The Week in Review

TV humor, like all gall, is divided into three parts, 1) slapstick, 2) situation comedies, 3) synthetic shyness. Last week a baker's dozen of high-priced comics was laboring hard in all three varieties spraying each other with Seltzer, spinning out plots as remote from reality as life on the moon, or being browbeaten by guest stars and fellow actors.

The results were not always sidesplitting. Martha Raye proved that slapstick can be tasteless with an interminable skit that required Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to pretend that he was madly in love with her (a role often filled last year by Actor Cesar Romero). Jackie Gleason is back with The Honeymooners, but the show is now filmed by the Electronicam method, which Gleason and the system's inventors (Du Mont) insist is just as good as live TV, from the evidence of the first two shows, not all of Gleason's audience will agree: on film, the battles between Jackie and Audrey Meadows seemed longer and less funny, while Art Carney's sewer-born impetuosities have lost their quality of brash unexpectedness. Red Skelton, helped by Comedienne Nancy Walker, took off after that comedy staple, The $64,000 Question, with a skillfully built parody of a member of the studio audience determinedly prompting Contestant Walker all the way to the summit question. NBC's Sid Caesar showed hopeful flashes of his old form with a rousing, doubletalk version of Pagliacci. Neither Groucho Marx, flourishing his cigar and convivial sneer, nor Jimmy Durante, with his patented songs and spotlighted exit, saw any reason for changing the formulas that have kept them among the leaders for years.

Situation comedies are as traditional with television as baggy pants with burlesque. As the granddaddy of the art form, I Love Lucy is back for its fifth year and as dependent as ever on the flawless mugging, caterwauling voice and limitless energy of Lucille Ball. Burns & Allen have changed their script sufficiently to allow a place for their son, Ronny, who supplies an unaccustomed note of sobriety into the antic proceedings; Danny Thomas is still pumping up a smidgeon of wit through 30 minutes of sentimental goo, while Schoolmarm Eve Arden in Our Miss Brooks has switched from public high to private elementary school without making any great change in the standard cast or plot. The brightest of the new situation shows is You'll Never Get Rich, starring Funnyman Phil Silvers as an Army top sergeant with a heart of solid larceny. Silvers makes life in the armed forces seem like a rainbow-colored version of a goldbricker's dream.

Since the departure of Wally Cox, George Gobel is the shyest comic left on television. Gobel ended last season No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings, but his opening program did not have the look of a winner as Gobel traded arch repartee with a fluttery actress pretending to be his mother, endlessly rubbed noses with plump Singer Peggy King, and finally salvaged some shreds of comedy from an interview with Actor Fred MacMurray. Gobel this year may have a rival in CBS's Johnny Carson, another minor-keyed comic who can extract a remarkable amount of amusement from such items as his meeting last week with his three-girl fan club. Like Gobel, Carson has a cute girl singer, Jill Corey, and they spend too much time nuzzling each other. It seems that the shy-type comic cannot survive on TV without a soubrette to lean against.

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