That Girl: The Drunkard

That Girl: The Drunkard
ABC
April 18, 1968
Sitcom
DVD
D+

This collaboration between Danny Arnold and Ruth Brooks Flippen just doesn't work at all.  Sid Caesar plays Marty Nickels, a TV comic with a drinking problem.  (I believe this was about a decade before his real life drinking problem, but that doesn't make this any less painful to watch.)  He casts Ann, partly for her legs, even though one of her rivals is Teri Garr.  Then he shows up at her apartment drunk-- three nights in a row!-- and each morning thinks that he's slept with her.  (He asks her if she's old enough to vote, i.e. over 21.)  And then his mother shows up, just so that he can hear that "Mrs. Nickels" is in Ann's bedroom and think that he's married Ann.  (Audrey Christie, who plays his mother Ella Nickels, was previously Miss Dailey and was ten years older than Caesar, who was not aging well.)  The episode is tasteless, unfunny, implausible even on farcical terms, just a mess.  In fact, the worst episode of any show I've watched so far.  The only reason I'm not going lower with the grade is because Ann at least wears cute outfits.