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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Deep Breath”

The new Doctor got swallowed by a dinosaur.

No, seriously.

Also, Vastra -- everyone's favorite lizard lady -- and her "wife" returned to help out the Doctor and Clara. It turned out that the Doctor had regenerated again and this time he had turned into Peter Capaldi. And Vastra had turned into Leo DiCaprio.

No, seriously.

Plus Clara got a phone call from Matt Smith who played the old Doctor.

No, seri--

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): "Asylum of the Daleks"

#NotAllDaleks#: Part I.

This was the episode that introduced the viewers to the concept of a crazy Dalek -- which, given the fact that all Daleks were homicidally insane by definition, seemed like a contradiction in terms.

It also introduced us to English actress Jenna-Louise Coleman -- AKA Jenna Coleman -- a woman so cute that she undoubtedly makes Amy Adams feel like an old hag. Unfortunately, Jenna's character did not survive this episode, but that was okay. Steven Moffat had seen to it that she would return again that season not just once but many times. So many times that it would be a wonder if you didn't get sick of her.

As for the plot... The Doctor was invited to a distant planet to help out the Daleks. No, seriously, that was what he did in this episode -- travel to a distant planet to help out one of his worst enemies. Apparently, the Daleks were having trouble with one of their fellow Daleks so naturally they called the Doctor for help.

No, seriously.

Plus Amy and Rory came all along for no good reason. Though it was kinda cute that Amy was more gung-ho about this adventure than poor Rory.

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Joan of Arcadia: “The Uncertainty Principle”

This had the potential to become the stupidest episode in the entire series -- but somehow the last five minutes managed to redeem it when we the audience were given a glimpse of what terrible things could have happened had it not been for Joan's actions earlier in the episode. Granted, I can think of many reasons why this episode should not work as well as it did. After all, we have seen far too many episodes of senseless violence in the real world to believe that one individual --even a fictional one -- can stop all such acts of evil.

And yet even God himself was not suggesting in this episode that it was possible for one person to stop all such terrible deeds. Just one.

And I would like to believe -- nay, I need to believe -- that sometimes stopping just one is enough.

And if you can stop one, you can stop two. And so on and so on...

Anyway, it's a lot better than believing the exact opposite.

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The Americans: "Pilot"

I always thought that the Fleetwood Mac song "Tusk" would make a cool background song for a secret agent show. I just never figured until I saw the first episode of the cable TV series The Americans that the secret agents in the show in question would be Soviet agents. Especially Soviet agents who were working undercover in the United States of America.

Yet it says something about The Americans that the show's writers manage to take this dubious premise and make it work -- even though they're in effect asking the show's American audience to root for the type of people whom they would obviously dislike in real life. Call it if you will a legacy of Dexter, Weeds and The Sopranos -- three successful cable TV shows which also dared American TV viewers to "root" for the type of people they would dislike in real life. Or maybe it's just nostalgia for the 1980s. After all, the 1980s seemed to be the last decade in America which had its own distinctive music, fashion and pop culture. At least it had a pop culture that had not been totally blanded out by the Internet. Or perhaps it would be simpler to argue that compared to today's Mideastern terrorist troubles, the Cold War antics of the 1980s seem as simple as the black-and-white politics of the Second World War must have seemed to people living in the more gray era of the Ronald Reagan Administration.

Anyway, the opening sequence of The Americans's first episode is not just about exploiting the cooler musical moments of the 1980s. It also answers one of the more logical questions posed by the show's storyline: why don't the agents in question defect to the United States? That question is answered quite simply by the fate of the would-be Soviet defector who is captured by the show's title characters in the episode's opening episode -- a capture that goes off almost perfectly until the couple in question fail to make a key rendezvous due to the need to tend to a wounded accomplice. As a result, they literally miss the boat that is supposed to take the defector back to Mother Russia and end up getting stuck with him. As if that were not bad enough, the wounded accomplice ends up dying of his wounds anyway.

In any event, the agents in question tend to be different in one regard: one is a "true believer" who genuinely supports the Soviet system, the other is more a skeptic who is not crazy enough to openly embrace the American system but can't help noticing its obvious advantages over the Soviet Union. As it turns out, the true believer -- played by actress Keri Russell -- also had a secret connection to the defector -- a secret that eventually comes out before the episode is over. And though both agents are thought to be in a marriage of convenience that was arranged by their bosses in the KGB, one agent -- the man, natch -- is more emotionally attached than the other. Which proves to be a key factor when that agent is asked to choose between his spouse and his mission...

Anyway, I found The Americans to be more interesting than it should have been. And not because I wax nostalgic for the good old days of the former Soviet Union. Indeed, one of the most refreshing aspects about this show is the way it refused to play down the fact that both characters had a great capacity to act like absolute bastards just because both of them were working on behalf of the Soviet Union. In other words, they were not the usual Russian agents with hearts of gold that one might normally expect from a liberal TV show.

Time will tell how successful this series will be in the long run but I for one am glad to see that it has lasted for more than one season. Granted, I might change my mind about that after viewing future episodes. But for now... I am content.

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Person of Interest: "Pilot"

I just started binge-watching this show before Christmas and apparently I am the last person on the Net to discover it. (Which means it should be going off the air any time now.)

But seriously, folks...

My middle brother used to be into it -- at least, that's what my mother says -- but apparently he stopped watching it. Apparently Lynn and Jaquandor watch it too.

I can understand why. The show does tend to be addictive if you watch enough episodes. And though I would normally not consider this type of show to be my cup of tea, it is rapidly becoming an acquired taste that I wish to partake of more and more.

It's tempting to describe the show as an updated version of The Equalizer since both shows revolve around former espionage agents who learn to use their talents for good instead of evil and who make a point of helping out the little guy. But there is also an ongoing subplot concerning a mysterious device which identifies possible perps or victims as well as a mysterious billionaire (played by Michael Emerson) who proves to be the most public-spirited rich guy since John Beresford Tipton, Jr. If you like conspiracies, this show has conspiracies. If you like action, then this show has action. If you like a bit with a dog, well, you're just going to have to wait until the next season.

If you really want to appreciate how good this show is, just watch a few episodes of The Blacklist and see how much that show suffers from comparison to this one.

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Suburgatory: "Pilot"

My favorite first cousin had this show listed on Facebook as being one of her favorite shows so I am reluctant to say anything really bad about it. Then again we are talking about a TV show set in the suburbs which pretends that the only Hispanics to be found out there are maids so I feel equally reluctant to pretend that there is nothing wrong with this series --especially the way it pretends that Hispanics like my cousin don't exist.

Then again my first cousin spent most of her teenage years in the suburbs so I feel weird second-guessing her. After all, when I was growing up, I identified more with the Ritchie Cunningham character on Happy Days than with Mexican-American characters like the Freddie Prinze character in Chico and the Man. It was not that I did not want to identify with any Latino characters on television; it was just that most of the characters I saw there had little in common with the ones I saw in real life. And here in 2015, I still see few Latino characters on television that I can identify with.

Fortunately, I grew up with enough admirable Latin relatives that I don't really feel like I missed out on much but it is amusing to see how little progress we have made -- apart from rare exceptions like American Family and Ugly Betty. And I never would have guessed that I would have been waxing so nostalgic for those shows this soon.

Oh, well. There are worse problems in the world to worry about.

On a more mainstream note, I guess I should be glad to see Jeremy Sisto playing a more normal role than the one he played on Six Feet Under. But -- yawn! -- it is not like this show is exactly exploring new ground. And please don't get me started on actress Cheryl Hines's broad Texas accent. I know her character's name is Dallas but seriously?

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The Simpsons: "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace"

Bart Simpson's toy firetruck accidentally causes a fire which manages to burn down the Simpsons family Christmas tree and all the presents beneath it but leaves the rest of the house untouched. It's a Christmas miracle.

Of course, there is more than the episode than that but the one bit I mentioned above is enough for me to take this episode less than seriously. Indeed, it is like this whole series was some type of cartoon!

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Community: "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"

Everyone's favorite pop culture enthusiast Abed Nadir has a nervous breakdown around Christmas time and starts seeing everything as if it were in stop motion animation. His friends try to ease him out of it by going along with his fantasy but things don't quite go right. Then they enlist the aid of British-born Professor Ian Duncan and things really go awry. But on the plus side, we get some really great songs out of it.

Plus we find out a lot more about our beloved characters' backgrounds. For example, Annie Edison turns out to be only half-Jewish. Who knew? And Abed's mother turns out to be of Polish descent just like my own real-life mother. That's an odd coincidence. I wonder if that means something.

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Warehouse 13: "The Greatest Gift"

Pete Lattimer accidentally stumbles upon an artifact that has the power to erase him from existence, forcing him to see what life would be like for his co-workers if he had never joined the staff of Warehouse 13 -- and, of course, putting him in the position of having to set things right again. As you might guess, the plot of this episode is a rather deliberate homage to It's a Wonderful Life; indeed, the writers of this episode are smart enough -- or at least, respectful enough -- to actually reference the original short story upon which the movie It's a Wonderful Life was based on instead of just attributing the whole storyline to Frank Capra like far lazier writers might have done.

It may not be the best homage to Frank Capra that I have ever seen but it is one of the better ones that I have seen so far. Then again, I have a soft spot for this show so what can I say?

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The Wild Wild West: "The Night of the Assassin"

U.S. Secret Service agent James West rescues Mexican president Benito Juárez from an assassin who was dressed like a priest. Considering President Juárez's real-life attitude toward the Catholic Church, there's some dramatic irony there -- though whether it was intentional or not is something only the writers know.

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The Vicar of Dibley: "The Christmas Lunch Incident"

And you all probably thought that you all ate a lot of food this past Thanksgiving...

Please pity -- if you all will -- the poor Vicar of Dibley (played by Dawn French), who is forced through sheer politeness to eat not just one but three Christmas lunches. And not just a mere mouthful at each meal either.

On top of that, the poor Vicar runs into Peter Capaldi -- yes, the same guy who will later play the Doctor in a certain British sci-fi series -- and gets what she thinks is a marriage proposal. Alas, the proposal proves to be just part of yet another misunderstanding and the poor Vicar is given yet another reason to be miserable.

But don't worry. The villagers come round later in the episode to give the Vicar some much-needed Christmas cheer and everything ends happily. Sort of. Of course, it was the Vicar's very popularity with the villagers which caused much of her problems to begin with but alas, that is a subject for another day.

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The Twilight Zone (TOS): "Mirror Image"

Was this the face that launched a thousand "evil twin" stories?

Probably not, but it should have been.

I have gotten so used to thinking of Vera Miles as the actress who played the surviving sibling of poor Marion Crane in the 1960 movie Psycho that I often forget how often she got away with roles like this.

And I can't help but wonder if it is entirely a coincidence that bus travel in America has become so less popular since this episode hit the air.

In any event, it is hardly likely that the average American who travels by bus today worries too much about seeing his or her evil twin at the bus station like Vera's character did. Then again it is not like most Americans spend a lot of time at the local bus station nowadays if they can help it.

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Warehouse 13: "Pilot"

By all rights, I should have hated this series because it not only played fast and loose with historical facts, but its premise ripped off one of the most famous scenes from my beloved Raiders of the Lost Ark. And yet...

I could not help loving it.

I won't pretend that it was one of my favorite TV shows of all time but it was a lot better than I expected it to be. Maybe it was the fact that though the two main characters are government agents, there was little attempt to make them over into the next Mulder and Scully even though one is a man and the other is a woman. Or maybe it was the fact that the show's writers actually had a sense of humor. (It did not hurt that one of the co-creators -- Jane Espenson -- was a former writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) Or maybe it was the fact that the actor who played the male agent -- Eddie McClintock -- did a good job of playing a young Bruce Campbell-like character without trying too hard to mimic Bruce Campbell. Or maybe I just found it hard to hate a TV series that managed to cast Lindsay Wagner -- the original Bionic Woman -- as a recurring character.

In any event, I am kinda sorry that I waited so long to write about this show. After all, it is off the air now and they aren't likely to be making any new episodes. Then again it did last five seasons and when I consider how many good shows did not last half that long, I can't help but consider that a good thing.

Of course, it might have been better if they had made it to a sixth season, but perhaps it is just as well that they quit while they were ahead.

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The Munsters: “Low-Cal Munster”

Dammit, Herman! Don't bogart that turkey!

After all, there are other people in this world who would like a piece of that bird as well. Some of them in that very house that you just invaded.

So what does it say about you that you just feel free to wantonly invade some neighbor's home and devour their entire Thanksgiving dinner?

What? You say you're just rehearsing for Black Friday?

Well, why didn't you say so?

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The Monkees: "I Was a Teenage Monster"

As some of you might have guessed from reading my home page, my real-life last name is not Kruger but Mendoza -- a name inherited from my Mexican-born father. Like most Spanish surnames, that name does not often appear on American movies and TV shows -- a fact that can either be blamed on the scarcity of Hispanic characters on American movies and TV shows or else on the lack of imagination on the part of those few American screenwriters who see fit to include Hispanic characters in their scripts.

So imagine my surprise when I finally saw my real-life surname appear on a popular television show. Granted, it was a television show from the 1960s, but it was still a popular television show. Then imagine my dismay when I realized that the character with my last name was a mad scientist! To add insult to injury, the character in question was not even played by a Hispanic actor. Instead the makers of this episode chose to cast non-Hispanic white actor John Hoyt, who was previously best known by me for playing an industrialist in the 1951 movie When World Collide and a -- ahem -- mad scientist in the 1958 movie Attack of the Puppet People. (Which, of course, raises the question of why the writers chose to give the character a Spanish surname in the first place. I'm guessing that it was because they were starting to get bored with the usual Germanic and Slavic surnames that were usually given to mad scientists in the TV shows of the 1960s.)

Of course, it might be argued that no one in the 1960s ever watched The Monkees expecting realistic storytelling, much less realistic representations of various minority groups. After all, this was an era when white actors still routinely portrayed Asian characters in movies and TV shows and almost any dark-skinned ethnic group -- apart from African-Americans, of course -- was considered interchangeable with any other dark-skinned ethnic group -- and African-Americans were generally rewarded for their distinctiveness by having few chances to appear on popular TV shows.

Indeed, even if you bypass the ethnic angle, a lot of this particular episode comes across as mediocre, even by 1960s standards. (And judging from my memories of past Monkees episodes, that was unfortunately the norm for this series.)

Anyway, the gimmick of the episode involved the various members of the Monkees being hired by a Dr. Mendoza -- the above-mentioned mad scientist -- to teach his monster (played by Richard Kiel) how to become a rock and roll singer. No, seriously, that was the plot. For what it is worth, Richard Kiel did a good job playing the Frankensteinish monster that the Monkees were teaching -- though I must admit that as much as I liked seeing Kiel doing something different than his usual big dumb thug routine, the humor of seeing him imitate a typical rock singer of the 1960s got old really fast.

As you might guess, the Monkees had a falling-out with the mad scientist when they found out that he planned to eliminate them after their work is finished -- and as if that was not enough, the scientist's equally insane daughter (played by blonde non-Hispanic actress Bonnie Dewberry) made a couple of appearances partway through the episode with news of a future episode. (Of course, said episode never happened.) Toss in the mixture of scenes that happened while a Monkees song played in the background and you got a brief description of the entire episode. Of course, Dr. Mendoza was brought to justice at the very end and the Monkees survived to play another day.

It would be nice to say that the next few episodes were better but I have not seen those yet so you are welcome to come to your own conclusions. However, it should be noted that neither Hoyt nor Kiel ever made another appearance on this show so if you really feel the need to see the two of them together -- or for that matter, to see what Richard Kiel looked like in green makeup -- then this is the episode for you. Personally, I prefer to consider this episode a reminder of why I don't watch The Monkees more often.

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The Neighbors: “Pilot”

There are undoubtedly many good TV shows to be derived from the fictional adventures of a group of aliens in the suburbs of modern-day America.

This is not one of them.

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Adam-12: “Venice Division”

Needless to say, Venice in this case refers to Venice, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, not Venice, Italy. After all, the jurisdiction of the LAPD may be large but it is not that large.

Adam-12 was created by producer Jack Webb to do for uniformed police officers what Dragnet did for police detectives: give the public some idea of what people in law enforcement have to put up with in real life. In a way, Adam-12 and Dragnet could be seen as forerunners of the Law & Order series. Only Jack Webb's shows tend to concentrate more on the police side of the equation and not on the prosecutors.

Moreover, since Adam-12 was created in 1968 -- a time when many liberals still equated police with the Chicago cops who beat up demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Southern lawmen who harassed and persecuted members of the African-American Civil Rights Movement -- the show was never considered quite as fashionable as later cop shows such as Hill Street Blues or NYPD Blue. If that was not unflattering enough, the show came in for special criticism when author Joseph Wambaugh -- a former member of the LAPD -- was doing interviews for the Wambaugh-inspired TV series Police Story and saw fit to note that the cops in Adam-12 were so unreal that they never even went to the bathroom. Yet more recently, author Connie Fletcher noted in a preface to her nonfiction book What Cops Know that the one TV show that consistently got praised from real-life police officers for showing what police work was really like was not Adam-12 but rather the 1970s sitcom Barney Miller.

In any event, Adam-12 was rarely seemed to me to be as memorable as its much-parodied-but-still-memorable predecessor Dragnet. For all their faults, Jack Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday and his partner, Officer Bill Gannon (played by Harry Morgan), still seemed more interesting to my younger self than Adam-12's Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed (played by Martin Milner and Kent McCord).

One of the more memorable exceptions was the “Venice Division” episode which aired in 1973. This was a rather gimmicky episode in which the most interesting event takes place shortly after the opening credits and then never gets mentioned again. Instead, Malloy and Reed got involved with trying to track down a maniac who preyed on young women when they were not exchanging jests with a hotshot motorcycle cop and solving relatively minor cases such as a runaway giant pumpkin.

The incident that opened the episode involved a young actress named Tammy Warren (played by Edy Williams) who had apparently confused her birthday suit with her bathing suit. When Malloy and Reed caught up with her, she had already attracted quite a crowd of eager onlookers who thought her version of the “natural look” was just fine. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law, it was also indecent exposure.

Malloy and Reed first covered Ms. Warren with a conveniently available blanket and then managed to talk her into redonning her white bikini. However, they also chose not to arrest her for indecent exposure, electing to pass that decision on to the DA. This annoyed the heck out of Ms. Warren's agent, who just happened to be conveniently located nearby. As it turned out, the whole incident was a publicity stunt cooked up by him. Given some of the celebrities who have recently received major media coverage for their willingness to “accidentally” uncover certain body parts -- Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, etc. -- you could argue that such an agent was ahead of his time. Indeed, some celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga have almost made a career out of such stunts. Unfortunately, Ms. Warren was not so lucky, which is what you get for being a fictional TV character in the 1970s. Instead she became one of the few women to actually get insulted at the prospect of not getting arrested for indecent exposure.

As for the rest of the show, nothing much happened that has not been already mentioned save for a lecture given by Malloy and Reed to a young dancer who supposedly attracted the unwanted attention of a would-be rapist by practicing yoga in her leotard. Ironically, the leotard that Malloy and Reed found so morally objectionable seemed quite conservative compared to much of the clothing worn by some of today's young women. (Of course, it was also very conservative compared to what Ms. Warren had been wearing at the beginning of the episode.) And did I mention that said young woman was wearing said leotard in the privacy of her own apartment? True, it was also in front of an uncovered window, but still the cops' warning seemed a bit much -- even by the standards of 1973.

Then again, Adam-12 was a conservative show -- which makes the Tammy Warren incident seem all that much more peculiar. Granted, it was filmed in a very conservative fashion. You initially heard more of the naked Ms. Warren than you saw of her thanks to a shot that conveniently placed her off-screen, and thanks to the blanket Malloy and Reed gave her, you never saw much of the undressed Ms. Warren save for her head and limbs. Indeed, the sight of her unoccupied swimsuit was the most serious visual clue you got that Ms. Warren had been showing a lot more than she told before the cops arrived.

It says something about how much times have changed since 1973 that I suspect most of today's less chivalrous male teenagers might consider this particular episode to be yawnworthy thanks to the abundance of female nudity available on cable TV, R-rated movies and the Internet. Compared to that, a woman covered by little more than a blanket might seem like small potatoes. Then again, if this same episode were to be remade for one of today's cable shows, I suspect we would have seen a lot more of Ms. Warren and a lot less of giant pumpkins.

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Sherlock: "A Study in Pink"

Sherlock Holmes is frequently depicted in pop culture as the ultimate atheist. So naturally producer Steven Moffat's newest version of Sherlock Holmes ends up solving a case by stealing a gimmick from renowned Catholic author G. K. Chesterton.

Apart from that, the show is quite clever. When I first heard that Moffat was creating a TV series about a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, I thought it would be awful. But actually the TV series turned out to be quite good. It doesn't hurt that Martin Freeman of The Office (UK) fame plays a great modern-day version of Dr. John Watson. The show even provides a good explanation of why a guy like Watson puts up with an eccentric like Sherlock. Granted, the constant hints of latency get a bit tiresome. But it says something for the way Benedict Cumberbatch plays Sherlock that the hints seem less tiresome than usual. Plus Una Stubbs plays a great Mrs. Hudson and Louise Brealey just breaks my heart as Molly Hooper, the pathologist in the local morgue who has such an obvious unrequited crush on the title character. Even the obligatory references to the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories are done quite nicely.

I wish all my fears were dealt with as easily as the ones I had concerning this show.

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Davey and Goliath: “Good Neighbor”

Davey and Goliath is a much-ridiculed stop-action animated Christian children's TV series which used to be shown here in the Dallas / Fort Worth area on Sunday morning. For many years I was embarrassed to admit to having watched the show. Then I grew up and realized that the show's messages were not that bad.

Granted, from an adult perspective, it is very easy to find fault with the series. The characters were almost always white, the men and women rarely strayed outside of traditional gender roles and the show had the nerve to promote Christianity as a good thing. (Then again it was produced by the Lutheran Church in America so how can one realistically expect the show to do otherwise?) Moreover, the title character Davey had a talking dog named Goliath whose scenes have not exactly improved with age. (Though I can't help but wonder if that poor much-ridiculed mutt helped inspire the creation of Scooby-Doo or for that matter, the talking tiger in Calvin and Hobbes. After all, stranger things have happened.)

Anyway, the one episode I find myself remembering most often is the “Good Neighbor” episode, perhaps because it is one of the few episodes that does not end happily for Davey. The whole episode revolves around a local celebration of neighborliness in which free balloons declaring their owner to be a good neighbor are passed out on a first-come, first-served basis. Davey wants to get such a balloon but on the way to the celebration, he comes across a young girl who has gotten separated from her mother and he chooses to help her first. He is not the first person to pass the little girl in question but he is the first person who stops to help her out. In the process of trying to track down the girl's mother, Davey loses more and more time until when he finally does manage to reunite the girl with her mother, he is too late to get a balloon.

The irony of the episode? In proving himself to be a good neighbor, Davey loses his chance at any material reward while those people who were selfish enough to ignore the little girl's plight end up receiving all the balloons. And of course, the one such person who is most proud of his rep as a “good neighbor” ends up seeing his balloon burst.

The moral of the episode? We can't always expect to be materially rewarded for our good deeds. Indeed, doing good deeds in hope of a material reward is not what Christianity is supposed to be all about. Moreover, there will be times when in order to do a good deed, a sacrifice will be expected of you. It could be a sacrifice of time or a sacrifice of effort or a sacrifice of money or so forth. But there will be a sacrifice. In other words, you should perform a good deed because it needs to be done, not because you expect to get something out of it.

I know that sounds like an obvious lesson but when I first saw this episode, it did not seem so obvious. Even as an adult, I find myself having to remind myself of this lesson. After all, it is not the type of lesson most American TV shows and movies preach and it is certainly not the type of lesson promoted by many American politicians. Indeed, even many Christian adults seem to forget such a message -- which is why it is a good thing that TV shows like Davey and Goliath exist in the first place.

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Davey and Goliath: “The Polka Dot Tie”

It has become so hip nowadays to make fun of the old stop-motion animated children's TV series Davey and Goliath that I sometimes forget how progressive this show could be. For example, this series once devoted an episode to a 1962 parable about racism which never quite mentions racism yet comes closer to mentioning it than most other animated shows of the era. Yet today hardly anyone remembers it.

Granted, messages of racial tolerance were not rare in 1962 when the African-American civil rights movement was in full swing, but they certainly were not very common in most American cartoon shows. And given the fact that Davey and Goliath is usually considered a conservative show because of its emphasis on overt Christian messages, the anti-racism message in this episode seems especially astounding.

To be fair, the episode never comes out and overtly argues on behalf of racial tolerance. But it was one of the first episodes to feature a black character and it is not very hard to connect the dots between the fuss title character Davey makes over said character's polka dot tie and the fuss many real-life adults in 1962 would have made about said character's skin color.

Of course, this being a positive show, Davey eventually comes around and accepts the friendship of the black character after his sister Sally spends the entire episode treating Davey as a fool for initially doing otherwise. And no one thinks anything of it.

It would be nice to believe that all racial conflicts were so easily settled back in 1962, but alas, I suspect otherwise. However, it is nice to see that even back then, some people's hearts were in the right place.