Wives With Beehives

Thursday, Dec. 27 , 10 p.m on TLC

If nothing else, the title promised a look at an era long gone. The 1950s, that is: the object of knowing derision today buried in clichés about a time when America was the land of happy automatons—a people unthinking, accepting and repressed. Especially its serious, non-revolutionary, jobs- and marriage-focused young, who have for decades been dismissed as "the silent generation" by sociologists enamored of the more colorful decades to come—years of riots, bomb-throwing, seizure of the universities, the reign of the Weathermen.

Dollie ices a cake in 'Wives With Beehives.' TLC

True, that title didn't sound altogether free of clichéd views—"wives with beehives" isn't all that far, tonally, from "the silent generation." Still, a film promising a look at women of the 21st century who choose—apparently for deep-rooted reasons—a hairdo popular in the 1950s along with a lot else associated with that decade could lead who knows where.

One place this breezy portrait of such women doesn't lead is to the sight of hair done in a beehive. There are other stand-out hairdos, to be sure, some clearly the product of fevered fantasies about the '50s, but nothing approaching the style the title mentions. That should have been the first sign that this TLC production about a group of Los Angeles housewives who pride themselves on adherence to the manners, morals and dress of the 1950s might be a bit short in the authenticity department. There would be others in regular succession.

When Dollie, one of the film's most impassioned spokespersons for the looks, the values, the style of the era, flounces around bare-shouldered, sporting a large tattoo, it's clear that somebody has an odd view of the way women of the '50s looked. And talked. The first time one of these devotees of the past burbles about something being "so awesome!" you may want to laugh. It's a reminder. Visits to retro clothing and furniture stores, and the solemn testaments to the virtues of the past, notwithstanding, these are women very much of their time.

It's not long, in fact, before the tone of the relationships between them, mannerly to begin with, degenerates into resentments of a familiar kind. For a while at least, we could be watching "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," in vintage clothing.

That clothing plays a central role in the concerns of the four women introduced here, whose reasons for their choice of lifestyle are all roughly similar. Dollie, who had a difficult childhood, wants order, and also a world like the one she connects with the '50s, when men were men and women were women. Unlike today—when, she charges, men have surrendered their masculinity. As she speaks a scene unfolds in her living room by way of illustration, showing her husband striding purposefully to a table lamp to change the bulb—presumably an example of male assertiveness. How many manly husbands does it take to screw in a light bulb?...

Amber, who also wants a stable and peaceful life, wants no children and may, it's suggested, be trying to overcome memories of her strict religious upbringing. Fifties fashion of all kinds is central to her life, if this report is to be believed. She prides herself on her cocktail parties featuring appropriate taste treats of the era: deviled eggs and cheese puffs. The dressing room that holds her huge vintage wardrobe is the largest room in the house—a fact that would likely have been incomprehensible to an American homemaker of the '50s.

Shelby, married to a U.S. Navy man, is proud to feed her husband what she considers 1950s meals when he's home on leave. Potato-chip casserole, freezer-box pie and blue Jello, etc. She believes, as does the elegant Leslie, that the values of the '50s will keep her family intact.

As far as one can tell from these lives and preoccupations, the values the film's subjects hold so dear are centered mostly on objects, possessions—the vintage outfits packed into their houses, the '50s sofas and kitchen, the underwear they buy at retro shops. One scene is devoted to a shopping trip in which the girls happily try on midcentury undergarments—bras and corsets—that give them the '50s look they long for.

We learn here, in the end, nothing about the beehive (a style that endured through much of the 1960s) and certainly nothing about the '50s itself, except for the image that has endured, and filtered down. A picture of a time at odds with the sneering pontifications about "the age of conformity," the aforementioned "silent generation." A decade that felt, even in the shadow of the Cold War and amid dire fears about atomic war, far more secure than life does now, far more sane, though the battle against segregation was yet to be won. It was a time of incomparably greater literacy, a decade unequaled for its outpouring of great American novels—a time, in short, that deserves far better than this film with its potato casseroles and retrofashion obsession. But say this about these women who decided to embrace the '50s—they were on to something. If only they knew why and what it was.

Ceelo Growl of 'The Year in Pup Culture.' Animal Planet

The Year in Pup Culture

Saturday, Dec. 22, 9 p.m. on Animal Planet

"The Year in Pup Culture" could have done more to live up to its endearing title. A jokey take on the year's major events and stars, with dogs and a few cats in the central roles, the joke doesn't deliver much fun till its midpoint. The producers of these films have yet to figure out that puppies draped in silly costumes aren't just unfunny—they're painful to behold. The whole point of puppies, and grown dogs too, is those fabulous bodies, those heads—which we see here covered in stupid hats and spectacles. Things do pick up when the film gets to larger events—the Olympics, the presidential election, the dogs preparing for the predicted end of the world. Best scene: the doggie Olympics star who decides to curl up and snooze on his balance beam.