Series / My World… and Welcome to It

Left to right: John Monroe, Ellen Monroe, Lydia Monroe. Foreground: Cartoon dog by James Thurber.

My World... and Welcome to It was an American sitcom that aired on NBC during the 1969-70 season. The cartoons and short stories of James Thurber served as the basis for the program’s material, with the show’s title being lifted from one of the author’s books. William Windom played Thurber Expy John Monroe, a crotchety and cynical Deadpan Snarker cartoonist/writer who works for the fictional New York-based magazine The Manhattanite (clearly modeled after The New Yorker) and lives in the Connecticut suburb of Westbury with his patiently indulgent wife, Ellen (Joan Hotchkis) and precocious pre-teen daughter, Lydia (Lisa Gerritsen). John’s managing editor Hamilton Greeley (Harold J. Stone) and fellow magazine writer Phil Jensen (Henry Morgan) are the show’s most often seen recurring characters.

The idea for a TV show based on Thurber's work was formulated more than a decade earlier by Melville Shavelson, with two unsuccessful pilot episodes being aired in 1959 and 1961 before the series was finally picked up several years later. Shavelson was heavily involved in the series in several off-screen roles, as were Sheldon Leonard (best known for Make Room for Daddy, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show) and Danny Arnold (best known for That Girl and Barney Miller).

The show received positive reviews for its polished scripts, clever format that neatly integrated live action and animated sequences (the latter derived from Thurber’s cartoons and produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises), and deftly-mixed elements of fantasy and reality. Despite this, the half-hour sitcom only managed to muster moderately good viewership numbers (in part because it was slotted against ratings juggernaut Gunsmoke) and was cancelled after only 26 episodes. It subsequently won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, and Windom took the Emmy for best actor in a comedy series.

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My Tropes… And Welcome to Them:

• Absent Animal Companion:
  • When the title character (a poodle) in "Christabel" dies later in this episode, the family adopts a puppy as replacement. It does not appear afterwards.
  • "The Saga of Dimity Ann" focuses on the family's cat, who is presented as having been a member of the household for a long while. She is otherwise not encountered or referred to before or after this episode.
• Acid Reflux Nightmare: Subverted in "Darn That Dream." Lydia has a nightmare, which she attributes to eating dinner so soon before bedtime. John debunks this, telling her that's an old wives' tale.
• Adolf Hitlarious: A Black Comedy example. The episode "Dear Is a Four-Letter Word" sees John daydreaming that school principal Otto Shultz, who called him into his office to discuss Lydia, gradually morphs into a blustering Adolf Hitler. Subverted in that once John begins to actually listen to what the principal has to say, he realizes the man is very reasonable and sympathetic to John’s viewpoint (unlike Lydia’s teacher, Miss Skidmore, who initiated the complaint).
• The Alcoholic:
  • Ulysses S. Grant is portrayed as a drunken sot in the story John makes up in "Man Against the World." He is seen slurring his words and staggering around after being wakened up, immediately heads for a bottle of whisky sitting on his desk, and is so soused that he surrenders to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox at the end of The American Civil War despite having won the conflict.
  • Phil Jensen, John's writer friend from The Manhattanite, is seen drinking in Cochran's Bar (the magazine's nearby watering hole) as often as he's seen at work. When he says "I'll drink to that" in the episode "Rules for a Happy Marriage," one of his magazine colleagues replies that he'll drink to anything. In "Child's Play," Phil suggests he and John write their collaborative article assignment at Cochran's — and when John says they can't spend two whole days in a bar, Phil says, "Why not? I've done it before." And in "The War between Men and Women," his wife accuses him of having drunk twelve martinis at John's party the previous evening — Phil corrects her, saying he only had nine!
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: In "The Mating Dance," Lydia has to choose between two boys she wants to go with to a school dance. One is Elbert, who is sensitive and Book Smart, while the other is Leonard, a bullying lout and misogynistic ignoramus who threatens Elbert if he doesn't back off from Lydia. At the end of the episode, she picks the latter when Elbert stands up to Leonard and punches him in the eye.
• Animals Hate Him:
  • One of John's dogs (a bloodhound named Irving) is depicted on various occasions to be attacking his master's pants leg, in episodes such as "Man Against the World," "The Shrike and the Chipmunks," "Dear Is a Four-Letter Word," and "Monroe the Misogynist." The act is never shown overtly, though — normally, John is seen from chest-up, looking down at his right leg and making motions to shake the pooch off while canine growling and snarling is heard.
  • John's other pooch, Christabel, is a poodle seen growling at John (during the episode "Christabel"). This episode also has John discussing a short essay he just wrote about a childhood dog his family owned, titled "Muggs: the Dog that Bit People" — and according to the story, Muggs bit everyone in the family but John's mother. Later in the same episode, he says, "Actually, I don't dislike dogs. Dogs dislike me."
  • John's cat Dimity Ann is presented as having bit her master as well as leaping onto him from the porch overhang. This leads to his exasperatedly sneaking the feline out of the house and abandoning her in the woods nearby. (John relents and tries to locate her later, though the cat finds her way back home shortly after anyway.) Occurs in the episode "The Saga of Dimity Ann."
• Artistic License – Awards: In "The Fourth Estate," John proudly states that he won the Beekman Award for Humor the previous year, calling it "the Pulitzer Prize for cartoonists." There are two issues with this: there are in fact a few "Beekman Awards" or "Beekman Prizes," but none are given for humor or cartooning — plus the Pulitzer in fact did offer a prize in the category of editorial cartooning at the time the show aired.
• Artistic License – Law: When Lydia decides to run away from home in "The Disenchanted," John insists on accompanying her. He claims he's required to do so because of what he calls a "very well-known case." He cites it as "Puberty vs. The Senate," which says fathers have to go with their runaway daughters to make sure they get where they're going. John even says you can look it up in the Congressional Record if you don't believe him. Of course there is no such official law.
• Bad Santa: In "Rally Round the Flag," John meets his match when he encounters a snarky, bad-tempered bell-ringing Santa on a Manhattan sidewalk.
  John: Bet that beard gets scratchy, doesn't it?
  Sidewalk Santa: Are you taking a Santa Claus survey or somethin'?
  John: No — I'm just curious.
  Sidewalk Santa: [motions to the kettle next to him] Yeah, well look, friend — uh, drop somethin' in there and move on would ya, you're blockin' the pot.
  John: [drops a coin in the pot] Sorry. There you are — keep the old pot boiling.
  Sidewalk Santa: [looks disparagingly into the kettle] I'm eternally grateful to you. Get lost.
• Bat Out of Hell: John and the new housekeeper Mrs. Simkins are frightened by a frantic bat that gets trapped in the house in "Maid in Connecticut."
• Bested by the Inexperienced: Narrowly averted in "Little Girls Are Sugar and Spice — and Not Always Nice." John feels the need to connect more closely with Lydia and proposes they play chess together as a bonding experience. Even though the girl is new to the game, she puts her far more experienced father on the ropes, to the point where John finds excuses to interrupt the game and later consults with a chess-expert friend of his at work to try and figure out how to beat her. Lydia only lets up when her mother suggests she go easy on John to spare his pride.
• Binomium ridiculus: In "The Human Being and the Dinosaur," John caustically refers to his managing editor Hamilton Greeley as being either a "Hypocrite gibbon" or "One-track-minded baboon" with a scientific name of "Hamiltonis stupidicus."
• Bizarre Taste in Food: In "Christabel," the title character (a poodle) is described as a frequent forager in the Monroe's garden, with a particular passion for raspberries and asparagus.
• Black Comedy: Some of the humorous elements in the series derive from dark situations not ordinarily considered comedic, with a few instances crossing into Values Dissonance territory.
  • John imagines his wife being hung from a chandelier by her neck after she says too many things that irritate him in "Man Against the World."
  • The episode "Dear Is a Four-Letter Word" sees John daydreaming that school principal Otto Shultz, who called him into his office to discuss Lydia, gradually morphs into a blustering Adolf Hitler. Subverted in that once John begins to actually listen to what the principal has to say, he realizes the man is very reasonable and sympathetic to John’s viewpoint (unlike Lydia’s teacher, Miss Skidmore, who initiated the complaint).
  • In "The Shrike and the Chipmunks," children's book author George Lockhart is unable to write a commissioned story for The Manhattanite until he allows himself to produce a work that's notably Darker and Edgier than his usual output. Titled after this episode, the story is loaded with deadpan snark, one in which the depicted animal characters behave foolishly and end up dead.
• Blackmail: Implied in "The Mating Dance." When John asks Leonard, the uncouth and rough-spoken boy (he says "ain't" a lot, for starters) escorting Lydia to a party what grade he got in English, he proudly says he got an A+. However, it becomes clear this came about because the teacher got behind on the payments for a used car Leonard's father sold him, not because Leonard actually earned the grade.
• Blowing a Raspberry: At the conclusion of "The Middle Years," a cartoon version of comely widow neighbor Mrs. Bessinger walks away from John's cartoon house. An animated representation of Ellen from the chest up morphs from the back of the house and blows a raspberry at her "rival."
• Box-and-Stick Trap: John rigs a box propped up with a stick and baited with saucers of food and milk in order to try and catch the title feline character in "The Saga of Dimity Ann." He hopes to capture the cat with it in order to sneak her out of the house and abandon her in the nearby woods without getting bitten. Turns out he manages this by plying her with a catnip mouse instead.
• Braces of Orthodontic Overkill: Lydia is frequently seen wearing a wire teeth-straightener that wraps around the sides of her face when at home.
• The Bully: Lydia is asked by two boys to a school dance in "The Mating Dance." She agrees to go with the uncouth Leonard, but it turns out his brainy rival Elbert backed off from pursuing Lydia because Leonard bullied him to stay away from her. John encourages Elbert to stand up to Leonard, telling him a story about how his grandfather bested three members of a bullying family. But things backfire when Elbert stands up for himself and punches Leonard — the latter backs down crying and Lydia feels sorry for him.
• Can't Take Criticism: John is normally very thin-skinned when others criticize his work. Examples:
  • "The Ghost and Mr. Monroe" sees John temporarily quit his magazine job when managing editor Hamilton Greeley critiques one of his cartoons.
  • When John submits two of his cartoons to his daughter's school newspaper in "The Fourth Estate," he is very upset to find that the student who serves as managing editor rejected them as unacceptable. John is sufficiently irked that he goes over to the boy's house to confront him about it.
• Cat Concerto: In "A Friend of the Earth," the wife of John's new neighbor Paul Morton throws a boot out the window when she hears caterwauling felines attracted by the sound of John's rusty gate. Her aim must be very bad, because it ends up breaking the window in Lydia's room.
• Catfight: The climax of "The Middle Years" shows John daydreaming that his wife Ellen and comely widow neighbor Mrs. Bessinger are engaging in a fiery battle over him. It’s sufficiently spirited that the two women are seen zealously destroying John's living room doing so.
• Child Hater: Once he gets tipsy on bourbon, children's book author George Lockhart is ironically revealed to be a man who doesn't much like children — and decidedly to Ellen's disgust, given how much she likes the man's books.
  John: Come to think of it, though, if we didn't have wives, we wouldn't have children.
  George: You bet your sweet life you wouldn't. I used to think that children were nature's practical joke upon the human race — pointless, tedious, and in questionable taste, but still a joke.
  John: Aren't they?
  George: No — a mistake, not a joke. Nature, my boy, has no sense of humor. Nature goofed.
  Lydia: That's funny!
  George: In five thousand years of comparative civilization, no one has ever discovered a practical use for the human young. In many of the higher forms of animal life, the adult male devours the young — the guppy, the alligator, the lowly hamster...
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • John tells Lydia about his odd, eccentric relatives in "Darn That Dream." These include:
    • Cousin Horace, who consults what he thinks is a ghost (named Jeremiah) in his bedroom to get horse racing tips.
    • Aunt Dora, who is afraid of burglars and puts a pile of shoes outside her room before bedtime, throwing them down the hall while yelling "Hark!" when she thinks she hears something in the middle of the night.
    • Aunt Hester, who is also afraid of burglars and piles all her valuables outside her door before bedtime, attaching a note telling the robber to take everything and not pipe chloroform under the door. She also wears a surgical mask to bed as an extra precaution.
  • "Maid in Connecticut" centers around John's new housekeeper Mrs. Simkins, who is deathly afraid of using the electrical kitchen appliances and the vacuum cleaner, and is too frightened to try lighting the pilot light on the stove when it goes out. She can cite an eccentric worst-case scenario story to justify each of her fears.
• Darker and Edgier: invoked An In-Universe example occurs in "The Shrike and the Chipmunks." Author George Lockhart's claim to fame is writing sugarcoated children's books, but when he and John are assigned to work together, the two of them put off the assignment until the last minute. Turns out Lockhart is unable to write until he allows himself to produce a work that's notably darker than his usual output. Titled after this episode, the story is essentially a Black Comedy loaded with deadpan snark, one in which the depicted animal characters behave foolishly and end up dead.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • John's dialogue (as well as his cartoons and stories) is crammed with wry wit and withering criticism.
    • A dialogue example from "Dear Is a Four Letter Word" addresses how best to convey affection to daughters and wives:
      Ellen: [giving John advice about how to show affection to his daughter] And chuck her under the chin.
      John: [incredulously] Chuck her under the chin?
      Ellen: Yes. You know... [chucks John under the chin]
      John: Girls like that?
      Ellen: They go mad about it.
      John: And to think of all the times I wasted nibbling on the lobes of ears.
    • "The Mating Dance" opens with this mordant, misogyny-tinged soliloquy on his daughter's transformation from girlhood to pre-teen status:
      John: I'm not much in a hurry to get home today. Last night, I discovered my daughter Lydia at the ripe old age of ten trying on her mother's lipstick. It suddenly dawned on me that our little bundle of joy is about to emerge from her somewhat transparent disguise of being a child and reveal herself as man's basic enemy, the Eternal Female. Now — now, the mating dance begins, and some poor male is going to end up trampled to a pulp. And please, none of you Pollyannas out there can convince me differently — I happen to know her mother.
    • This exchange from "The Shrike and the Chipmunks" concerns John's extreme irritation about having to draw illustrations for a children's book — something his wife thinks is a good idea.
      John: I've done some shameful things in my time, but I have never illustrated a kid book!
      Ellen: It's high time you did — they've needed somebody like you.
      John: Sure — like the lions needed the Christians.
    • The episode "Rally Round the Flag" sees John snarkily criticizing his milkman, who atypically greets him in cheerful fashion around the holidays:
      John: One of the first signs that Christmas is upon us is when your basic, garden-variety milkman, barely civil for fifty weeks of the year, becomes a fawning hypocrite — a milk-bearing Uriah Heep. A sudden expert literary critic, founder of the John Monroe Fan Clubs of America. Yes sir, Christmas is at our throats again.
  • John's friend Phil Jensen has his moments of cynical irreverence as well. An example from "Rally Round the Flag" when he misunderstands what John's problem is with Ellen today and thinks he's looking for a divorce:
    Phil: I wouldn't consider a divorce right now. In the first place, you can't get a lawyer on the phone — they're out buying presents for the judges. Secondly, to start a divorce action at Yuletide would be in bad taste.
• Discreet Dining Disposal: In a Fantasy Sequence of John's shown during "Monroe the Misogynist," he imagines Ellen running off with neighbor Farley Burrell. She says she fed John enough liver to immobilize him, and that now "there's enough iron in his system to knock out a horse." John counters that when she wasn't looking, he dumped his liver in the rubber plant.
• Dramatic Irony: Played for Laughs. The episode "The War between Men and Women" begins with John describing how a catastrophic falling out between Phil Jensen and his wife Ruth began, when Phil became exasperated by Ruth's constant interruptions as he tried to tell a funny story. Partway through John's retelling, his wife Ellen enters and continually interrupts his monologue. Fortunately, John and Ellen do not end up in a fight over this.
• Dumb Dinos: In "The Human Being and the Dinosaur," John tells Lydia a fable about the two title characters. In it, he characterizes the dinosaur as being stupid and doomed to extinction, while the human is smart and destined to rule the world for eternity.
• Eating the Eye Candy: When comely new widow Mrs. Bessinger moves next door to John in "The Middle Years," he ogles her from his studio window while she's sunbathing. Later, things degenerate further into Naughty Birdwatching, when John uses binoculars to gawk at her.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Much of "Seal in the Bedroom" sees Hamilton Greeley and John's wife Ellen failing to see the humor in John's cartoon in which a seal is shown looming over a married couple's bed. Both come around to the cartoon during the course of the episode, though — and when Hamilton brings a live seal to John's house as a comical peace offering at the end of the show, Hamilton, Ellen, and John share a hearty laugh.
• Eye Poke: The last of the three fights between John's grandfather and a bully of similar age who is trying to force him to pay an illegal bridge toll is especially cartoonish, heavily reminiscent of The Three Stooges. Here, John's grandfather bests his tormentor with a series of pokes to the eye interspersed with punches and nose tweaks before pushing him into the river. Occurs in "The Mating Dance."
• Fantasy Sequence: John frequently daydreams imaginary scenarios in these episodes. One especially notable example is seen in "Nobody Ever Kills Dragons Anymore," where he repeatedly imagines himself as a secret agent, complete with a fawning Fanservice Femme Fatale girlfriend. He does so while riding the commuter train to work and in the office, as well as in bed asleep.
• Flower-Pot Drop: Played with in "The War between Men and Women." Just as John and his friends are about to try and sneak Phil Jensen into his house (over the objections of his wife), an older woman neighbor starts throwing flower pots at them from the top floor window of her house to try and shut them up. She doesn't actually hit them, but it's not for lack of trying. In the closing credits, she's listed as "The Sniper."
• Gilligan Cut: The episode "Child's Play" opens with John insisting at length that Hamilton Greeley will never agree to let him collaborate with Phil Jensen on a proposed article for The Manhattanite. As soon as he finishes his monologue, Hamilton enters John's office and says he thinks it's a great idea.
• Hates Everyone Equally: At the close of "Monroe the Misogynist," Ellen shows John various cartoons he has drawn in the past, suggesting that he not only hates women, but also men, dogs, doctors, bars, etc. She goes on to say that it proves that because of his extremely high standards, he hates everybody equally regardless of circumstances.
• Hayseed Name: Zeph Leggin, the local homespun sage and hayseed jokester who matches wits with John in the episodes "A Friend of the Earth" and "Native Wit," has a name which suggests he has a rural Southern or Midwestern background.
• He-Man Woman Hater: John is often referred to as a misogynist by various characters (one episode is even titled "Monroe the Misogynist") — and despite some level of downplaying in the series, there's a good bit of truth to that. For example, he says "I hate women" a few times in the first episode ("Man Against the World"), as well as imagining his wife being hung from a chandelier by her neck after she says too many things that irritate him.
• High on Catnip: In "The Saga of Dimity Ann," John tries to capture the feline title character in order to sneak her out of the house and abandon her in the nearby woods without getting bitten. He first tries to catch her using a Box-and-Stick Trap, but finds success by using a catnip mouse instead. Dimity Ann's reaction clearly suggests she's zoned out after encountering it.
• Hollywood Midlife Crisis:
  • "Nobody Ever Kills Dragons Anymore" sees John acting bored and frustrated with his current humdrum life. Among other things, he repeatedly imagines himself as a secret agent, complete with a fawning Fanservice Femme Fatale girlfriend, as well as half-heartedly exploring the feasibility of running off to Tahiti.
  • When comely new widow Mrs. Bessinger moves next door to John in "The Middle Years," he ogles her from his studio window and imagines what it would be like to develop a clandestine relationship with her, culminating in a daydream in which his wife and Mrs. Bessinger engage in an all-out Catfight over him.
• Imagine Spotting: In "Rules for a Happy Marriage," the various men who work at The Manhattanite present brief cutaways of recent fictional and non-fictional discussions with their wives. Their co-workers act as if they can see them and react accordingly.
• I'm Your Biggest Fan:
  • When Lydia goes over to help out with her school newspaper at her schoolmate Patrick's house, John accompanies her. It turns out Patrick's mother knows of John's work in The Manhattanite and spends their short interaction time gushing over him and trying to impress him with her highbrow and pretentious taste in food and culture. Occurs in "The Fourth Estate."
    Cecily McGraw: How nice to have met the famous, famous John Monroe! I was having a demitasse — won't you join me?
    John: Well... thank you...
    Cecily: [interrupting] Yes, The Manhattanite is one of the few magazines allowed in our home. We particularly find you very Aristotelian...
    John: Do you?
    Cecily: ...occasionally somewhat Shavian, and more often than not spiced with shreds of Camus.
    John: [trying to be polite] Well that's very nice of you to notice.
  • Played with in "The Middle Years" when John has a Fantasy Sequence in which his comely new widow neighbor Mrs. Bessinger visits his home and shamelessly flirts with him. While doing so, she says one of the biggest reasons she's attracted to him is that she loves his cartoons and stories.
    Mrs. Bessinger: [seductively] Oh — just knowing you through your words and cartoons. Oh — those precious words. Oh — those wonderfully funny cartoons...
• Informed Attractiveness: In "The Wooing of Mr. Monroe," Ellen says that Dorothy Carter's legs are very shapely. Once it's pointed out, John agrees with her (he had never considered this before, as he had never thought to look at Dorothy in that light).
• It's All My Fault: When Lydia falls and breaks her arm in "The Mea Culpa Bit," John, John's boss Hamilton Greeley, and John's critic colleague Arthur Charles all take the blame for it, the last two doing so for far-fetched reasons (in addition, they both show up with dolls as a gift for the girl).
• Letting the Air out of the Band: In "The Middle Years," John daydreams a Fantasy Sequence in which his comely new widow neighbor dances seductively and then opens her long coat, the better to show off her tight and skimpy red dress. Classic strip-tease music is heard while she does so — but when John's wife Ellen calls out to interrupt his reverie, the strip-tease music quickly winds down until it stops.
• Literalist Snarking: When Ruth Jensen snidely describes her husband Phil as being pig-headed in "The War Between Men and Women," he angrily shouts "Oink! Oink! Oink!" at her.
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Echoing a recurring trope in Thurber's work, several episodes present husbands and wives as incompatible adversaries, most notably the episode "The War Between Men and Women." Here, an argument between Phil Jensen and his wife Ruth escalates to the point where she throws him out of the house. Phil and his colleagues at The Manhattanite scheme to get him back home covertly and run afoul of their own wives in the process. Detente is finally reached by all parties when the men threaten to close off their wives' credit cards.
• Meaningful Echo: In "The Fourth Estate," John first confronts Hamilton Greeley (managing editor of The Manhattanite) and then Patrick McGraw (managing editor of Lydia's school newspaper) over their rejecting cartoons he submitted for publication. Neither editor likes the cartoons and blows John off with stretches of dialogue that echo each other.
  Hamilton: So I'm going to see that this little drawing of yours gets every chance. I'm going to give it every break. I'll go home, have a drink, relax, take a nice warm bath, have a quiet dinner — all alone — just me and your cartoon. And then I'm gonna study it very carefully... and figure out exactly why I don't like it.
  [and later]
  Patrick: All right — I'll give it every break. After we finish, I'm going to relax, take a nice warm bath, get into bed — then I'll study this very carefully and figure out exactly why I don't like it.
• Mistaken for Cheating: In "The Wooing of Mr. Monroe," John and author colleague Dorothy Carter are assigned to write a story together for The Manhattanite, and when they find the office isn't conducive to the task, they head to Carter's apartment to work on it. When John's wife Ellen calls the office asking for her husband, she is given Carter's number to reach him — and when Carter answers the phone, Ellen assumes John is cheating on her. It takes the rest of the episode before she realizes there's no hanky-panky going on.
• Ms. Fanservice: The episode "The Middle Years" concerns John's sudden fascination with his comely new widow neighbor Mrs. Bessinger. He ogles her throughout the episode, sometimes using binoculars, and at one point imagines her wearing a tight, skimpy red dress and dancing to strip tease music.
• Naughty Birdwatching: When comely new widow Mrs. Bessinger moves next door to John in "The Middle Years," he initially ogles her from his studio window while she's sunbathing. Later, things degenerate further when John uses binoculars to gawk at her.
• No Fourth Wall: John serves as in-universe narrator in all episodes, frequently looking at the camera and addressing the viewer to explain what’s going on, usually in Deadpan Snarker mode.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: The characters who work at The Manhattanite are based on James Thurber and his colleagues at The New Yorker, all of whom were deceased when the show was aired. Specifically:
  • John Monroe is modeled after Thurber.
  • Magazine editor Hamilton Greeley, a recurring character, is based on New Yorker managing editor Harold Ross.
  • Writer Phil Jensen, a recurring character, is very similar to American humorist Robert Benchley.
  • Writer Dorothy Carter in "The Wooing of Mr. Monroe" is modeled after American writer Dorothy Parker.
• Not Listening to Me, Are You?: In "Rules for a Happy Marriage," Nathan Williams presents his magazine colleagues with an Imagine Spot that relates how he eventually informed his wife he was leaving her one evening. During the whole conversation, she intently scrutinizes her fingernails and distractedly says "Uh huh" or "Yes dear" or "Certainly, dear," regardless of what Nathan tells her. This echoes John's situation at home earlier that morning, when he absentmindedly agreed to have lunch with Ellen at noon (naturally, he forgot).
• Old-School Chivalry: Thoroughly inverted in "The Mating Game." When Lydia asks Leonard, the uncouth boy escorting her to a party, if he would open the door for her, he pointedly refuses and in fact seems proud of not doing so. Lydia oddly enough finds this amusing.
  Lydia: [standing in front of the unopened front door] Will you open the door for me?
  Leonard: What’sa matter, you break your arm?
  Lydia: [giggles] You’re terrible!
  Leonard: Yeah, I know.
• Oral Fixation:
  • John's new neighbor Paul Morton is a character with an accent and demeanor that suggests rural Southern or Midwest origins, and he's initially seen chewing on a piece of straw. Occurs in the episode "A Friend of the Earth."
  • John's hayseed joke-telling rival Zeph Leggin is seen in his room chewing on a piece of straw in "Native Wit."
• Parental Obliviousness: John often demonstrates a lack of thoughtfulness or understanding when it comes to his daughter Lydia.
  • In "The Disenchanted," he refuses to allow Lydia to change seats in class to avoid a boy who is distracting her. She runs away to New York City to move in with her Aunt Kate.
  • In "Rally Round the Flag," he has no clue what sort of gift a girl Lydia's age would like for Christmas (his wife normally does the shopping), so he settles on buying a large American flag. Lydia is surprised and disappointed when she opens the present, but decides not to make a fuss about it.
  • In "Dear Is a Four Letter Word," he forgets about his promise to leave work early to attend Lydia's birthday party, arriving two hours after it's over.
  • In "Child’s Play," he forgets all about a picnic date he made with Lydia.
• Parrot Exposition: In "The Wooing of Mr. Monroe," John repeats what Ellen says incredulously when she accuses him of being attracted to fellow writer Dorothy Carter (though Ellen does so to John first).
  John: Well, you haven't asked me what kind of a day we had.
  Ellen: I know what kind of a day you had. I went to see Dorothy Carter at her apartment.
  John: Oh? Where was I?
  Ellen: You had just left. But we talked about you all afternoon.
  John: You talked about me all afternoon?
  Ellen: Dorothy Carter is infatuated with you.
  John: Dorothy Carter is infatuated with me?
  Ellen: Will you please stop repeating everything I say?
• Patriotic Fervor: Negatively played with in "Rally Round the Flag." John has no clue what sort of gift a girl Lydia's age would like for Christmas (his wife normally does the shopping), so he settles on buying a large American flag. Lydia is surprised and disappointed when she opens the present, but decides not to make a fuss about it. She makes the best of things by conspicuously flying the huge flag outside her window, which gets their neighbors in an uproar. The Monroes become the source of intense gossip from townsfolk thinking John and his family have something to hide. Several of John's neighbors cancel their subscriptions to The Manhattanite over this issue. John also gets visited by a group of Revolutionary War battle descendants who pressure him to take the flag down because he's neither a war veteran nor a member of their organization — that he's in fact the only person with a flag up, doing so during a time of year they see as inappropriate. Or as the battle descendants puts it, "Our view is unity in the community, everybody pulling together as a team," and "You're making the rest of us look unpatriotic," and "You're out of line, Monroe — you ought to get in step with the rest of us," and "This is a fine neighborhood, Monroe — love it or leave it." By the end of the episode, the rest of the neighbors have come around to John's way of thinking and are flying flags of their own.
• A Pet into the Wild: After the title character (a cat) bites John in "The Saga of Dimity Ann," his exasperation leads him to sneak the feline out of the house and abandon her in the woods nearby.
• Pursue the Dream Job: Subverted. In "The Ghost and Mr. Monroe," John quits his job at The Manhattanite when managing editor Hamilton Greeley criticizes one of his cartoons. Unsure of what to do next, John decides now's the time to write that novel he has always fantasized about. His time unemployed is short, though, as one of the magazine's major sponsors sees John's cartoons and says if Hamilton doesn't hire John back, he'll pull his ads. As a result, John decides to put the novel off until later.
• Retail Riot: It's more the aftermath that's shown in "Rally Round the Flag," as opposed to the riot itself. When John finally reaches the department store on Christmas Eve, he encounters a store with most of its merchandise gone and much of what's left strewn haphazardly around the floor and shelves, along with an exhausted woman sprawled on the ground. He and another shopper make a mad dash for the last "Feverish Phyllis" doll and fight tooth and nail over it.
• Rewind Gag: In "The Mating Dance," John and Ellen reminisce about the circumstances under which they got engaged while attending a dance. John tells his version first, painting himself as having vanquished Ellen's bullying and Jerk Jock interloper Rick Feldspar with a punch to the face that floors him. Ellen then tells John that's not how things happened at all, following which we see John's version of the tale run backwards in fast motion. When the action restarts, it's shown that John's punch to Rick's face had no effect at all — and when his rival floors John with a roundhouse right, Ellen runs to comfort John. She asked John to marry her shortly afterwards.
• Ridiculous Procrastinator: In "The Shrike and the Chipmunks," John and author George Lockhart are assigned to produce a children's story with illustrations for an edition of The Manhattanite that is supposed to be released in two weeks. They spend almost the whole time together procrastinating while reading, swapping stories, and drinking copious amounts of bourbon and beer. It turns out that Lockhart is loathe to write yet another sugarcoated book for young readers, and when he finally manages to dash the story off, it's Darker and Edgier than his usual output.
• Rule of Symbolism: The episode "Seal in the Bedroom" concerns John's managing editor and family members not understanding the humor behind his surreal cartoon, featuring a seal looming over a married couple's bed. However, John's writer colleague Phil Jensen gets why it works — the seal is a symbol of the man's mother. The rest of the episode plays up this connection when John's mother arrives for a visit, showing the older woman doing things reminiscent of a seal's behavior (such as clapping her hands together in the manner of a seal or making barking noises like the animal).
• The Runaway: In "The Disenchanted," Lydia runs away from home when John won't allow her to change seats in class to avoid a boy who is distracting her. She runs away to New York City to move in with her Aunt Kate, though things get straightened out by the end of the episode.
• Sadistic Choice: A comic example is seen in "The Wooing of Mr. Monroe." John discusses how arguing with women invariably ends up as a lose-lose proposition for the man.
  John: What I hate most about arguing with women is that usually you lose — and when you win, you get a pain in the stomach. That's guilt, you see. And most of the time, you don't have that heady memory of something to feel guilty about.
• Serial Homewrecker: Implied about John and Ellen's sleazy widowed neighbor Farley Burrell in "Monroe the Misogynist." When his attempt to seduce Ellen is rebuffed, he says "Well, you can't win them all. I'll have to start on the girls in the next block."
• Shaking the Rump: Two examples appear in "The Middle Years":
  • When John first sees comely new widow Mrs. Bessinger (who has just moved in next door), he daydreams a Fantasy Sequence where she dances seductively and then opens her long coat, the better to show off her tight and skimpy red dress while accompanied by classic strip-tease music. Just before she does so, she turns her back to John and seductively wiggles her behind in time to the music.
  • Later, John is shown at his drawing desk looking at an unflattering cartoon drawing of his wife. He imagines a Fantasy Sequence where the woman in the picture scolds him for ogling Mrs. Bessinger. She shakes her bottom in exaggerated fashion, making fun of him for finding the same thing attractive about the new neighbor.
• Shoe Slap: In "A Friend of the Earth," the wife of John's new neighbor Paul Morton throws a boot out the window when she hears caterwauling felines attracted by the sound of John's rusty gate. Her aim must be very bad, because it ends up breaking the window in Lydia's room.
• Short-Runners: Despite receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews, the show drew only moderately good viewership numbers and was cancelled after one season. It went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for the 1969-70 season.
• Shout-Out:
  • Every episode in the series references cartoons and stories by James Thurber, many of which serve as basis for the plot or other notable elements.
    • "The Disenchanted," "Seal in the Bedroom," and "The War Between Men and Women" are based on Thurber cartoons in whole or in part.
    • "Man Against the World," "Christabel," "The Night the House Caught Fire," "The Saga of Dimity Ann," "The Shrike and the Chipmunks," "Rally Round the Flag," "Darn That Dream," and "The Human Being and the Dinosaur" are based on Thurber stories in whole or in part.
  • The opening of "Christabel" shows John lying on his back on top of a doghouse, alluding to the same behavior exhibited by Snoopy from Peanuts. He even references The Red Baron, who is Snoopy's nemesis when the beagle pretends he's a World War I flying ace.
  • In "The Disenchanted," John draws a cartoon in which he imagines his runaway daughter Lydia standing in the snow, pleading to have passerby purchase matches she's selling. It's clearly a reference to the Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Match Girl.
  • In "A Friend of the Earth," John is irritated that Zeph Leggin is busy regaling his friends with witticisms instead of fixing John's fence. He counters Zeph's observation that it's not good wood-sawing weather with a paraphrased quote from Hamlet about being able to tell "a hawk from a handsaw."
    Zeph: Mornin', Mr. Monroe. Didn't know you was there listenin'.
    John: I've been listening all morning, uh, but I haven't heard any sawing.
    Zeph: 'Twern't sawin' weather.
    John: 'Twar.
    Zeph: Oh... you know much about sawin'?
    John: Enough to make me think you can't tell a hawk from a handsaw.
  • John quotes from Hamlet again in "The Fourth Estate," this time splitting the quote up between two different locales. He first tells Patrick, the school newspaper editor, "To thine own self be true" regarding whether to run John's cartoon or not. When Lydia tells John the next morning that Patrick took his advice and didn't run the cartoon, he says, "And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not be false to any man."
  • In "Native Wit," Phil Jensen refers to John's hayseed joke-telling rival Zeph Leggin as "Aaron Slick from Punkin' Crick." It's a reference to the hillbilly title character from the film of the same name.
  • In "The Shrike and the Chipmunks," George Lockhart is a veritable fountain of quotes, citing lines from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, the poem "Casabianca" by Felicia Dorothea Hemons, and the 1890s song "Elsie from Chelsea."
  • The episode "Rally Round the Flag" sees John snarkily criticizing his milkman, who atypically greets him in cheerful fashion around the holidays. He compares him to the character Uriah Heep from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens:
    John: One of the first signs that Christmas is upon us is when your basic, garden-variety milkman, barely civil for fifty weeks of the year, becomes a fawning hypocrite — a milk-bearing Uriah Heep.
  • In "Darn That Dream," the household ghost Jeremiah (supposedly conjured up by Cloudcuckoolander Cousin Horace) quotes A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare while disparaging John's nutty boyhood family.
    Jeremiah: A weirder group of ding-a-lings I never hope to see. Gives a fellow pause to think what fools these mortals be.
  • In "Rules for a Happy Marriage," Hamilton Greeley references the farcical play Charley's Aunt by Brandon Thomas, comparing his not-so-attractive wife to the play's main character, a man who disguises himself as a woman.
    Hamilton: You got your nose out of joint because Blanche Sugarman makes you look like Charley's Aunt!
  • Phil Jensen compares one of his wife Ruth's former boyfriends disparagingly to Ichabod Crane from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Occurs in "Rules for a Happy Marriage."
    Ruth: I'll have you know I was a very good bridge player in college — when I had an intelligent partner.
    Phil: You mean that puny little Ichabod Crane of a library assistant you had your hooks into at Cornell?
  • In "Monroe the Misogynist," Hamilton Greeley makes back to back references to the 1920s song standard "My Blue Heaven" and the 60s pop hit "Harper Valley PTA" by Jeannie C. Riley. He and John are discussing whether Ellen may be cheating on the latter or not.
    Hamilton: Something's gone wrong at my blue heaven?
    John: Of course not!
    Hamilton: Couldn't be another man, could it?
    John: Impossible — not Ellen! Besides, he's a very honest, straightforward neighbor — a member of the PTA.
    Hamilton: Remember what happened at Harper Valley?
    John: Oh, you are a comfort, Hamilton.
• Southern-Fried Genius: The character of Zeph Leggin appears in two episodes, "A Friend of the Earth" and "Native Wit." He's essentially a transplanted hayseed sage from the South or Midwest who hangs around Westbury's version of a general store, dispensing homespun witticisms to his circle of admirers. John crosses his path soon enough and spends both episodes matching wits with him.
• Start of Darkness: When John forgets to take Lydia to a picnic as he promised in "Child's Play," he imagines a multi-part Fantasy Sequence in which she has spiraled absurdly out of control later in life because of his thoughtless act — first becoming grossly obese from overeating to compensate for hurt feelings, then turning into a jailed pot-headed hippie, and finally morphing into a prostitute.
• Stern Teacher: Lydia's teacher Miss Skidmore qualifies, at times veering towards Sadistic Teacher status.
  • In "Man Against the World," she makes Lydia write "I am a liar" on the blackboard 200 times when she submits John's fanciful re-imagining of the surrender at Appomattox in class to fulfill an assignment, one in which a drunken Ulysses S. Grant surrenders to Robert E. Lee instead of the other way around. She furthermore comes to the Monroe home to heatedly inform Ellen and John about this transgression.
  • "The Disenchanted" sees her refusing to change seating in class in order to keep the boy sitting behind Lydia from distracting her until John comes to school to call her out on it. She angrily stonewalls John while they talk, but later relents when she returns to the classroom. It's unclear if Miss Skidmore was unsympathetic towards Lydia or unaware of the issue, but neither possibility reflects well on her.
  • In "Dear Is a Four Letter Word," she is sufficiently angry at John that she insists he come to school to report to the principal. The teacher is concerned that Lydia's non-communicative father is setting a bad example for his daughter, given that the girl is acting moody and hostile to her male classmates. The principal, however, is sympathetic to John and admits that he shares the cartoonist’s irritation with Miss Skidmore.
• Still Fighting the Civil War: The character of John's great-grandpa Skinner is encountered in "The Night the House Caught Fire" — and as John tells Lydia, "For grandpa, the Civil War had never ended. We always had to keep him from freeing our cook." He’s an atypical example of a veteran from the Yankee side shown believing this, one who among other things is seen wearing a Union soldier's cap and reciting the poem "Barbara Frietchie" with gusto. Subverted as it's eventually revealed that great-grandpa Skinner was never actually in the war (he worked in a brewery in Cincinnati during those years) and made his stories up to entertain John and his siblings.
• Stock "Yuck!": John expresses significant displeasure over being served liver for dinner in "Monroe the Misogynist."
• The Talk: Comically subverted in "The Human Being and the Dinosaur." Lydia has punched her classmate Fenton Burger for telling her where babies come from. Eventually, it's discovered that Fenton was told by his mother that when daddies put lilies-of-the-valley in the mother's bedroom and open the window to let the bluebirds in, they go out and look for the new baby under a lily pad. Lydia hit him because the explanation was incredibly naive and stupid, not because the boy was being indecorous.
• Test Kiss: In "The Wooing of Mr. Monroe," John and Dorothy Carter awkwardly try to work on a story in John's office after Ellen has accused him of developing an attraction to Dorothy. After self-consciously trying to avoid getting too close to each other, they finally indulge in a passionate kiss to see if they actually have feelings for one another. Immediately after doing so, they realize there's absolutely no chemistry between them.
  John: [after breaking off their passionate kiss] Ellen's crazy!
  Dorothy: Ridiculous!
• Three Stooges Shout-Out:
  • The last of the three fights between John's grandfather and a bully of similar age who is trying to force him to pay an illegal bridge toll is especially cartoonish, heavily reminiscent of The Three Stooges. Here, John's grandfather bests his tormentor with a series of pokes to the eye interspersed with punches and nose tweaks before pushing him into the river. Occurs in "The Mating Dance."
  • In "The Night the House Caught Fire," a group of clumsy and clueless firemen respond to the call and wreck the downstairs of the house with axes and water from a fire hose (without determining whether there was a fire or not — and it turns out there isn't). The gung-ho lead fireman is played by Joe Besser, best known nowadays as a member of The Three Stooges during the 1950s. Besser also plays the equally overzealous head policeman in "Darn That Dream," who answers a call to John's boyhood home accompanied by a gaggle of cops. He arrests John and his family, convinced they're intruders.
• Title Drop: John frequently states the title of the show just before the Opening Credits roll.
• Unreliable Narrator: In "Rules for a Happy Marriage," John presents an Imagine Spot to his male colleagues at The Manhattanite — one that involved a crotchety exchange between him and Ellen that he says he will repeat to them verbatim. It turns out to have little resemblance to what was seen earlier in the episode, heavily skewed to make his wife look worse.
• When I Was Your Age...: John at times grumpily remarks that things were different when he was a child. The subject of museums is addressed in his conversation with Lydia in "Darn That Dream."
  Lydia: Actually, today we didn't go to school. Our class went to the museum instead.
  John: Ah — well, I'm glad to see your education extends beyond the four walls of the classroom. Did you see any Rembrandts?
  Lydia: No, but we saw a lot of naked statues.
  John: [addressing the camera] We never had museums like that when I was a kid.
• Writing Lines: When Lydia takes John's fanciful re-imagining of the surrender at Appomattox that ended The American Civil War literally (he concocts a scenario where Ulysses S. Grant drunkenly surrenders to Robert E. Lee) — and submits this for a class assignment — her teacher forces her to write "I am a liar" on the blackboard 200 times as punishment. Occurs in the episode "Man Against the World."
• You Can Leave Your Hat On: When John first sees the comely new widow Mrs. Bessinger (who has just moved in next door) in "The Middle Years," he daydreams a Fantasy Sequence where she dances seductively and then opens her long coat, the better to show off her tight and skimpy red dress. Classic strip-tease music is heard while she does so.

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