bkoganbing
My Favorite Martian was an amusing comedy of the middle sixties in America that had a nice following. Sad to say that our advances in space travel culminating in the Martian probe rendered syndication of the show practically nil. Still those of us who recall it have some fond memories.While covering the flight of America's fastest jet at the time, the X-15, reporter Tim O'Hara discovers a crashed Martian vessel with an alien inside. He takes the ship and the alien home with him, realizing he's got the scoop of the century.It's not as easy as all that as Bill Bixby discovers. As Tim O'Hara, Bixby's your average 20th century American male, trying to earn a living to make money to spend on the women he chases. And he discovers that he rather likes the Martian he's taken in. So he starts referring to Ray Walston as his Uncle Martin.Walston and Bixby had a marvelous chemistry together which was the secret of the show's success. I enjoyed Ray Walston in everything that man ever did, from the devil in Damn Yankees to his crusty judge in Picket Fences. As for Bixby this was the first of several TV series that established him as a fine light comedian. More serious roles would come later in his career.Bixby and Walston rent a room over the garage of Mrs. Brown played by Pamela Britton. She was a good hearted soul who accepted Tim's explanation of his newly arrived uncle without question. But always lurking around was Detective Brennan of the LAPD. Alan Hewitt was at his supercilious best. He was jealous because he thought Walston might be moving in on his time with Britton. He was never satisfied with all the explanations he got about Walston. Hewitt's curiosity was the basis for about half the episodes.Walston was a marvelous alien, over a 1000 years old, an expert in fact on Earth history because he'd made many trips here for research. He could read minds, levitate objects, and with the raise of a couple of antenna from the back of his head, disappear. Some of these things were of inestimable value to Bixby as a reporter.My Favorite Martian was a cute comedy that sadly will have no basis in truth because of our recent discoveries about Mars. Wouldst we could go there and find a race of Ray Walstons. We could probably learn a lot.
Aldanoli
During its first two seasons on the air, "My Favorite Martian" often really *did* seem like the story of a Martian anthropologist providing insights into human society. In "We Love You, Miss Pringle" (the show's finest episode), for example, Uncle Martin helps convince a high school graduating class to honor Miss Pringle, one of the toughest (though hardly one of the nicest) teachers at Tim's old school. Martin used his "special abilities" to reveal that she had often helped students in trouble – but always behind the scenes. Or in "Martian Report #1," Martin decided to "study" a little orphan girl because Martian children have no "childhood" -- but when she learned about this and was hurt by it, he was forced to confront that she was a real person with feelings – not just a specimen.Sadly, by the third season, these "human interest" stories were largely forgotten, and each episode followed a predictable formula: in the first half of the episode, one of Martin's gadgets would wreak some kind of havoc (e.g., he accidentally exchanged his personality for that of Mrs. Brown; he shrank himself into a bottle, and had folks thinking he was a genie when it was opened; he developed a "Midas touch" and turned everything he touched into gold; and so on). The second half of the episodes were then devoted to "undoing the damage" from the first half.The worst, though, were a series of completely absurd "spy" shows "inspired" by the "Man from U.N.C.L.E." craze in which an organization called "CRUSH" battled a government agency called "TOPSEEK," with Martin and Tim caught in the middle. It was perhaps a useful "filler" idea the first time they used it, but with repetition, these episodes played like live-action cartoons. Even Ray Walston complained about the silliness of many of the third-season scripts.Despite these occasional shortcomings, though, in many ways this show was ahead of its time: apart from Superman, it was the first show to feature a main character endowed with special abilities, premiering a year before the whole boatload of such shows (Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Mr. Terrific – not to mention the Munsters and the Addams Family) that populated television during the Sixties. Those first two seasons rarely relied on contrived "Martian havoc" to carry the episodes, and instead often had wonderful stories in which the characters acted like real people and Martin's powers or gadgets only incidentally were involved. The concluding scene in the "Miss Pringle" episode or Martin's scenes with the little girl in "Martian Report," for example, had a poignancy rarely found in what was supposed to be a comedy show.The scripts on the show were also often quite sophisticated; for example, Martin was forever telling Tim it was "no time for levity" – not "jokes," but "levity." Martin's well-developed vocabulary undoubtedly sent more than one viewer scrambling for a dictionary. And one of the few redeeming features of the last season, when Martin and Detective Brennan were always trying oneupmanship, was that they were constantly quoting Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Ben Jonson, or Edgar Allan Poe to one another.Perhaps most importantly, there was a remarkable chemistry between Bill Bixby and Ray Walston that's evident from the pilot onward. They genuinely seemed to care about one another, and that chemistry made what was otherwise a far-out premise seem, in their capable hands, completely believable. Had they stuck to the human interest stories and not gone in for gadget-driven plots, the show could have lasted a lot longer than it did.
mack3175
This was a fun show to watch. But in the department of magic shows, it could not be the success that Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie where. It was funny, and at times the special effects seemed hoaky, but it was still a good show. Ray Walston was charming as the martian who rooms with human Reporter Tim O'Hara, played comicly well by Bill Bixby. This show could have lasted one more seasons or two.
Itsamoomoo
Even as a young kid back in the 60's I knew this was bad. But a lot of years have passed since watching this back to back with "Gilligan's Island" on weekday afternoons, and after having recently re-discovered this on cable's TV Land, it's not as bad as I remember. Okay, it's still bad, who am I trying to kid. But, compared to what I see on prime time today, this show is actually holding my interest.For example. In a recent episode, next door neighbor Mrs. Brown was complaining about the flowers in her garden wilting and dying from the current heatwave. So, the Martian (Ray Walston) does that little thing with his finger and makes them all fresh again and erect. I would much rather see this than "Early Edition's" Kyle Chandler trying to rescue victim #981 from a piano crashing on his head.Again who am I trying to kid. I changed the channel after watching the flowers come back to life. I'll check out the next episode.