This is another pilot that never got off the ground that the Donna Reed show put to use. The previous one, two months earlier, ( "Aloha, Kimi") didn't have much spark to it, but this one is just DOA.
William Windom and Pat Breslin are a pair of ex-city professional people, known for their sophistication, but he's decided to take up the family farm life, which he inexplicably loves. If you've ever had a taste of that life you'll be stunned and maybe insulted to see their problems are ridiculously silly; the kids have named and befriended the chickens, and so can't be eaten, their goat is bathed in the bathtub, his good shoes are too tight, she misses going to art galleries in the city.
Outside of some exterior footage, it's as fake a farm as one could see, even the hay looks sterile. The worst part is a phoney plot where an old horse is dying. On it's back in the stable. It seems in his old age, they've been sparing him his old jobs. Windom is supposed to be a doctor, and so is one of his visitors from Hilldale, and they diagnose death at any second, but when the horse hears a bridle jingle, he hops right up, full strength and I suppose youth are restored. Happy ending. What a cheap out. Windom and Breslin are boring, the two kids, whatever they were, could have been offscreen for all they meant. There was not one speck of integrity in this almost arrogant dismissal of the audience intelligence. When a similar idea inspired GREEN ACRES, they came out with a much more believable show.
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