We continue our countdown of my favorite 1970s Christmas TV episodes with 1977’s “A Child is Given” from Family.
As we get higher on the list, we run into the same problems I discussed with The Bob Newhart Show, namely that on a pure meritorious ranking of all of the episodes that I watched, there would be multiple episodes of Family on this countdown, but, well, come on, that’d be boring as heck. If there were multiple AMAZING Christmas episodes of Family, then sure, I’d feature more than one, but they were all basically the same general level of quality. All better than, say, Mork and Mindy or Three’s Company, but not much different from each other, to the point where I think it really made more sense to put some more variety into the list and simply pick my favorite of the four Family Christmas episodes, and that’s what I’ve done.
The first season of Family, a series following the Lawrences, a couple and their three children (one, a single mother in law school, one nearing the end of high school and one just about to start high school), was a miniseries, but it was so well-received that the show was brought back as a regular series. It was very critically acclaimed, and made a star out of Kristy McNichol, who played the youngest child, a tomboy nicknamed “Buddy.” McNichol and Gary Frank, who played middle child, Willie, both won Supporting Actor/Actress Emmys for the show’s second season. The mother of the family, Kate, played by Sada Thompson, won an Emmy for Best Actress for the show’s third season. Meredith Baxter Bierney played the oldest child, Nancy, (a different actor played the role in the miniseries), and while I wouldn’t say the show made her a star, it didn’t hurt her career, either, and she soon began a big star as the mother on Family Ties (in an interesting bit of trivia, the original actor Gary David Goldberg wanted for Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties was Matthew Broderick, but Broderick wasn’t willing to give up his work in the theater just yet. In any event, Broderick’s father, James Broderick, played the father on Family).
Okay, so the first Christmas episode of Family was in Season 2, and it involved Doug (the father) learning that his father is engaged to a younger woman who had been part of a scandalous romance in her past that involved lost money, so Doug expresses his concern to his dad, who gets upset, and in the end, Doug apologizes and everyone spends Christmas together. It’s a well-told episode (a major side plot is Nancy dealing with the fact that her ex-husband, Jeff, technically has custody of the son for Christmas, and he plans on going on a trip with the boy over the holiday. He ultimately changes his mind, not wanting to deprive Nancy of seeing her son on Christmas).
The fourth season saw the introduction of a fourth child, as the great child actor, Quinn Cummings (hot off of an Oscar nomination for her role in The Goodbye Girl) plays their new youngest child, adopted after her parents, longtime friends of Doug and Kate, are both killed in an accident. Season 4’s “Gifts” sees Annie run away after a Christmas present her mother bought her earlier in the year arrived, making Annie feel she wasn’t really a part of the Lawrence family, so she runs away. Marge Redmond is excellent as an Army Sergeant who takes Annie under her wing at the bus depot. It’s a good episode.
Season 5’s Christmas episode was dumb, so we’ll skip it (but, again, Family had a high enough level of skill that even a fairly dumb episode was still decent enough).
So that leaves Season 3’s “A Child Is Given,” where Jeff returns from a trip with his son, Timmy, who is complaining about a minor cold. Well, it turns out to be a major infection, and Timmy is soon in the hospital, fighting for his life. Something I didn’t note is that the Lawrences lost a child to an accident before the series began due to a boating accident (Holy Ordinary People, right?), and his death hung over his family’s heads like a cloud. He was named Timmy, as well. Not only that, but Willie had just lost his most recent girlfriend, Lizzy, to a fatal illness, so while ANY family would have a hard time with something like this, this particular family REALLY struggled.
One of the best parts of the episode is the interactions between Willie and Buddy, who had become VERY close after the death of the brother who was between them in age, and they had both bought each other a very special present. In the end, they both donated the present they got for each other to the hospital’s toy donation box. It’s a cute bit, but, well, their presents were so darn specific for each other that it was kind of weird, as why would a kid in the hospital want a fancy fountain pen? The vintage Mickey Mouse Club watch was more likely to be a hit with a kid, but it’s still a bit odd.
In any event, Timmy comes through okay, and they all spend Christmas together, but boy, it’s INTENSE before then, and the show handles everyone’s conflicted emotions really well (like Nancy’s anger at Jeff, and Jeff freaking out because no one was able to get a hold of him to let him know that his son was in the hospital).
