That boy was so irritating. They treated him like a baby all the time too. There was one episode where he had to learn a song about the Mona Lisa for school, and he kept singing "the Mommy Lisa" like he was three years old! He must've been at least 8 or 9. Laura was so delicate around him, like he was their little china doll. I thought the show was very funny when the kid was not in the story.
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Bring back the old emoticons!
The worst was when the kid was home all day and he kept using rob's shaving cream and making a mess everywhere while Laura kept screaming. I remember thinking what the hell is this kid doing. It was like he was acting like a 3 year old. Punish the kid or something
share^^ lol. Exactly. All his scenes were head scratchers because he looked too old for the behaviour and lines they gave him.
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toh devres tseb hsid a si msacras
Richie was at the worst when he sang in the Christmas show. The child could not carry a tune in a bucket.
Considering Ritch was an only child, had parents who would leave him at the drop of a hat to go downtown, and didn't have the greatest friends to play with (Jerry and Millie's kids stand out as being kind of bratty and mean to Ritchie for no reason), I'm not surprised he did goofy things to amuse himself once in a while. The only thing about Ritchie that bugs me is that he still called Rob Daddy when he was like 8-9 years old...it just seems strange.
shareDon't forget that Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford on LEAVE IT TO BEAVER addressed his father as "Daddy"--and he was in his teens!
shareHe was singing "The Mommy Lisa" at age 9 too.
I was about Ritchie's age in the early '60s, and I remember starting to feel silly calling my parents "Mommy" and "Daddy". I think I made the transition to "Mom" and "Dad" by the time I was seven or eight. But my wife and her three adult sisters have never stopped calling their parents "Mommy" and "Daddy". I've got used to hearing it, but if they were men it would seem really odd.
sharebut I did love the episode where he kept telling his parents that he was being attacked by a bird and they did not believe him until Millie came over and commented that she saw Richie being attacked by a bird!!
😱
That plot was a staple of sitcoms from the period: the kid says something fantastic but true, and no one believes him/her. Happened to Beaver, Opie, and Linda (from Make Room for Daddy).
shareYes, it would be interesting if someone or some project could sort out all these plots, and find out the lineage of these staples you talk about, and how they traveled and mutated over time.
I see this kind of thing a lot in doctor shows ... certain situations that the "guest patients" have that start somewhere and then show up all over every other doctor show.
Opie and the man in the trees with the jangly belt who gave him a “quorder”. Andy thought he was making up fairy tales to cover for stealing money. Man ended up being a telephone pole repair guy.
sharelol you guys i love the kid. i'm full grown now but that little richie has some great pointers on how to take the piss out of my parents. i think he's supposed to be an annoying little *beep* sorry dude but more carl reiner comic genius.
shareYeah they should have stripped him, tied him up and burned him with cigarettes for being too much of a kid, right?
Seriously, I saw nothing wrong with the way Ritchie behaved. Or Laura for that matter.
Kid couldn’t act. He was a line reading blank. Whoever above said he screamed his lines was right too.
shareCompared to Ron Howard’s Opie who was so genuine in that role.
shareTrue! Young Ron was not a singer either but he had charm and comic acting chops. Who can forget the way he belted out “The Wells Fargo Wagon is a comin’” in his lispy, spitty off tune voice? In the AGS, he sang all loud and confident with a tipsy Aunt Bee at the piano in the episode about the elixir salesman.
shareNot many nuanced roles for kids in TV shows back then. This was just before they started to realize what demographics were and skewed all broadcast TV to single digit IQs and began pandering to children to make them feel they were superior to adults.
Also ... it was a real trope that actors back then hated to work with kids because they stole the spotlight and got all the laughs ... and after all it was the "Dick Van Dyke Show", not the "Annoying Little Richie Show", and then of course there was MTM.
Is there actually a "t" in Ritchie/Richie?