User Reviews

Six months before four mop tops calling themselves The Beatles degraded our shores with their "ugga bugga" noise, Fred MacMurray tried to warn us of the perils of rock and roll music. This program needed to be taped, if only to chide those libertine progressives Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, who actually encouraged their boy, Ricky, to caterwaul on television for two years and making "hit" records to boot! What an outrage to family television in 1963. Rock AND Roll music is "fiddle faddle" as The Boss reminds Fred. Well, that's what it sounded like to unbiased old farts in those days. If only The Youth of America had listened to the wisdom of the 70-year-old fathers behind My Three Sons in September of 1963, how much more conserved our nation would be! For one thing, we probably would not have assassinated President Kennedy that November. And we might still have pull-tabs on our beer cans. My Three Sons reminds us why Rock and Roll music will never last.

In this, the first episode of Season four, the usually, wise, thoughtful father of the Douglas clan has a character crisis. Steve consents to join his family on a teenage song competition recording of a composition Robbie wrote, a novelty ditty titled "Ugga-Bugga." I guess it's a reflection on the taste of kids, but Robbie's entrant is a finalist in the contest. But a problem arises for Steve, as the singers in the entered recordings must now perform the number on live television. This is where the problem lies, Steve fairly panics at the thought he'll be seen singing the silly song, and being humiliated by such a loss of dignity. He goes along with the boys and Bub to the station, but doesn't stop whining and offering pathetic reasons why he should be let out. When the actual on-camera performance starts, he's nervously trying to hide behind Robbie and Mike, and even putting on a trick store plastic nose-mustache-glasses disguise, which are snatched off his face from offscreen stage hands. This seems to be a careless lapse in the consistancy of the character, more befitting William Bendix in THE LIFE OF RILEY.