"You see before you me.Gidget. For fifteen and a half years my life was complete and total ick. But then, on the 23rd of June, two things happened. I fell in love.with two things: Jeff - my Moondoggie - and surfing." - Sally Field as Gidget
Gidget: The Complete Series DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Imagine if summer was endless, each day consisting of warm sand under a golden sun, surfing, cute boys, and even cuter girls. Such is life for Francine "Gidget" Lawrence (Sally Field), a perky fifteen-and-a-half year old Angeleno for whom the beach is a second home. Her widowed father, Russ (Don Porter, Private Secretary), isn't really concerned about Gidget's obsession with surfing, boys, and the beach. An English professor at UCLA, he recognizes that his youngest daughter is smart, dedicated, and will someday put aside her surfboard in favor of a more useful activity. Her neurotic sister, Anne Cooper (Betty Conner), disagrees. She believes that Gidget (who calls her "Ms. Name-Your-Own-Psychosis") should shake off the sand and become a respectable young lady. Anne's husband John (Peter Deuel, Alias Smith and Jones) is studying to become a psychologist and sees his sister-in-law as the perfect guinea pig for his theories. For her part, Gidget thinks John is "an A-1, first class nut."
Gidget avoids her sister as much as possible, usually by heading out to the beach with her best friend Larue (Lynette Winter, Petticoat Junction). To Gidget's continuing dismay, Larue, who says she is allergic to the sun, won't expose a single inch of her flesh on the beach. This means lots of oversized muumuus, sweatshirts, and ridiculous sombreros with floppy brims that cover the entire upper half of her body.
The beach is the center of Gidget's social life. It's where she met her boyfriend, Moondoggie (Stephen Mines), an avid surfer. Unfortunately, she meets Moondoggie shortly before he leaves for Princeton. Or perhaps that's "fortunately" - Gidget suggests that they see other people and Moondoggie agrees, thus allowing her to fall head over heels for a new guy every week. Even her father notices Gidget's fickleness:
Russ: "Do you realize that you've been in love four times in the last three months?
Gidget: "Five, but who's counting?"
Gidget isn't exactly a feminist. In "A Hearse, a Hearse, My Kingdom for a Hearse," a series of silly events leaves her part owner of a hearse with the guys in her high school's auto shop. Gidget decides to enroll in the class to help fix up the jalopy, but the other boys would prefer to buy her out than allow a chick in auto shop. Gidget refuses. To teach her a lesson, they assign her the messiest, most complex tasks they can come up with. Gidget actually begins to learn about auto repair, but quickly comes to the conclusion that, "a woman is never helpless as long as there's a man around.and she remembers she's a woman." It's not important to know how to actually do something, as long as feminine wiles can be employed to get some stupid guy to do it instead. Besides, why get your dress all icky?
In "Chivalry Isn't Dead," Gidget and her pals feel taken for granted when their boyfriends wait to hear the weekend surfing forecast every Friday night before asking them out. If the forecast is good, the boys surf. If it's bad, they ask their girlfriends out. The girls usually say yes, but Gidget organizes a girls-only slumber party so that they can truthfully say that they have other plans. The plan backfires when the girls miss the boys. They had set out to teach the guys that they are expendable, only to discover that they actually need the boys. It turns out that the boys need the girls, too, but the episode mostly focuses on the weakness of Gidget's girlfriends.
Of course, no one has ever watched Gidget in order to see a hard-hitting take on feminism and the role of women in society. We watch because Sally Field is so darned cute. This was her first television job, and her performance sometimes relies a bit too much on shtick (count the number of times she sticks out her tongue. You'll lose track by the second episode). She is also saddled with seemingly endless monologues spoken either as voiceovers or directly into the camera. However, she is definitely a star in the making. She and Porter have a natural rapport, making Gidget just as much a show about father/daughter relationships as one about the beach.
Another part of Gidget's appeal is its candy-colored production design, a hallmark of many Screen Gems shows (like The Monkees). Everything manages to look fake and realistic at the same time. Interiors are bright and shiny, but sometimes look as if they are made of cardboard. Exteriors seem to have been shot on location on the actual Pacific coast at times, and near a backlot pond at others - sometimes in the same scene.
Guests include Michael Nader (Dynasty), Martin Milner (Route 66), Harvey Korman (The Carol Burnett Show), Dick Gautier (Get Smart), Noam Pitlik (The Bob Newhart Show), Judy Carne (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In), Henry Jaglom, Bonnie Franklin (One Day at a Time), Barbara Hershey (Chicago Hope), Mako (Hawaiian Heat), Walter Koenig (Star Trek), Daniel J. Travanti (Hill Street Blues), Richard Dreyfuss (The Education of Max Bickford), Ron Rifkin (Alias), Paul Lynde (Bewitched), Richard Bull (Little House on the Prairie), John McGiver (The Patty Duke Show), and Frank DeVol (composer of classic TV themes, including The Brady Bunch).
The thirty-two episodes that make up Gidget: The Complete Series are divided onto four discs. The discs are housed in two slim, clear keepcases, each of which holds two discs. The front covers each feature a different publicity photo of the show's stars: Field on the first case and Porter on the second. The back covers include episode titles and plot synopses. The double-sided coversheets show through to the inside of the cases and feature a blue-tinted photo of Field and Nader in a skiff. The actual discs feature the publicity stills of Field. The two keepcases slide into a cardboard sleeve which highlights a composite photo of Field and Porter.
The static DVD menus are extremely basic. Viewers can play all episodes or choose an individual episode. Although there are no scene selection menus, chapter stops are included, including one after the title sequence.
