That Girl

Thanks to a TVLand marathon, this weekend I became well acquainted with That Girl. If your brain is still in the uninitiated position mine was in Friday night, let me 'splain. That Girl is an adorable, sweet, innocent and moderately funny situation comedy that aired on ABC for five seasons from 1966 to 1971. Plot: adorably, quirky girl from upstate New York goes to NYC to make it on her own as an actress and lives out the single life in a wholesome and innocent way. Accessories: the best boyfriend ever, an overprotective father, an inexplicable yet unending wardrobe of the latest in mod fashion, egregiously long eyelashes, and a flippy sixties hair-do. She even comes with her own flippy-haired kite logo.




What good little girl wouldn't want to grow up and be That Girl? She's adorable and beautiful and quirky. Everyone loves her and is captivated by her. Her boyfriend Donald is cute, but not too handsome, is always understanding and loving and never pressures her. Example. Knowing Donald's up late researching a magazine interview he has at the U.N. the next day, she calls him at 2 am to tell him there is a mouse in her apartment and she can't sleep and begs him to come over and shoo it away. After realizing she'll keep calling him if he doesn't help, he goes over to her apartment and decides the best course of action for him to finish his work and get some sleep is for them to switch apartments for the night. Before she can get back the next morning, her Dad pops by to pick her up for a weekend visit home, and Donald answers the door fresh out of bed in his blue boxers and white T-shirt. Meanwhile, That Girl (her name is Ann) breezes through the open door with breakfast fixings for Donald and says that a fresh cooked breakfast is the least she could do for Donald considering all the work he did last night and how little sleep he got. Moderate hilarity ensues. Dad demands everyone get in the car and go to Maryland (the Vegas of the east coast) to restore his daughter's honor. Ann is upset her father doesn't trust her crazy explanation (she claims the mouse was ferocious and four feet tall). Donald is heart-crushingly (because my heart is crushing on him) sweet when he says a trip to Maryland is no problem for him, even though he's never asked, because he'd ask eventually... It's just so sweet and amusing.

In the midst of the turbulent late sixties, life on That Girl seems so normal. Ann takes her 1968 presidential vote seriously, researching party platforms, pundits, and congressional voting records, touting her sacred voting duty, and railing against her father's straight party ticket voting policy. Never do the characters reveal their party affiliation. The closest they come to a seriously, historically relevant issue is a rhetorical mention of Civil Rights. No mention of Vietnam, the violent Democratic National Convention, the tragic lack of a Kennedy on the ticket, or the inclusion of George Wallace among the choices. The whitewash is consistent with Ann's optimism about voting, and despite the utter lack of sensibility to the realities of the it is somehow so darn up-lifting and comforting.

The show is an fuzzy, rose-colored glasses escape. The plots avoid melodrama and concentrate on awh-drama. The parental misunderstanding plots are a bit trite, but always highlight the similarities between Donald and Ann's father, as well as give the couple's patient purity an opportunity to shine. And glimpses into the style and scenery of a glammed up sixties are nice. Watching the episodes evolve from 1966 to the 1970s, I am cut by the loss of Donald's tamed and somewhat gelled sixties haircut to the unflattering wavy length of those loose seventies. Even Ann's hair takes a reverse flip in the seventies, but the garish seventies fashion print dresses are more distressing. As the actors get older (because the characters never do) the magic loosens. The fashions and age of the actors seem out of place in the sweetly innocent plots. Time intrudes and That Girl starts to look like That Woman. The escape becomes patently ridiculous.

But for a little while, it's a happy, ridiculous world. I'd choose this fantasy world over that of Sex in the City any day which says soooo many good, bad and hopelessly naive things about me. BTW, of course I went to the TVLand website and registered for the DVD set sweepstakes, if you want to see what I saw, you can go there too.