That Girl: Leaving the Nest Is for the Birds

That Girl: Leaving the Nest Is for the Birds

ABC

March 2, 1967

Sitcom

DVD

B+

Barbara Avedon, who did four Gidget scripts among many other shows, contributes her only TG script, but it's easily the funniest so far.  Credit must also go to Jerry Van Dyke, as a man who turns from suicide to robbery, which I'll admit doesn't sound like a hilarious plot twist.  The trouble begins when Helen Marie's sister, Ann's Aunt Harriette (Hazel Shermet, who'd gone on to do voices for Wait Till Your Father Gets Home), shows up and can't stop raving about her own daughter, who's married, with a baby and a maid.  The humor is more out there than usual for TG, but still with a connection to believable human behavior.  The final scene manages to be sweet, feminist, and again laugh-out-loud.

Luana Anders previously played Shirley and is Beryl here. 

Gidget: A Hard Night's Night

Gidget: A Hard Night's Night
ABC
April 7, 1966
Sitcom
DVD
C+

Don Porter directed this episode, in which he appears only briefly at the beginning and end.  It's mostly forgettable, except for the shots of the airport in those scenes, Larue's sudden interest in being a writer, and the appearance of actor/composer Frank De Vol as Russ's friend Stu.  I could've done without the bickering couple next door, although I understand they're meant to add to the spookiness.

Gidget: Ring-a-Ding-Dingbat

Gidget: Ring-a-Ding-Dingbat
ABC
February 24, 1966
Sitcom
DVD
C+

After the satires of Dylan and "sickies" earlier in the season, this episode seems particularly dated, like it should've aired a year or two earlier, when the British invasion was fresher and jokes about wigs made more sense.  Not only that, unlike the more mod-looking Mosquitoes on Gilligan's Island, the Dingbats don't even sing!  So it's mostly Gidget and Larue racing around, trying to find the teen idols, with a pay-off that can't match the classic Davy Jones episode of The Brady Bunch five years later.  Note, I don't think Anne is old enough to have been part of Elvis's first wave of fans, since that would make her about a decade older than Gidget, rather than the more likely five or seven years.

Gidget: Ego-a-Go-Go

Gidget: Ego-a-Go-Go
ABC
January 27, 1966
Sitcom
DVD
B-

While it's fun to see 18-year-old Richard Dreyfuss play a nerd, I think the script could've used another rewrite.  A rivalry is built up between Gidget and a transfer student, but there's no pay-off.  And it looks like Gidget is going to try to go to the "Spinster Hop" with another boy, but that fizzles out.  Kudos though to getting a plausible calendar date for the dance this time: Saturday the 14th, which would place this in either February or March of that year.

Gidget: Image Scrimmage

Still wholesome and unsophisticated
but she's trying.

Gidget: Image Scrimmage
ABC
November 3, 1965
Sitcom
DVD
B

This, the first episode written by Barbara Avedon, is the also the first since the pilot that I feel lives up to its potential.  When Larue's sophisticated New Yorker cousin buys Gidget a "junior ticket" on their blind date to the movies (is that equivalent to a child's ticket or what?), Gidget decides she needs to have a more sophisticated image, which includes a dress with feathers.  The five main cast members all have their moments here, with the height being the reactions to Russ's student with the crush on him explaining that she has a tendency to take things off, like her earrings.

Jan Crawford, who plays cousin Roger, would return in a different role.  Note that I'm tagging Mike Nader even when he's uncredited and/or has no lines.