Mom Always Loved Them Best

Maybe a price we must pay for commercial television is that we again put up with the fraternal bores for a few months, so that when they’re dumped this time, everybody will know it’s because they are dreadful and not because of their “politics.” The Brothers Smothers are back, flaunting their tackiness as if they’d learned nothing the first time. Their new comedy hour, like the old one, predictably chomps into something and relentlessly, joylessly, gums it to death. They have an instant-down effect on every segment of their show in which they appear, rather like Ed Sullivan without Sullivan’s charm.

There’s obviously some schizophrenic programming going on in Smothersland: somebody with smarts signing on the real talent, like songwriters Harry Nilsson and Mac Davis, the Supremes-like Sunday’s Child, comedian Pat Paulsen, and superb short films like Why Man Creates and American Time Capsule, all doing fine without the Smotherses mucking up the show; and somebody else— the Brothers?—mushing it to us with too many minutes’ worth of yesterday’s nymphets (Nancy Sinatra, Marlo Thomas, Sally Struthers), treasured bits of Americana (Ted Mack and a baton twirler), gracelessly aging Peter Lawford types, and the Brothers’ own awful, endless bits.

DB

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David Brudnoy

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Maybe a price we must pay for commercial television is that we again put up with the fraternal bores for a few months, so that when they’re dumped this time, everybody will know it’s because they are dreadful and not because of their “politics.” The Brothers Smothers are back, flaunting their tackiness as if they’d learned nothing the first time. Their new comedy hour, like the old one, predictably chomps into something and relentlessly, joylessly, gums it to death. They have an instant-down effect on every segment of their show in which they appear, rather like Ed Sullivan without Sullivan’s charm.

There’s obviously some schizophrenic programming going on in Smothersland: somebody with smarts signing on the real talent, like songwriters Harry Nilsson and Mac Davis, the Supremes-like Sunday’s Child, comedian Pat Paulsen, and superb short films like Why Man Creates and American Time Capsule, all doing fine without the Smotherses mucking up the show; and somebody else— the Brothers?—mushing it to us with too many minutes’ worth of yesterday’s nymphets (Nancy Sinatra, Marlo Thomas, Sally Struthers), treasured bits of Americana (Ted Mack and a baton twirler), gracelessly aging Peter Lawford types, and the Brothers’ own awful, endless bits.