It's a Man's World

- Season 1

(1962)

We're introduced to the four main characters, Wes (Glenn Corbett), Tom-Tom (Ted Bessel), Howie (Michael Burns) and Vern (Randy Boone), but the relationships are far from defined. Wes and Tom-Tom are college students and Howie is in junior high. The three of them share a houseboat on the Ohio River in the small college town of Cordella. Howie and Wes and both smart, ambitious and driven to excel at school, while Tom-Tom, also obviously a bright guy, has his head in the clouds. Vern is a newcomer in town, a drifting Folk singer. The pilot revolves around an economic and...

This show knits together the four leads. Surprisingly, Vern was not yet a member of the household at the end of the pilot, having met only Howie in passing. The story is based around Tom-Tom inviting Vern to live with the guys on the houseboat which brings the conflicts between Wes and Tom-Tom to a boiling point. The ensuing argument that involves all fours is amazingly realistic and unsentimental. You'd hate to lose anything of this storyline, but like the first, it seems drawn out at times as if they writers were struggling with a half hour concept in a full hour. ...

Free spirited college student/artist Nora (Anne Schuyler) is added to the cast. Much of the story focuses around her and Wes when she's stranded on a side road resulting in Wes losing a load of tires he's hauling back to the gas station he works at. The tire part of the episode goes on a bit long, but the rest of the show is great. It's portrait of college students is relevant to any era. The story also highlights the conflicts between Wes and his fiancé Irene, a non-student, who's acting as the surrogate wife/mother for the group. Irene and Nora's confrontation and ...

Tom-Tom sets out to buy a car. In the process we're treated to series of labyrinthine wheeling and dealing as he trades up from a typewriter, a tape recorder and on and on. No doubt, Tom-Tom graduated to be a Wall Street entrepreneur. Meanwhile, Howie has his heart set on a mini-motor bike for his paper route that Wes can't afford. Again, the best part of the show and series is when Wes and Tom-Tom verbally duke it out. The dialog and relationship between these two guys is one of the most realistic exchanges you'll ever see in series television in any era.

Vern decides to get a tattoo in nearby Exeter which is a rough little town where the kids from Cardella go to booze and pickup women. He takes Howie along so Wes, Irene, Tom-Tom and Nora have to give up their date night to rescue them, or so they think. The frank discussions about sexuality and why young men go to a town like Exeter is explored with amazing realism. Humor and drama go hand in hand throughout the show. A flawless piece of writing. The last five minutes are a showcase for Randy Boone as he shows off his skills as both an actor and musician.

Indian Summer has come to Cordella. While everyone else is basking in the sun and fun, Wes and Irene are stuck working and going to classes until they decide to skip out as well. The pair's relationship is explored expertly, including an opportunity for a little premarital sex. Irene (Jan Norris) displays her enormous talents as an actress. She gives a multi-layered performance as she does throughout the show, with the silences displaying an amazing level of subtly. Wes and Irene are about as real a couple as ever populated a TV show. Tom-Tom (Ted Bessell) slips in a ...

Tom-Tom, Vern and Howie go camping. Howie ends up lost and partly amnesiac. How he got that way is truly was an innovative twist. Tom-Tom nearly kills himself trying to find him. Again, the emotions and reactions are so real it's amazing. It sounds pretty standard, kid lost in the woods, etc, but they weave in the loss of Wes and Howie's parents and some spiritual stuff without being preachy or saccharine. Another piece of amazing writing.

Another brilliant show that serves as a showcase for Ted Bessel who gives a bravura performance. Dawn Wells, Mary-Ann of Gilligan's Island fame shows up as Tom's latest love interest, Molly. Unfortunately for Tom-Tom, Molly's steady boyfriend is the town football hero who's off in the army. The writing brilliantly captures the small town narrow mindedness and expectation that were and still are, the expectation for young women of that era and to a great extent, the present. Gary Conway (Land of the Giants) plays the football hero. As usual, there's a twist ending ...

This one features Howie, (Michael Burns), as he gets caught up in a tug of war between Mr. Stott (Harry Hervey Sr.) who runs the gas station and Mr. Lowell (Charles P. Thompson, who is memorable as the elderly bank guard on The Andy Griffith Show), a insurance agent, both of whom want him to work for them. The climax is a moving evocation of the difficulty of men facing retirement and marginalization. There's also some nice horseplay between Wes, Tom-Tom and Vern at the end. It's a fine episode, but it probably highlights another reason the series didn't succeed. When...

This one featuring southern born and bred guitar player Vern as he strikes up a relationship with local waitress Jeri (Diane Sayer), who was featured a couple of episodes earlier. Sayer made a mini-career out of playing bad girls in the 60s, one of her more memorable being Wally Cleaver's worldly date the same year she played on IMAMW. She also played in the classic B movie Kitten With A Whip. She proves a bit much for Vern as she subsequently would for Wally. Randy Boone does a pretty decent job of playing a James Dean type sullen outsider. Things go wildly wrong ...

Tom-Tom is expelled from college for failing to take makeup exams. Frustrated by the bureaucracy, during which we're given a prescient tech babble about flowcharts and computers, somebody was doing their homework, he quits school to head back home to Chicago. By this point in the series it was becoming apparent that Ted Bessell was stealing the show. Certainly, Glenn Corbett had all the classic leading man requisites, which he would display to good effect in the next decade, but Bessell was clearly the guy who could charm the camera. Dawn Wells shows up again, this ...

The excellent opening captures the quintessence of the four guys as they set out on a Saturday morning, Howie to play basketball and the three older guys to take an aptitude test setup by Irene. Wes gets frustrated and gets drunk in a show which is unfortunately played for laughs. Nothing like a happy drunk in the good old 60s. Fortunately, the hangover is played for real. In uncharacteristic fashion, Tom-Tom comes to Wes's rescue. The final scene between Wes (Glenn Corbett) and Irene (Jan Norris) is excellent, as always.

Tom-Tom offers to return a book to the library for Wes. He spends the day wandering around town, playing games with kids and sitting in the graveyard with Nora . Meanwhile, Wes attempts to get a check to the bank before it closes.

This one features Michael Burns as Howie almost to the exclusion of the rest of the cast. The result is a good show, if you want to follow around a fourteen year old in 1962, but it's the biggest dud of the series. It is a good exploration of a young man without parents dealing with loneliness, but it's a glaring reason why the series failed. The college age crowd that was so into the rest of the characters would have been tuning this one out in droves.

What starts off as a seemingly lighthearted Saturday night, ends up a rather grim character study when Nora breaks her date with Tom-Tom to go out with an old boyfriend. Tom-Tom's subsequent journey through the underbelly of Cordella's nightlife is a none too pleasant experience as he battles his own inner demons. In the process, he meets the town minister, played by Russell Johnson who would find fame a couple of years later as the professor on Gilligan's Island. As Tom-Tom is underage, he tries to get a homeless alcoholic to buy him a bottle of booze, a scene that ...

Another show that falls with a resounding thud as Vern steps to the fore in a silly story that revolves around his telling the truth to everyone he meets and the havoc that ensues. It only points out the weakness and limitations they had built into Vern's character. As the show nears its end, it becomes ever clearer that despite Randy Boone's charming interpretation of the character, Vern should have been written out of the show and Howie reduced to a supporting player in favor of Wes and Tom-Tom.

Wes decides to join the Cordella football team when he's offered a partial scholarship. It pushes his already thinly stretched social life over the edge when Irene begins dating a single professor at the college. Much of the show is dedicated to the football program, which proves non too enlightening after the headier fare of the earlier shows. But in the end, reality wins out when Wes quits the team when his grades begin to fail. Contrast that to the 21st Century concept that's elevated football is the cure all for all things spiritual, financial and social. Irene ...

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The series finale was, unfortunately, a bit of a dud. Howie is again the central character as he delves into dating after an infatuation with the older grocer's daughter, Alma Jean Dobson. Meanwhile, Vern's guitar is broken, forcing him to go to the library where he discovers Thomas Wolfe, broadening his horizons. In the end, Vern is dating Alma Jean and Howie has a junior high school sweetheart. Even with the dual storyline of Vern, the show suffers, highlighting the fact that the true strength of the series was the two college men, Wes and Tom-Tom, who barely show ...