This show was part of ABC's Friday night line-up back when networks put their good shows on Friday and Saturdays, as opposed to today when those nights are burial grounds for failing TV shows. It was popular in the late 60's and early 70's not just because it was witty, but because it was considered a bit naughty. In fact it was put on last in the evening in the lineup and given a great big warning label - for mature audiences only. For modern viewers, this show will seem much like a precode film from the early 1930's - you'll wonder what the big deal is since by and large nothing shocking ever really happens. Like precode films it does mark a transitional period. Precodes were the last hurrah of controversial material in the movies for the next 30 years. Love American Style marked the first inroad of controversial material on TV, as bigger and bigger shocks would be required to titillate audiences until now, almost 50 years later, the show appears quaint. You just have to remember that at the time this show first aired shows such "My Three Sons" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" were the norm for hit Television. The 60's didn't really happen in middle America until the 70's and this show was part of the first wave of that transition, for better or worse.The episodes themselves are still pretty humorous, and often you'll see failed pilots end up as episodes of Love American Style. The most famous example was a 1972 episode that turned out to be the pilot for "Happy Days", one of ABC's most successful shows of the 1970's. If you're a boomer you're bound to enjoy this show. If you are younger, it's an interesting and humorous lesson in the journey TV has taken over the years.

The things from our childhood often stick with us, so perhaps I remember so many moments from this series because my brain had so much more room for stuff at the time. Yet even thinking back on the sketches I recall, they were wonderfully ingenious. I recall they were often quite funny, although who knows if I would find them so today. Even though it could be seen as a sex-obsessed sketch-comedy show, it was a show with something to say about love and often said it very well. And so I'd just like to mention the sketches that have stuck with for the last 40 years.An impressionist (played by Rich Little) brings a girl back to his room. He continually speaks to her as other people. She finds that weird, and insists that he talk to her as himself. He turns out to be a nebbish, and at the end she says, "give me Kirk Douglas."A scientist wants to find the perfect way to sleep with a girl. He invents a time machine, and he keeps screwing up and then going back in time. Finally he just says, after trying many elaborate ploys, would you like to go out? She says of course, and then the time machine breaks and she's caught in a perpetual loop of saying yes.A guy gets a date with a nude model. He's very excited. It turns out she's totally okay with getting naked, except for one thing; she won't take her gloves off. So he becomes obsessed with seeing her hands. I think he might propose to get those gloves off.And my favorite:As a joke (or perhaps a test), a man on a honeymoon tells his new wife that he's bald, and he hopes she can deal with that. To make him feel better, she tells him every embarrassing secret she has. At the end, he decides to shave his head every day for the rest of his life so she doesn't feel like an idiot.There was actually a great pilot for a revival in 1999. So sad it didn't make it.

I fondly recall watching Love, American Style, on Friday nights as a kid. Watching it was a pleasant conclusion, to my Friday TV viewing before my bedtime, when the 11 O'clock news came on after the show. This show was the first anthology show on the air, during the 70s. Another great anthology show called Night Gallery, premiered a year after Love, American Style.Love, American Style was a delightfully entertaining show, that could be enjoyed by all ages. It's premise, was based on the ups and downs of love and romance, in America during the late 60s/early-70s. Each episode lasted an hour, with different mini-episodes within the hour time-frame. I thought it was especially clever that short, hilarious comedy sketches, were included between each mini-episode.This show had marvelous comedy actors in each episode, such as Stuart Margolin, Alice Ghostly, Flip Wilson, Arte Johnson, etc. These and other actors appearing on the show, were some of the most superb comedians in show business. This factor was what made Love, American Style so much fun to watch, during the entire run of the series. If you like warm, light-hearted classic comedy shows, then you owe it to yourself to enjoy Love, American Style, on DVD.

during the early to mid seventies, i looked forward to Friday nights on ABC to tuning in on the first and only comedic anthology series featuring a slew of well known actors, writers and directors. it's sad that the attempted updated version recently shown wasn't as successful as the version from the seventies. what the world needs now are series such as these in a world full of violence. Although the premise of the show was silly, it did have it's romantic overtones in a funny type manner which most of all the vignettes were family oriented, which i think was one of the keys toward its popularity. i personally enjoyed viewing performers Charles Nelson Reilly and Louisa Moritz to Flip Wilson and Gail Fisher. it would be nice to have it return more often in reruns or on video tape.