Chapter 2: "The History of Television" (It gets better)

This is the second installment of The History of Television: A History of Television (scroll down one entry for the introduction and first chapter). Enjoy and, above all, be edified.

Chapter Two: A Nation Chuckles: The '50s

By the 1950s, the Television Revolution was underway, with a startling array of diverse programming created to mollify the masses and take their minds off the repression and paranoia of the era. Some of the biggest stars were Lucille Ball and Ricky Ricardo, a dizzy wife and her long-suffering husband; George Burns and Gracie Allen, a long-suffering husband and his dizzy wife; Jack Benny and Rochester, a long-suffering skinflint and his equally long-suffering manservant; and Milton Berle, who dressed up in women's clothing so that he could play both long-suffering husband and dizzy housewife and thereby save money on hiring an actress.

Unidentified Old-Timey Guy Talking Head (with "I Love Lucy's" theme music in background): "Lucy was ahead of her time. She could do it all - she could do physical comedy, she was a supreme verbal wit and, when push came to shove, she could file a legal action faster than nobody's business."

Other shows that delighted viewers in the decade were "The Ernie Kovacs Show," which expanded Television's visual palate, "Dragnet," which expanded acting's emotional palate, and "Gunsmoke," which as the longest-running series in American TV history expanded CBS's financial palate.

Then there was "Vice President Knows Best," a light-hearted family "situation comedy" starring Richard Nixon as a beleaguered patriarch beset by Congressional investigations into ethical lapses, his wife Pat and her "Republican cloth coat" (which became as much a character on the show as Fonzie's leather jacket would two decades later on "Happy Days"), daughter Julie, AKA Kitten, whose indefatigable high jinks included marrying the President's son, and beloved family pooch Checkers, whose colorful array of reaction shots (most involving burying his head beneath his paws in anthropomorphological dismay) anytime Richard would say something xenophobic or anti-Semitic would invariably send audiences into paroxysms of laughter.

The '50s became known as "The Golden Age of Television," mainly among those who wallow in a warm nostalgic bath of their own halcyon days. But then, so did practically every other frickin' decade.

Coming soon: Color Television (which we hear was very influential).