Thursday, July 06, 2006

Reasons Why I’m Loving Gidget Lately

When I was a kid I used to watch the Gidget movies after school on the 4:30 movie, but I’d never really seen the TV show, starring Sally Field. It’s been showing on Me-TV lately at 12:30, and as is often the case, I’m inclined to present a list of reasons I love this show. (Please note utter absence of ironic enjoyment here, for reals.)

1) The fashion! Oh, the fashion. Cute fabrics, bright colored dresses, little cardies, oh, the fashion.
a. The colors! Just before Me-TV switched to Gidget for the summer, they were showing Hawaii Five-O, which was also quite enjoyable for the fashion, but especially for the Hawaiian sixties color schemes and set furnishings. Same on Gidget.

2) The crazy sixties-beach dialogue! A sample: “You are the weirdest thing the
cooks ever produced!” “Not as weird as you, Jazz!”
3) Trying to identify the supporting cast and guest stars! Gidget’s semi-regular
circle of friends include a teenage Barbara Hershey and One Day at a Time’s Bonnie Franklin! With brown hair styled in sort of a – well, not a beehive but something like that.
4) The humor/premise of the show! At times, it’s actually funny, and at other
times it’s actually really sweet. The basic premise of the show is that Gidget is this bright, earnest, spunky, fifteen year old beach girl, daughter of a widowed
college professor (who makes a lot of “oh, Gidget” faces). So she’s lost her
mom and it comes up once in a while. I just watched an episode where Gidget liked this older man and mistakenly thought he returned her feelings, and in the end after she figures it out she has a heart-to-heart with her dad and asks when it stops hurting and he says it never really does but it starts to hurt a little bit less every day. And she says something like, I guess you know about that, don’t you dad. Also, in my opinion, although yes, boys are a recurring topic, Gidget is very much a sort of junior/pre women’s lib type of gal.
5) The beach location shots!
6) The dancing! The swim, the monkey, etc. Awesome.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

She's always been the Bassturd to me anyway. Have you seen the TV show? Do they have it in NY?

Dean said...

I have to confess that I've never liked Sally Field. She's just too Sally Field for me. I don't know why I would feel that way. Probably some nasty personal deficiency, of which I should be ashamed.

Anonymous said...

But TV Sally Field is way different from movie Sally Field. FAR more charming!

I agree with everything on the list of why Gidget is delightful. But I can't ever decided if the Freudian undertones are cute or creepy. All of that "wait til you see my Gidget ... that Gidget is MINE!" with pictures of her and her dad.

Anonymous said...

It's true, you could look at the titles of the TV show as a little Freudian, but the show isn't at all. The title photo montage, I will say, is just plain weird!

Supernova is pretty frigging hilarious. Look for a post here soon.

Anonymous said...

Since you are in Chicago, and enjoy Gidget so, the world premier of Gidget, the stage version, based on the book is currently at CityLit Theatre on the Northside if you were interested! It's a little bit racier than the tv show and movie because the book is a bit racier, but it is still an amazing show! I highly recommend it!