns & Chris Heyward

Plot: 

David Crabtree (Van Dyke) sees a 1928 Porter in a used car lot and when he gets in it, he finds out that it's his mother (Sothern) who has come back from the dead as a car. David has to deal with his incredulous wife, Barbara (Pierce) and Captain Manzini (Schreiber) who is determined to get the car. Rounding out the main cast are David's two children, Cindy and Randy (Eilbacher and Whipple).

Pilot Review:
One of the most infamous flops of all time, this is quite the show. Some flops are just boring. This one is bad but you can't say it's boring. In an era where there were tons of fantasy themed sitcoms on the air, this may be the weirdest of them all. Although maybe it just feels that way because it flopped so hard. Some of those others were weird too but ran longer. Honestly, for being the epic plot that it was, the pilot is not terrible. There's something mildly amusing about the whole thing though it feels an awful lot like Mister Ed right down to the blonde and disapproving wife. The Captain Manzini character is a complete cartoon but he's obviously designed that way. 

Jerry Van Dyke is decent in this, but he doesn't have a ton of spunk or excitement which feels like it should be expected because he seems so similar to his famous brother. Ann Sothern (billed as "Miss Ann Sothern" in the credits) gives some personality and a distinct voice to the car. The show chose to do a long theme song explaining the premise and then repeat the whole thing later in the episode when David had the car fixed up. I am not saying this deserved to run longer than a year or that its preposterous premise isn't deserving of some scorn. But I am saying that I would rather have a pilot be ridiculous and interesting instead of boring and My Mother the Car succeeds there.

What Went Wrong:

There were a lot of "dumb-coms" in the 1960s but apparently My Mother the Car was a step too far even for a more forgiving audience. For co-creators Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, this show was a follow-up to one that straddled the line between weird and entertaining much better: The Munsters. This one did not win over critics or fans. NBC had it leading off its Tuesday night lineup and paired with Please Don't Eat the Daisies, another new sitcom. The competition was not that fierce and Daisies did get renewed but My Mother the Car had to also deal with critical trashing.

Burns and Hayward found more success in the years to come with Burns going on to create The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda and Hayward being a key contributor to Barney Miller. Both of them also worked on Get Smart and won an Emmy for the short-lived He & She. Jerry Van Dyke had another failed sitcom a couple years in later in Accidental Family (more on that show in a future blog post) but finally struck gold in the late 1980s on Coach.

Despite it being a notorious flop, My Mother the Car has lived on quite a bit. It has gotten a full DVD release and aired or streamed on TV Land, Antenna TV, Hulu and Roku to name a few. The general consensus now seems to be that it really isn't that much worse than other "dumb-coms" and not deserving of the notorious flop reputation it has. But the 60s audiences who accepted witches, martians, genies, ghoulish families, and eventually flying nuns apparently couldn't accept a mother as a talking car.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the first season of Bewitched!

Next Wednesday: A look at 1970s flop The New Andy Griffith Show!