Today, I want to know who is your all-time favorite ditzy TV character.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
Upon the passing of the great Suzanne Somers, who was one of the all-time great TV ditzes on Three’s Company as Chrissy Snow (before they took her character waaaaaay past “ditz” into barely having brain function at all) (I just spotlighted the episodes I thought were her best), I thought it was only right to celebrate the perennial TV character….the ditz.
The Ditz is the character whose whole deal on the show is that they don’t have the same intelligence level as the other characters on the show. They might not be dumb, per se, as they might just be unusual more than dumb, but generally speaking, yeah, they’re dumb. Dumb can be funny, naturally. There are a lot of amazing ditzes out there, with Chrissy Snow being one of the most famous examples. Ditzes aren’t gendered, as there are some excellent male ditzes, like Chris Pratt’s Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation and Manny Jacinto’s Jason Mendoza on The Good Place (Michael Schur is really good at ditzes).
My pick, though, would be Gracie Allen on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, where Allen essentially just played her ditz character from her and Allen’s long-running vaudeville and radio show. Gracie’s illogical logic would often be the centerpieces of episodes, and it is amazing to me just how COMPLICATED Allen’s lines were on the show. It takes a lot of hard work to look that dumb, and Allen was a master at it. It was so tough that Allen eventually retired while the show was still doing really well in the ratings, as she was in her 60s and she just had to do SO much on the show, and naturally, her husband, Burns, didn’t want to press her too much (she ended up having a heart attack a few years after the show ended, and passed away in 1964, six years after the show ended. Burns, of course, would live until he was 100).
Here’s a classic bit from the pilot of their series, where Gracie thinks George talks too much about show business, and so she wants to discuss other things…but she doesn’t actually know about other things…
https://youtu.be/seSEznlHeic?si=GgxNlVuo9iNnx21E&t=99
She was quite a talent.
Okay, that’s my answer. How about you?
And feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at brian@poprefs.com!
Angus T. Jones as Jake Harper on Two and A Half Men
Buddy Lembeck (Willie Ames) from Charles in Charge. 🙂
Joey on Friends and Cheryl on Archer come to mind.
Woody on Cheers. (Coach on Cheers as it’s mostly the same character)
As soon as I saw the title of this one—before I read the article—Gracie Allen leapt to my mind. You described what made her so remarkable, sir. She wasn’t a ditz in the manner of most stupid television characters. It was just that Gracie’s logic was off-centre. For example, in one scene of an episode, Gracie returns home with her arms full of flowers. George asks her, “I thought you went to visit your friend Betty in the hospital.”
“I did,” replies Gracie.
“Then, what’s with all the bouquets?”
“I was only doing what you suggested, George. You said when I visited Betty in the hospital, I should take her flowers.”
Gracie’s peculiarities served as the basis for one of the longest running jokes I’ve ever seen in a series. For the first couple of seasons, in many episodes, after a particularly zany action from Gracie, a character would ask Burns, “George, why do you put up with Gracie’s screwy behaviour?”
“Because I love her,” George would reply.
A few seasons after that, a character would say, “George, why do you—”
“Because I love her.”
And near the end of the show’s run, a character would start, ” George—”
“Because I love her.”
Not too long ago, the Good Mrs. Benson and I went out to lunch. So as to not be encumbered by her purse, she locked it in the trunk. Unfortunately, she had done the driving and her car keys were in her purse—which was now locked in the trunk. The car doors were locked, too.
We have AAA, so we put in a call for a locksmith. While we waited, the GMB bemoaned to me, “That was a stupid thing for me to do. Sometimes, I wonder how you can—”
“Because I love you.”
Total agreement with you and the Commander, Brian. Gracie was brilliant at being a nitwit.
My own favorite running gag was that every so often some official would show up at the house to get Gracie to do something. After a few minutes jousting with her byzantine logic, he’d get up, walk out in a daze and leave his hat behind. Then Gracie puts it in a closet full of other hats, showing how often this happens (even the first time they did the gag on the show, there are lots of hats already there).
No greater Ditz than the great Betty White. She played ditz better than anyone
Darius on Atlanta. Hipster Ditz. And if you buy that I got a Maynard G. Krebs to sell you.
Don Adams built a career out of this, from Byron Glick on “THE BILL DANA SHOW” to Maxwell Smart in “GET SMART” to the titular Inspector Gadget. Few male actors were as skilled act seeming to be so confident while also being so dimwitted. I’d say Maxwell Smart gets a bonus since he’s a ditz who is also the star of the show.
I also want to mention one of the biggest sitcom ditzes of my younger years, Christina Applegate as Kelly Bundy on “MARRIED WITH CHILDREN.” Her character didn’t start out that way when the show debuted in 1987, but midway thru the second season in 1988 she began to be portrayed as a dullard who her brother, Bud, could trick into thinking TV shows were classic books for book reports. And then from season three onward, Kelly Bundy just got dumber and dumber, with her own internal logic regarding it (i.e. her brain could get “full”). It’s tough to find a bigger “dumb blonde” stereotype in sitcoms of the era than her.
Great story, Commander.
torn between 2 very different characters from sitcoms from my side of “the Pond”
Mrs Johnson (AKA “Mum”) in Citizen Smith (A mother whose daughter’s Marxist would-be urban guerrilla boyfriend had moved in) was clearly rather dim but goodt-natured and played with charm by Hilda Braid so was endearing.
Father Dougal McGuire (played by Ardal O’Hanlon) in Father Ted was clever in some ways but incapable of seeing basic obvious things (and was convinced nobody expected priests to believe what is written in the Bible)
I’ll add two more:
Gina Bellman on the Britcom “Coupling” is a marvelous ditz, so self-absorbed she doesn’t quite seem to grasp other people are real.
Jodi Thalen on the regrettably obscure 1980s sitcom “Duet,” as the ditzy sister of the female lead who addresses her in one episode: “Jane, while I’m gone you are not to buy anything. You are not to sell anything. You are not to cook anything. You are not to start a fire in the fireplace or anywhere else. And under no circumstances are you to rent a chainsaw!”