Billiards has always been about more than shooting balls into pockets. In television dramas, the pool hall is often the milieu, and the pool match a metaphor, for determining one’s future existence and ability to live (e.g., Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”; Twilight Zone – “A Game of Pool”; Monsters – “Pool Sharks”).
In billiards TV sitcoms, one’s life may not quite so much hang in the balance (this is comedy, after all), but the pool match nonetheless remains the arbiter of the future. Just consider Ralph Kramden’s error in judgment when he upsets Harvey on the pool table (The Honeymooners – “The Bensonhurst Bomber”) or cadet Francis’ grudge match against Commandant Spangler (Malcolm in the Middle – “Waterpark”) or Oscar Madison’s desperate match to save the reputation of his roommate Felix Unger (The Honeymooners – “The Hustler”).
Billiards life was not always so complicated. Billiards matches were not always about losing your car (Dharma & Greg – “Do the Hustle”), or your money (Family Matters – “Fast Eddie Winslow”) or your job (Mr. Belvedere – “Tornado”).
Almost sixty years ago, the most complicated decision one faced when it came to billiards was where to put the pool table. At least, that’s the premise of the utterly domestic billiards TV episode “Pool Table” (November, 1956) from the fifth season of that quintessentially wholesome sitcom, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
As many will recall, Ozzie and Harriet, which aired from 1952-1966, making it still the longest-running live action American sitcom in television history, focused on the daily living of the real-life Nelson family (Ozzie, Harriet, and their two sons, Ricky and David). The show’s plotlines focused on typical problems around dating, marriage, and careers.
In “Pool Table,” which you can watch here in its entirety, the original problem is not the pool table, but that Ricky has too much clutter in his room, so he doesn’t have space to complete his homework. Ozzie’s initial solution to buy the kids filing cabinets is shelved when he instead buys a pool table from the local department store. “They were all out of filing cabinets, so I got a pool table instead,” explains Ozzie.
http://youtu.be/fIOSKETzyBI
Harriet’s surprise turns to disapproval when Ozzie temporarily sets up the pool table in the family room. Ozzie’s retort, “What are we going to do with it? Well, isn’t that just like a woman,” doesn’t ameliorate the situation. Thus begins the pool table’s peregrination from the dining room to the kitchen to the garage to the outside yard. Everyone is temporarily happy when Ozzie’s neighbor, Thorny, volunteers to keep it his in rumpus room, but that plan is quickly reversed once Ozzie realizes his neighbor is not home enough to let him access it.
Running out of rooms, Ozzie enlists the support of his kids to jerry-rig a pulley system and haul the pool table up three stories to locate it in the attic via the outdoor window. This solution seems to be perfect, until the weight of the pool table causes its legs to crash through the attic floor and into the kids’ bedroom.
But, this being 1956, and the benefit of household cleanliness far outweighing the morbid likelihood of the rest of the pool table falling from its perch and crushing the kids, the decision is made to use the space between the protruding pool legs as a makeshift shelf, thereby enabling the kids to remove their clutter…which solves the original problem! And, for added giggles, the kids can still play pool upstairs, just now on their knees. As I said, life was much simpler back then.
