TV Moms, Part Six: Aunt Bee: Wholesome and Homecooked Mom-In-Effect

If there's one thing that can be learned from television, it's that there is more than one way to portray a family.

And sometimes, in these television families, the mother is absent.

Single dads aren't rare on TV. Phillip Drummond from Diff'rent Strokes, Russell Lawrence from Gidget, and even Full House's Danny Tanner and Arrested Development's Michael Bluth have been part of the television single-father tradition.

But one of the most famous TV single dads, who appeared on CBS from October of 1960 to April of 1968, was the sheriff of a a small town called Mayberry and still runs in syndication over fifty years after its cancellation.

Widower Andy Taylor and his son, Opie, though they had lost their wife and mother respectively, were not without a mother figure, even before the series began.

 The first episode of The Andy Griffith Show had Andy's housekeeper, Rose, moving out to get married and Opie being reluctant to accept a new mother figure into their house and his life.

And the woman that is brought in (brought back in, in Andy's case) into the Taylor boys' lives is Beatrice Taylor, or, as Mayberry and American came to know her, Aunt Bee.

Frances Bavier's Aunt Bee was the never-married sister of Andy's father. Though it's never explored very deeply in the series, it is stated flat out that Bee raised Andy and implied that she had raised a few other Taylors, also, though she never married or had children of her own (another tidbit that is never really explored in the show).

Aunt Bee is a very interesting character to me, especially when considered through the scope of her time and in the context of the modern audiences exposed to the show.

When The Andy Griffith Show first aired in the early sixties, the social stigma for unmarried women and the fact that the Feminist Movement of the 1960s was still in its infancy limited what they could do--working as housekeepers and in other "pink-collar" (or traditionally female) jobs such as teaching and nursing. And a woman never having been married was rare enough (check this pdf if you're interested in detailed 1960s marriage statistics). Even though Aunt Bee was established as an unmarried woman, her romantic life played a fairly large part in her storylines in the show. Though her actual life track is unusual for a woman on television in that time, Aunt Bee is very much like the other television mothers of her time--working inside the home and in the community by way of her church and being responsible for the care and upbringing of a child. The only differences Aunt Bee and mothers like June Cleaver are that Bee isn't married, and she didn't give birth to Opie.

There's something very encouraging, I think, in the fact that even in what was a considerably more conservative time, the idea that there are many different kinds of mothers-- Aunt Bee didn't physically carry or give birth to Opie, but there's no denying that she is a mother to Opie. Today, more people are considering adoption that in the 1960s, and it's interesting to me that, even fifty years ago, there was a postivie role model for people that are parents that didn't give birth themselves.

Though there are many ways in which Aunt Bee is relatable to modern audiences, there are, of course, things about the character that date her. While Bee lives with her nephew Andy during the series and, after Andy marries Helen Crump at the end of the series, with another widowed father, Sam Jones as part of the exposition for the spin-off series, Mayberry, R.F.D, in 2012, more single women are choosing to live alone than ever before. And, while Aunt Bee worked mostly in the home (though later in the series she did open a restaurant and record a cooking show), more women are working outside the home now than then, juggling work and parenthood.


Mayberry may have been a simpler time and place on the whole, and The Andy Griffith Show certainly portrayed more conservative values than many television shows today, it's interesting to see the modern thinking that got slipped into the narrative by way of Aunt Bee's unique representation of motherhood.

In the coming weeks, we'll start taking a look at single mothers and blended families with Brett Butler's Grace Under Fire and one of television's most famous mother, Florence Henderson's Carol Brady.


Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Tell You Something Good: Warehouse 13

I've taken a Saturday to talk about something that makes me angry.

I've taken a Saturday to talk about something that makes me sad.

It seems only right that I take a Saturday to talk about something that makes me happy. Stupidly, ridiculously, fantastically happy.

My job, which is wonderful in that it gives me money so that I can pay rent and buy food, kinda stinks because the hours I work make it impossible for me to watch any prime time television that isn't aired on the stations I work for as it airs,so I am way behind on fall premieres. It's really not that bad--I have to avoid spoiler-heavy sites (which is much more challenging than it really ought to be), but I get to spend my mornings picking my favorite programs and watching them at my leisure, which, inevitably, leads to personal marathons.

Recently, I've been binging on the SyFy original series Warehouse 13.

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, imagine a police procedural, but replace the station house with the giant warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is sent at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark and swap out chasing criminals for chasing down magic objects with historical significance.  Secret Service agents Myka Bering and Pete Lattimer, while saving the president from an attempt on his life, stumble upon an "artifact"--a piece of historical brick-a-brac imbued with magical properties that are a manifestation of some aspect of the personality the object's original owner or user. In a typical "they know too much" way, Pete and Myka find themselves whisked away to Univille, South Dakota, home of their new workplace, Warehouse 13, where they learn they will be sent out into the world to "snag, bag, and tag" artifacts that are out in the world and apt to "ruin the world's day."

I'll make no secret about it--I love this show. So much. After Community, it's probably my favorite show currently on TV.

There are a ton of subjective reasons that I like this show--I wanted to be an archeologist when I was a kid, so the bits of history thrown in delight me; and I'm a big fan of procedural shows in general. But I'd like to focus on some more objective things that she show does right.

(Be warned: this post will contain spoilers through season 3 and up to the fifth episode of season 4. If you haven't watched the show but think you may want to, it might be best for you to skip this post until you're caught up. Seasons 1-3 are on Netflix Instant Watch, and, as of this post, the first five episodes of season 4 are on Hulu.)

As a person who has made it her business to study how different types of people are represented on television and various other media, I am frequently disappointed. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, we see TV characters falling into certain types of roles based on their gender, race, and sexuality, and there's a emphasis on sexual male-female relationships between main characters, while male-female platonic relationships are largely ignored.

While it's important to note that Warehouse 13 is not completely immune to this--people of color are numerically underrepresented, and though at least two of them have authoritative roles in the world of the show, they don't get nearly as much screen time as their white counterparts, and we haven't yet seen any cannon non-hetero romantic relationships on the show among the regular characters--the show is full of complete female and  non-hetero characters and the most significant relationships in the show are platonic and/or familial.

Warehouse 13 has no shortage of incredible female characters.

(image found here)

Myka, even before her transfer to the Warehouse, was a top Secret Service agent, and she's clearly the brains of the team of agents. Leena, keeper of the bed and breakfast that houses the Warehouse agents, knows the artifacts and Warehouse as well, if not better, than senior agent Artie and keep the artifacts from negatively interacting in the Warehouse. Claudia, who, it's worth mentioning, is the youngest employee of the Warehouse,  was able to hack into the Warehouse and is constantly creating new tools for the agents to use and upgrading the computer systems and imaging technology in the Warehouse. In season two, it's revealed that Claudia will be the next Caretaker of the Warehouse, a role with just as much power and responsibility as the title implies. And H.G. Wells (yes, that H.G. Wells and yes, she's a woman) is a martial arts expert and inventor in addition to an agent of the now-defunct Warehouse 12 all before she even appears in the series and joins the Warehouse 13 team.

These four are competent ladies; they get the job done. They're also flawed, funny, and charming.  Their storylines are interwoven with those of the male characters, but not dependent upon them. They get to do just as much ass-kicking as the guys. Sometimes more.

They prove that it's possible to have amazing women in a TV show without detracting from the equally amazing men in a TV show.

And the men are amazing. Mentor agent Artie is a curmudgeonly but deeply caring father figure to the younger agents, and Pete is charming, charismatic, and refreshingly sincere. I could write pages on the both of them, but, even though characters as memorable and lovable as Pete and Artie are a rarity, there are tons of great straight male leading characters on TV.

And this is more a post about what Warehouse 13 has that other shows don't.

I mentioned earlier how rare complete non-hetero characters are. Frequently, gay, bisexual, and lesbian characters are either played as jokes or reduced to their sexuality in characterization. Warehouse 13 does it right: Steve Jinks, who is gay, and H.G. Wells, who is bisexual, are both multifaceted and engaging characters that are also non-hetero. While no secret is made of either character's sexuality, and--wonderfully--neither character is shamed for their preference, they're not limited to being gay/being bisexual as an identity. They have aspirations and motivations that are given just as much weight (and aren't much different) than their straight companions.

The show also subverts the trope Bury Your Gays. But since there's a good possibility that not everyone reading this has seen the show, I won't go into how. (But, seriously, why haven't you watched this show? It's beautiful.)

As if outstanding female and non-hetero characters weren't enough, non-sexual relationships are not only featured, they're put in the foreground and given focus, treated as if they're more important than the sexual ones.

There are so many great friendships.

There's the father/daughter dynamic between Artie and Claudia that shows pretty much the full spectrum of parent-child interaction at one point or another.

 And Myka and Pete, who have not only mostly avoided the Will They or Won't They trope (though how well they've avoided it depends on the opinion of the watcher, I suppose), but also reverse gender roles-- Myka is the more logical and Pete is the intuitive one.

And Claudia and Steve, who pull off the straight-girl-gay-guy friendship without going to Will and Grace extremes and who literally feel each other's pain.

So, yeah, this show has a lot about it to love.

Clearly, since this is my longest post yet.

Between politics and television and the rampant sexism in internet and nerd culture, it's easy to say that there's nothing encouraging about the media.

But then, a show like Warehouse 13 comes along and does it right. And, more importantly, does it right and makes it.

And that, Saturday crowd, is something that makes me very happy.

(Season four of Warehouse 13 is currently airing on Mondays at 9/8 central on SyFy, and the previous three seasons are out on DVD and up on Netflix.)