There are no good episodes in the third season, just the occasional good moment and many surprising moments. They don’t come from the main cast, not even Shirley Booth, though she gamely tries in each episode. Every guest actor who appears, including the gangsters in the two-part episode “Scheherezade and Her Frying Pan,” are nearly as plaingoing as Don DeFore, who seemed to have made a career out of not having much of an effect on television, except always being annoyed, exasperated, and perplexed by Hazel, as nearly each episode presents. For three seasons, she’s helped a lot in the Baxter household. She probably doesn’t fit the image of a working maid as DeFore’s George Baxter must have hoped, but she’s part of the family, and has been for all this time. The writers of this series keep harping on that always-temporary divide between George and Hazel, and what use is it with all she’s done already, and with 32 episodes here that show much the same thing? Whitney Blake and Bobby Buntrock as Dorothy and Harold, respectively, offer no help. She’s the supportive wife, as always, and he’s the devoted young son, as always. Nothing more, nothing less, but mostly less.
There are minor glimmers of hope in the surprising moments, though they don’t come until the final two episodes of the season, witness to the next generation of television comedy getting ready to emerge and wipe out all memories of this taxing excuse for a comedy.
In “Let’s Get Away From It All,” the family, naturally including Hazel, go to an Italian restaurant for dinner, finding it empty, but that’s good. George wants to get away from it all for an evening, and this is the perfect setting, until they get no service, and Hazel goes to see what’s going on, and then so does George. It turns out that the chef’s wife, unseen for the entire episode, is upstairs, ready to give birth, and the chef is paralyzed with fear. How can he serve dinner when his wife’s going to give birth? The surprising moment here is that the chef, Antonio, is a young Jamie Farr, eight years before he would become famous as Corporal Max Klinger on M*A*S*H. Farr at least attempts to be an Italian chef, and is good at looking mostly worried, though it’s embarrassing when George attempts to be Antonio on the phone in order to try to clear the line so he can call the family doctor to come to the restaurant to help with the birth, and his accent veers into being offensive. That this, besides Farr, is most noticeable in the episode, shows how much Hazel is hurting for actual comedy, for a few laughs that make the minutes fly by rather than feeling like you’re watching a bad three-hour movie in a 25-minute span.
Then in the final episode of the season, “Maid for a Day,” George’s haughty sister Deirdre (Cathy Lewis) is cast as a maid in a community talent show, but can’t understand why she would do what the maid does as written, including throwing a pie in someone’s face. The playwright, Max Denton, tries to explain to her why she must do this, and is gradually frustrated in the process, though pleased when she finally understands when a real-life situation finds her doing it herself, dressed as Hazel, as she’s agreed to learn from Hazel what to do. Max Denton is played by Harvey Korman, three years before he would become famous on The Carol Burnett Show, and then for working with Mel Brooks. When Korman appears, the plot of the episode doesn’t matter. We just want to see what he’s like before his fame, developing the little comedic tics that would benefit him greatly later. But that this is all the value the show offers is indicative that the producers tried everything they could to keep the show’s ratings up, to involve more guest stars, to go outside the Baxter household. I don’t know what the ratings were for this season, but why else would they have Hazel travel to Malibu and be taken prisoner by gangsters along with her friend Gracie?
It’s not Shout! Factory’s doing that the series rapidly descended to such awfulness. They’re just the middleman, doing their best with the sources they have to bring these episodes to DVD, the last one of which doesn’t look as good as previous episodes, but there’s an on-screen notice that image transfers are the best that they could do. At least they’re showing off some of the history of television comedy, leaving it to the public to decide what still works today and what now looks like an anomaly in that history. Hazel certainly does. If you’re curious, make sure to have a book with you for all those unfunny moments. You’ll be able to finish that novel you’re reading, faster than you anticipated.
