What I watched: The twentieth episode of The Life of Riley, an early sitcom. The episode starred Jackie Gleason, Rosemary DeCamp, Gloria Winters, Sid Tomack and Lanny Rees. It was directed by Herbert I. Leeds, and written by Irving Breecher, Reuben Shipp, and Alan Lipscott. “Valentine’s Day” aired on NBC at 9:30 PM on Tuesday, February 14, 1950, is available to watch on the Internet Archive.
What I thought: Riley and Gillis come home, and imply they’ve been waiting for an hour for Babs to open the door. (I wouldn’t give Riley a key either.) Gillis finds a valentine addressed to Babs, which Riley finds confusing as he thinks Valentine’s Day is on March 15th. Junior is also heading out to see his girlfriend, and Gillis makes a rather surprising joke about him knocking his girlfriend up.
The shoe finally drops for Riley, and he realizes that he forgot to get a valentine for Peg. Gillis finds the whole idea strange. Peg says that she wasn’t expecting Riley home, and tries to rush him out the door to play poker. She also reveals that she has received a valentine, assuming it was from her husband.
Riley swears to not leave Peg’s side so as to not give the “antelope” a chance to swoop in. He starts pestering Peg, trying to figure out her secret admirer’s identity. Riley suspects her old flame Sidney, who he did try to hook up with her in a previous episode. He makes an expensive long-distance call to Brooklyn to check that Sidney hasn’t slipped back to the West Coast.
Meanwhile, Peg is letting someone on the phone know that her husband isn’t home (this was before the meme.) Junior says that he’s taking Babs to the basketball game. I guess neither of them have dates, or maybe they’re just keeping it in the family. An old-looking guy comes to the house looking for Peg, but Riley chases him away.
The next morning, Riley is still so paranoid that he refuses to go to work. Gillis shows up and takes his lunch. Peg whispers on the phone, trying to get her husband out of the house. But it’s not a lothario, just a carpenter coming to check out the spare room. Babs tries to get her dad to go to a movie with her called The Green Monster, which I assume is one of the many now-disavowed Hulk movies. Peg reverse-psychologizes him out the door.
That night, the carpenter is there to start constructing the den, which is meant to be a surprise to Riley. He eavesdrop on the conversation, has a typical misunderstanding, and rushes in to fight the carpenter. He headbutts a plank of wood, but Peg is happy because he loves her enough to be jealous. It turns out that Junior was the one who sent the Valentine, on Riley’s instructions from a year ago. And so Riley discovers that his enemy is the most fearsome foe of all: the self.
What I thought: After the rash of birthday episodes and the flashback episodes, we see Life of Riley turn to another familiar device for churning out twenty-odd sitcom episodes a year: the holiday episode. And this episode aired on the actual holiday, as opposed to contemporary shows where Christmas episodes air in early November. So, still no points for originality, but at least points for timeliness.
Valentine’s Day has a history going back to the fifth century, and the modern tradition of sending valentines to a loved one was popularized in the 1800s. But this episode seems to suggest that the current practice where February 14 is an overdetermined focal point for romantic love is much more recent then that. Despite the fact that the whole episode is about Valentine’s Day, nobody in the Riley family seems to really care that much.
In a contemporary sitcom (or indeed, in a contemporary reality), a husband forgetting the day would be a major source of conflict, but here it’s treated as a minor occurrence. None of the characters seem to have romantic plans for the evening — Riley and Peg don’t have a dinner or any other kind of celebration planned, and Babs and Junior are abandoning their respective paramours to go see some hoops. Gillis seems to find the whole idea of adults participating in the festivities silly, and there’s no suggestion that he’ll be in trouble for this.
Instead, Valentine’s is presented as chiefly the exchanging of gifts, done primarily by young people — Riley getting his wife a card at all is seen as charmingly romantic but slightly juvenile. I can’t really say if this more low-key portrayal was typical of the era, but it is interesting. Maybe this is before the hospitality and jewellery industries really got their hooks into the culture, or maybe this is another sign of the Rileys’ working-class status.
The actual story of the episode is pretty by-the-numbers, with Riley once again imagining a suitor for his wife that doesn’t exist. The only thing that makes it a little interesting is that the identity of the “secret admirer” and the carpenter misunderstanding is kept secret from the audience for as long as it’s left unknown to Riley, a marked break from past episodes which practically rubbed our noses in the dramatic irony.
Peg, of course, always responds to these jealous fits with affection, in this case even remodelling an extra room in the house for his pleasure. (What happened to that boarder they took in?) Perhaps this is why Riley doesn’t care about Valentine’s Day. Who needs it, when your wife is defined purely by her love for you?
Coming up next: Suspense marks the holiday with the most romantic celebration of all: suicide.
The Eternal Couch Potato 