based on Max Shulman's collection of short stories, this youth-oriented series was witty and irreverent with sharp writing and a peerlessly eclectic cast (Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld, in particular shine) in addition to the leads Hickman and Denver. Hickman is the sensitive youth who aspires to be a poet under a hard-nosed father and doting mother. The father, played by Frank Faylen is outstanding as the hard-working store owner who fails to understand his impractical son's fancies and who frequently intones "I just gotta kill that boy, I gotta." Denver is particularly fun to watch, his comic style which would occasionally suffocate Gilligan's Island is tuned to the right intensity as Hickman's beatnik sidekick.
What particularly makes Dobie successful, particularly in the early seasons, is the almost surreal and self-contained world created by the writers. Just the names of the characters Thalia Menninger, Milton Armitage, Chatsworth Osborne Jr., Maynard G Krebs and Aphrodite Millican gives an idea of the tone of the series. Dobie begins every episode before Rodin's Thinker, speaking directly to the viewer with a pithy observation, which by the framing end sequence has been demonstrated or refuted. Unlike Father Knows Best and other family shows of its era, the Gillis family is dysfunctional, and the differences between Dobie and his father are not of a dramatic Rebel Without a Cause sort, but a gentler divergence of life views of a depression-era father and a postwar teenager.
The later seasons, much less inspired, take Dobie and Maynard out of high school into college and other adventures.
I hope at least the first season comes out as a season box set. It's an important part of our pop history.
What particularly makes Dobie successful, particularly in the early seasons, is the almost surreal and self-contained world created by the writers. Just the names of the characters Thalia Menninger, Milton Armitage, Chatsworth Osborne Jr., Maynard G Krebs and Aphrodite Millican gives an idea of the tone of the series. Dobie begins every episode before Rodin's Thinker, speaking directly to the viewer with a pithy observation, which by the framing end sequence has been demonstrated or refuted. Unlike Father Knows Best and other family shows of its era, the Gillis family is dysfunctional, and the differences between Dobie and his father are not of a dramatic Rebel Without a Cause sort, but a gentler divergence of life views of a depression-era father and a postwar teenager.
The later seasons, much less inspired, take Dobie and Maynard out of high school into college and other adventures.
I hope at least the first season comes out as a season box set. It's an important part of our pop history.
