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SITCOM

BY LEWIS SHINER

ET ME TELL YOU about a TV show. If you’re under thirty-five, it’s

probably a major part of your life. If you’re forty-two, like me, it probably

doesn’t mean much to you, and you’ll find it hard to understand how a simple

situation comedy could destroy my marriage and make me doubt my sanity.

And you’d never, ever believe the rest of it: that it got Richard Nixon elected

president and killed the sixties.

It did, though.

I’m talking about The Harrigan House . You know, the one Time magazine

called “America’s favorite TV show.” Only I’d never heard of it until last

week.

My name is Larry Ryan and I’m a freelance magazine writer. My wife—

we’re still married, but that’s just a matter of time at this point—is named

Linda, and she’s nine years younger than me. At thirty-three, she’s a card-

carrying member of the Harrigan Generation.

She sells hosiery at a boutique operation in Highland Mall, some nights until

after ten. It was just last week that she came into my study to give me a peck

on the cheek and ask me to tape a show for her. “ HarriganMania ,” she said.

“It’s on ABC at eight.”

“What mania?”

“Harrigan. You know, the Harrigans?” She let out a quick snatch of song.

“ That’s life at the Harrigan house .”

“I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about.”

“I love it. You sound just like the professor. Except it’s ‘I haven’t the

foggiest notion.’“

“What professor?”

“Professor Harrigan . Why are you being this way?” She wrote “8:00/ABC/2

hrs” across my notes for the stock car racing piece I was writing and walked

out.

TOOK A LUNCH BREAK about two o’clock and turned on MTV while

I ate. I came in on a Tabitha Soren interview with a blonde teenager named

Denise O’Brien. Under her name on the screen was “Janie Harrigan” in

quotes.

“This is too weird,” I said, probably out loud. The occasion was a live stage

show, off-Broadway, where a bunch of semi-professional actors like O’Brien

recreated Harrigan House episodes line-for-line on a minimal set. Tabitha

flagged down a passing boy in his twenties and asked him, “Do you know who

this is?” The boy stared for a second and then yelled, “Janie Harrigan!”

When I went back to work I couldn’t concentrate. I admit I’ve never been

a sitcom fan. Maybe they failed to get their hooks into me at an early enough

age, since my father never permitted them in the house. He was full of rules

like that, as if the fact that he taught at SMU law school gave him some kind of

anointed knowledge of right and wrong for him to crack over my little brother

L E W I S S H I N E R

Phil and me like a whip.

Even so, how could I miss something that’s this much a part of the cultural

gestalt ? I’m in the entertainment business, I do profiles of musicians, actors,

athletes. It didn’t make sense.

It’s hard to sit and stare at a computer screen when your mind is not on

your work. I found myself up and searching the house for the TV section. If

the show was such a big deal , it had to be in syndication—probably two or

three times a day. But I couldn’t find it anywhere in the schedule.

In my business, if you want answers you pick up the phone. I called Austin

Cablevision and got a woman in the PR department.

“You wouldn’t believe how many calls we get for that show,” she told me.

“We had it on up until, I don’t know, a couple of years ago or so. TBS, I

think it was. It seems like whoever it was that owned the rights pulled it off

the market. I don’t know if it was the studio or what. Maybe they’re gearing

up for a videotape release or something.”

“The shows aren’t on tape?”

“Never have been. I think the video rental places get as much grief over it

as we do. Seems crazy, doesn’t it? A show that popular and it’s just not around

any more?”

HAD TO GO OUT that afternoon for the usual post office and Fed Ex

drops, so I swung by the Bookstop in Lincoln Village. The woman who

asked to help me was about my age, wearing a long dress and glasses.

It’s one thing to sound like an idiot on the phone, and another to do it in

person. I found myself suddenly embarrassed. “Do you, uh, have anything

about a TV show called Harrigan’s House ?”

“ The Harrigan House ? Sure. You can take your pick.”

She showed me to the section. There was an oversized paperback called

HarriganMania , same as the special Linda wanted me to tape, and one called

That’s Life at the Harrigan House . Then there was Harrigan House: The Compleat

Episode Guide and a smaller, brightly colored one called The Ultimate Harrigan

House Trivia Book .

“Good lord,” I said.

“I have a confession to make,” the woman said. “Until these books started

coming in, a couple of years ago? I’d never heard of the damned show.”

I looked up at her from where I knelt by the row of books.

“Maybe,” I said, “we’re too old.”

The girl who checked me out was in her late teens. “The Harrigans,” she

said. “Coo1.”

The guy at the next register, who was blond and not much older, looked

over. “Oh yeah,” he said. He turned HarriganMania over to check out the

photos on the back. “Remember this one? The pie fight?”

“Yeah,” the girl said. “It’s like really sad about the professor, you know?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know. Dying and all.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

NSTEAD OF WORKING that afternoon I read HarriganMania . It was hard

to understand what all the fuss was about—even Tina Storm, the author and

self-proclaimed “number one Harrigan fan,” admitted that the show’s premise

was “dumb,” the episodes were “banal and formulaic,” and the acting was

Sitcom

“wooden at best.” After reading a few of the episode synopses, I had to agree. I

found myself skipping on to the next section.

The bare facts were these: the show premiered on ABC on Friday night,

September 27, 1968, at 8:00 pm Eastern. It ran seven seasons, through 1975,

161 half-hour episodes in all. John “Prof” Harrigan was an English teacher at

Ivyville College and “Mom” (Joan) was a widowed socialite; Nancy, their

unflappable housekeeper, was from “back East” somewhere. The five kids

were the show’s gimmick, such as was: Mom and the Prof each had one child

from a previous marriage, Jeff and Janie respectively. They’d adopted one child

together, Joey, plus taking in Nancy’s daughter Judy to raise with their own.

The first episode took up shortly after the arrival of fifth child, who was

actually the Prof’s little brother. He had obviously come very late in life to

Prof’s parents, since he was only five—younger than any of the other kids—

when he arrived at the Harrigan house. The death of his (i.e. the Prof’s)

parents, and any possible associated traumas, were never alluded to.

In fact, the show didn’t just avoid controversy, it completely obliterated it.

There were no student protests at Ivyville College, not even in the wake of the

Kent and Jackson State shootings of 1970. Adopted brother Joey was pure

WASP, not Italian or Jewish, let alone black or Hispanic, let alone Vietnamese.

How could he be, since the Vietnam War didn’t seem to exist in the world of

the Harrigans?

The episodes I was able to slog through dealt with such matters as the

importance of investing your allowance wisely, and strategies for being popular

in school. The professor was a bit pompous, but always full of good, solid

common sense at the end. Like when little Jimmy gave the other kids

permission to misbehave because he was, after all, their uncle. The Prof

straightened everything out at the end when he explained that it was a

combination of age, experience, and position that made authority work, and it

took all three.

It was that kind of attitude that doubtless attracted Richard Nixon and

prompted him to declare, two weeks before his 1968 presidential victory: “It’s

my favorite show. Families like the Harrigans are what makes this country

great.” When they asked Hubert Humphrey about the Harrigans, he said,

“Who?” At least that was how Tina Storm, who was a decade too young to

vote at the time, remembered it. The next week, in mock elections in grade

schools and junior highs across the country, Nixon won by a landslide.

Professor Harrigan reminded me uncomfortably of my own father, who was

of course an avid Nixon supporter. He was so convinced of his own

infallibility, so rigid, so heroic in his own eyes. The difference was that Prof

Harrigan was able to tell his kids that he loved them, and in turn his kids

thought he was a hero, too.

Harrigan catch phrases abounded. Prof’s “I haven’t the foggiest notion,” of

course, and his “Do you mind?” every time he found one of Mom’s cats in his

favorite armchair. Little Jimmy’s cries of “Say uncle!” Janie’s accidentally

overheard remark, “Professor Arrogant you mean!” which was later picked up

by the rest of the family—in a good-natured way, of course.

There weren’t a lot of pictures in HarriganMania . Pub shots of the actresses,

none of whom I recognized, and few posed studio stills. There was nothing

from the actual episodes because Sheldon Browne, the show’s creator and

producer, had supposedly refused permission.

I had a tingling feeling that meant there was a story lurking somewhere.

L E W I S S H I N E R

The feeling turned into certainty when I got to the chapter about The Song.

It was irresistible, Storm said, like the theme from Gilligan’s Island or any of

those other viral little tunes that hook into your brain and refuse to let to. In

sixty seconds the theme covered the entire hare-brained setup, including the

business with Prof’s little brother “who was an uncle and a brother to them

all.”

The theme was performed by the 1910 Fruitgum Company, of “Simon

Says” and “1 2 3 Red Light” fame. According to the book, an extended

version of the song hit the top ten late in 1968.

That, I knew, was wrong, and I could prove it.

I had a lot of music reference books, including Billboard’s Top Ten Charts

and Norm N. Nite’s Rock On Volume II . The 1910 Fruitgum Company was

listed in both books, but not “Theme From The Harrigan House ” or anything

remotely like it, not by any artist. Okay, big deal, Storm had been sloppy in

her research. Instead of a feeling of superiority, I got a chill.

HAT NIGHT I WATCHED the HarriganMania special while the VCR

taped it. In typical network fashion it was all form and minimal content.

Tina Storm was the host, and she spent most of the show interviewing

celebrities about their favorite Harrigan House episodes, and what the Harrigans

meant to them. “The Harrigan House,” Jay Leno said, “was like an island of

calm in troubled times. It was a place you could come to for milk and cookies

while the rest of the world was full of riots and Vietnam and girls putting you

down.” Shannen Doherty, wearing a “Do You Mind?” T-shirt, said, “Prof

Harrigan was the father everybody wants to have. He was just so cool.” Arnold

Schwarzenegger said, “The Harrigans were about family values. Why can’t

there be shows like that today?”

There was an overblown emotional farewell to the actor who played Prof,

who had died a few months ago in a private plane crash while doing a dinner

theater tour. Then more tears were shed over the kid who played Joey

Harrigan, who’d died of an OD in 1980. The woman who played Mom was

brought onstage for a standing ovation, then hustled off again because she

hadn’t aged well and was obviously drunk.

In one segment they read excerpts from the thousands of letters the show

had received from kids who wanted to run away from their own families and

come live in the Harrigan House. The studio had been forced to come up

with a form letter explaining that the Harrigans were fictional, that the kids

should stay with their own parents and make the best of it.

Sheldon Browne did not make an appearance; he had refused permission to

use any clips from the show. So instead we got footage of The Harrigan House

Live Onstage , and shots of the Harrigan House comic books and trading cards,

dolls and board games.

At the end all the celebrity guests got onstage and sang The Song together.

T TEN LINDA got home and we had sandwiches. I went on to bed

while she stayed up to watch the tape. I read for a while and then tried to

sleep. Linda’s side of the bed was cold and empty, not that that was anything

new. Most mornings I had to be up at eight to talk to editors in New York,

while she slept in. More and more we seemed to live in separate worlds.

Maybe I could try harder. I thought I would go in and see if she wanted to

talk, or maybe even fool around a little. I put on a robe and got far as doorway

Sitcom

into the living room. Linda sat on the couch, tears rolling down her face. I

couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her cry. Her lips moved as she sang

along softly with the tape:

And there they had their own little world

Nancy and the kids, the professor and his spouse

Laughter and love for each boy and every girl

That’s life in the Harrigan house.

She didn’t see me as turned and went back to bed.

HEN LINDA AND I first dated there was an awkwardness that I

chalked up to her being only twenty years old, compared to my

worldly twenty-nine. I thought it would pass in time, but it never did.

I went in the next morning, which was a Saturday, to talk to her. I found

her curled up on the couch, watching a black-and-white movie from the

forties and reading the morning paper.

“So,” I said. “Did you like the special?”

“It was great.”

“I watched it while it was taping.” For just a second she looked at me with

real curiosity and interest, the first time in longer than I could remember. The

look went away when I said, “I have to admit I didn’t get it.”

She turned back to the movie. “Well, you don’t like TV. You say so all the

time. I wouldn’t really expect you to ‘get it.’“

“So maybe you could help me, here. What is it you like so much about the

Harrigans?” She shrugged, and I could see her slipping into hurt and anger. I

kept after her anyway, knowing I should stop, a little angry at her myself for

liking something that seemed so awful to me. “I mean, it didn’t seem to have

much to do with the real world. It’s like some fascist fantasy, where there

aren’t any black or poor people, women just stay home and have babies,

there’s no crime, no injustice...”

“And what’s wrong with that?” She was actually angry and letting it show,

something even rarer than her tears. “Does everything always have to mean

something? Some of us are tired of real life. I have customers in my face all day

and when I get home I just want to relax. I don’t need to be challenged or

stimulated, I want things to be nice. The Harrigan House was a nice show, okay?

Is that so terrible?”

“I was just asking.”

“Just asking. With that superior tone in your voice. Just because you went

on a few protest marches in the sixties, that’s supposed to make you some kind

of holy person. Well, look at yourself. You used to talk about this Great

American Novel you were going to write, about how you were just doing

journalism while you got your novel together. Now you don’t even bother to

talk about it anymore, let alone do anything. You don’t even vote, for God’s

sake. Your talk and everybody else’s holier-than-thou talk about changing the

world is just bullshit. Talk is all it is. The rest of us want to keep our houses

and cars and TV sets, thank you very much. The Harrigan House is shown all

over the world. Eastern Europe, Somalia, Brazil. That’s what everybody wants,

everywhere. To be like the Harrigans.”

“Linda, I—”

“You think I like my shitty job? You think I like it that we’re too poor to

Lewis Shiner - Sitcom.pdf

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