My Mother the Car : Symbol for bad television……

Over the years MMTC has become a symbol for really bad television. Although the premise was far fetched, the situations (remember "sitcom" is shorthand for "situation comedy")were no more lame than many other comedies at the time. Did anyone really ever live next door to a family like The Munsters? Were The Monkees high drama? Was life in a German p.o.w. camp one big laugh-fest as in Hogan's Heroes? Lighten up.its TELEVISION! After all we've come a long way in forty years, entertainment now is watching some freak eat a live worm. Come to think of it, give me back the talking car
BigPhil

I could never watch the late great Avery 'Manzini' Schreiber in the Cheetos commercials and not remember MMTC.

And when the late great Louis 'Zombo' Nye cracks a joke about this show on The Munsters. With Munsters on tv all the time, makes you wonder if the Zombo episode is the only reference young people of today ever hear of MMTC..

A 1928 PORTERTHAT'S MY MOTHER DEAR!

This show was a bit before my time. I was born in 1965, You are right about the Zombo episode! That's probably where I first heard of it. Thank God for YouTube. Out of curiousity I've watched some clips of My Mother the Car there.
However I think Pink Lady and Jeff may have replaced it as the symbol for bad TV.

Pink Lady was certainly one of the worst variety shows ever. Who was the network programming genius who thought, "Let's do a musical variety hour starring two Japanese girls who are totally unknown in the United States and who can barely speak English!"?



All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?

. and the talking HORSE !

Don't hate on Mr. Ed!!!

I remember when MMTC first aired in '65. I was 9 and had recently started a lifelong love affair with old cars. And there it was, a new TV show with an old car AS THE STAR! I loved it! The show didn't survive but it set my love affair in concrete.

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans

I watched this show as a kid, and I loved the theme song, but my main memory of the show is Mother the Car punishing Dave for being a bad boy by rolling onto onto his foot and spanking him with the door. Sick!

I agree! TV has given us way worse than this (before and since!). How anyone thought ALF was funny is still beyond me! Mr. Ed was on TV at the same time and was a HIT! Why was a talking horse more plausible or palatable than a talking CAR?

Why was a talking horse more plausible or palatable than a talking CAR?

It was the sexism of the time. The talking horse was male and the talking car was female!



All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?

But even ALF and the 80's shows are better than most of the junk, this current tv era is 10 times much worse.

The Two Party system sucks ass and always will

Vote libertarian or Constitution party

Early TV was famously described in its day as a "vast wasteland". But things have changed. A lot of modern stuff falls under the category of "vast toxic wasteland".

I don't understand who nominated this for such a dubious award. I never listen to critics anyway. I recall when "Star Wars" originally came out. For some reason the critics didn't think much of that movie. We all know it went on to be a blockbuster hit. Yet, I don't think it was given the recognition in the film industry it deserved.

I was a child when MMTC was first broadcast. I liked it. I liked it. I accepted this show as just another fantasy-themed show running at that time, like "Mr Ed".

In my child's mind they seemed about the same - a horse talks, a car talks.

Haven't seen any of MMTC since the 60's. It's nostalgia for me and I look forward to watching some episodes.

I wonder if the people who rate this as the worst stinker ever, got to watch this as a child or were older when they first watched it?

"My Mother The Car" fit in with many of the other fantasy-themed series that were on around that time. Such as: "Mr. Ed.", I Dream Of Jeannie", Bewitched", Munsters", "Twilight Zone", "Outer Limits","The Addams Family", "Star Trek"(TOS),"Lost In Space","Time Tunnel","Voyage to the Bottom Of The Sea". I watched all of these in the 60's and really liked them.

I love fantasy and science fiction shows to this day and believe it's because there were so many shows in those genres while I was growing up, that I developed a life long preference for fantasy and science fiction shows.

These shows were aired between the 60's and 70's when there were only 3 channels to watch. I'm very glad that as a kid during that time period, there was something kids could enjoy besides cartoons and 'The Mickey Mouse Club" reruns.

Who remembers "The Ugliest Girl In Town" that was also one of the worst sitcoms ever made?

Speaking of stinkers,"F-Troop" was no better.

And speaking of fantasy themed series,I'm surprised no one even mentioned the classic spy spoofs like "The Man From UNCLE",and "Get Smart".

And if no one even mentioned if World War II in a German P.O.W. Camp was supposed to be a barrel of laughs on "Hogan's Heroes".

Then no even mentioned about a bunch of ragtag sailors causing choas and hilarious hijinks in the South Pacific during World War II on "McHale's Navy".

The only WWII series from the 1960's that took its theme seriously was "Combat!"

raysond: "speaking of fantasy themed series,I'm surprised no one even mentioned the classic spy spoofs like 'The Man From UNCLE',and 'Get Smart'."

Probably because those were both excellent shows.

raysond: "And if no one even mentioned if World War II in a German P.O.W. Camp was supposed to be a barrel of laughs on 'Hogan's Heroes'."

That one wasn't. Perhaps it wasn't silly enough to be included with My Mother the Car, but it was pretty bad. However, I do remember reading an article back in the late 'seventies that called it one of the most destructive TV shows ever produced. The writer's thesis was that it not only made light of something that wasn't the least bit funny (in retrospect I'm surprised more World War II vets didn't complain), but more importantly, that it depicted the Germans as buffoons and suggested that their embrace of Nazism was the result of stupidity.

That wasn't true. The Germans were bright and capable, just culturally sick. Nazi-like regimes can crop up anywhere including here in the U.S. In fact, we're dangerously close to the brink right now, though perhaps not quite as close as we were in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

That article listed several shows as destructive, not always the ones you'd expect. Like, I remember it mentioned All in the Family as a case of unintended destructiveness. Audiences were supposed to hate Archie Bunker. They were supposed to laugh at him, not with him, but the plan backfired. Instead, Archie became a hero to many. Producer Norman Lear was shocked.

That's very true about the World War II themed sitcoms. My dad was a WWII veteran who saw action in the Pacific and I remember him saying that if the Japanese were as stupid as portrayed on McHale's Navy the war would have lasted about 15 minutes. Same goes for the Germans on Hogan's Heroes. As for All in the Family, Lear wanted audiences to hate Archie, but despite Archie's limited education and terrible vocabulary he certainly had a lot more common sense than his meatheaded son-in-law.

The people that made All in the Family were ultra-liberal, but they knew successful drama requires characters you care about. Obviously Archie Bunker personified the "bad" philosophy, but you were never supposed to hate him. He even scored a few points, such as being in the superior position of an honest breadwinner while Meathead was waiting to grow up. There was no shortage of stupid politics, but Lear and his people put the quality of the show ahead of that, and that's why they were successful.

Whoa,whoa, whoa, whoa, Twilight Zone??? Fantasy? Twilight Zone was an anthology, wrapped and dripping with irony. Some were Sci-Fi, to be sure, and that makes people think fantasy, but Sci-Fi is just science that hasn't happened yet. The Outer LImits was a blatant rip-off of TZ, but leaning more toward goofy looking monsters and scarier, especially for kids. OL had some thought provoking episodes, but I consider TZ the greatest product that Television ever produced. Totally relatable to nearly everyone, even today.Rod Serling and Richard Matheson were two of the finest writers that came out of that era, and I resent you linking TZ and OL to "My Mother the car". Bewitched, yes, I dream of Jeannie, Mr. Ed, and The flying nun, sure. But They are in their own category and even Star Trek linkage should be avoided. Not that these shows aren't fun to watch, But just because Walter Cronkite and Laverne & Shirley come at you from the same screen doesn't make them comparable!

Maybe it wasn't the talking car that gave this show its bad reputation, but that the car was inhabited by the soul of the guy's mom his dead mom! I remember my dad (who was usually pretty open-minded) saying, "Awww, that's in bad taste!"

At least Mr. Ed wasn't a reincarnated dead guy say, Wilbur's late father come back as a horse (although really, that would make more sense than coming back as a car).

Oh, well. I agree that My Mother the Car wasn't the dumbest thing on television. I think It's About Time tied for that.

I totally agree.

If "My Mother The Car" wasn't the dumbest thing to ever grace television,then I can think of several that were FAR OFF even worst"F-Troop","It's About Time",to even to an extent "Gilligan's Island",and "The Ugliest Girl In Town" to name a few. Who remembers "Ichabod and Me"?

"Mr. Ed" was basically a kids show. Yeah,take a silly owner and his talking horse.a show that was made especially for kids! It's a miracle that this show lasted a mere five seasons before it was finally taken off the air in 1966.

"The Ugliest Girl In Town" was the worst of the worst. When it premiered in 1968,this was the show that replaced the hugely popular BATMAN on ABC after two seasons.

raysond@hotmail.com

The 60's were a decade of drugs, war, & many more. It seems like show creators were on drugs when they thought of a lot of the shows back then. Some were great, others, like MMTC, were horrible.

The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s had an episode where Bob was givining a lecture on education tv and froze up. He alter said it was the worst tv show ever but his friend said the second episode of My Mother the Car was teh worst ever.

I always suspected that was some kind of in joke and somebody at the Bob Newhart Show worked on My Mother the Car.

It must have been Howard played by Bill Daily. He was in the 2nd episode oh MMTC.