It’s a Man’s World “Molly Pitcher and the Green-Eyed Monster” (October 1, 1962)

I’ve never been as enamored of this vanity project from producer-director Peter Tewksbury as are the members of its fervent cult following, which extended so far as to garner the show a lengthy encomium in the New York Times forty years after its demise.  The hour-long scripts drag, and the supporting cast – particularly a bleating chimpanzee billed as “Ted Bessell” – indulges in behavior that might charitably be described as “always on.”  But this segment has an undeniable magic.  It begins as a nearly formless comic romp, in which all the characters are thrown out of their comfort zone.  Uptight law student/mechanic Wes (Glenn Corbett) helps beatnik Nora (Ann Schuyler) tow her jalopy and they end up playing in a mud puddle.  Meanwhile Wes’s square girlfriend Irene (Jan Norris) attends his gas station and must figure out how to help a game middle-aged lady gas up her car and change the oil (in a sequence that’s not as sexist as it sounds).  The second half is as tightly structured as the first was freewheeling.  Wes’s enthusiasm at having been freed briefly from the pressures of his daily routine plants a seed of jealousy between Irene and Nora, and this leads to a mortifying outburst and then a terrific scene in which the two women reconcile while chatting about everything except the subject of their conflict.  In one sense the script by David Duncan and James Menzies is delightfully about nothing in the Seinfeldian way, and in another it’s rich in observation on subjects such as nonconformity versus responsibility and the durability of friendships between women.