Car 54, Where Are Your Bar Mitzvah Guests?

I have so many favourite "Car 54, Where Are You?" episodes, including 'See You at the Bar Mitzvah' (1963), where Toody (Joe E. Ross, Bilko's Ritzik) and Muldoon (the lovely Fred Gwynne) try to get everyone to come to the bar mitzvah party of a child in their precinct (Claude Gersene), with the misfortune of having a very unpopular father. As with Bilko, writer Nat Hiken had a joyous knack for capturing a cross-section of society (with a magnifying lens on the unphotogenically beautiful, the bordering-on-burlesque over-the-top, the hilariously odd and off-kilter everyday) with love and humour, and here he comes closer to presenting his own New York through the universal gathering stage of the police station. Here, Toody and Muldoon search the precinct and Bronx neighbourhoods for people who'll come to celebrate little Joel Polkrass' special day, but no-one can stand his terrible landlord father. Even the kindly rabbi (magnificently, if briefly, played by Lou Polan) and his close friend the neighbourhood Catholic priest Father Donovan (played by Barney Martin, who many of us adore as Jerry Seinfeld's fictional father) try to help, but can't see how anyone will show up. And after meeting Mr. Polkrass, neither do Toody and Muldoon as they anxiously scramble for a solution that will help them save face and lift the little boy's spirits.

But no need to fret, even when the old pitying tears well in the throat as only Father Donovan and Joel's basketball team attend, because almost everyone in the Hiken universe, rough-hewn diamonds and well-meaning tryers that they are, have hearts of gold. Toody and Muldoon bring in their evening's lineup of prisoners on their way to night court, Katz the butcher, Mrs. Kramer, Schnauser, Sergeant Feldman, everyone makes a return exodus to come to the support of a little one in need. And then little Joel finally doesn't stutter in his Hebrew speech, and finally the old tears flow with pain and joy. Just as you don't have to be a Catholic priest to enjoy Father Ted or a serviceperson to enjoy Bilko, you don't have to be Jewish (or a policeman) to enjoy this, only someone with a little humour - and a little heart Xo