# The Bob Crane Show

The Bob Crane Show is an American sitcom that aired on NBC. The series starred Bob Crane as Bob Wilcox, a man in his 40s who abruptly quits his job as an insurance company executive to enter medical school. The series co-starred Patricia Harty as his wife Ellie Wilcox, who becomes the family's breadwinner while Bob is in school. The family helped out at home, but at school Bob faced the problem of being so much older than the other students. Characters such as Mr. Busso, the nutty landlord, and the overzealous Dean Ingersoll added to the show's comedy.
After initial delays, the series debuted on March 6, 1975. It performed poorly in the Nielsen ratings and was canceled after 14 episodes were broadcast.

## Production

The Bob Crane Show was originally titled Second Start, and NBC planned to debut it in the fall of 1974. However, the Federal Communications Commission re-instituted its Prime Time Access Rule, which limited the broadcast networks to programming only three of the four hours of the prime time programming block. This decision led NBC to delay the series until January 1975. Crane re-shot the pilot, leading to another delay to March 1975.
Crane expressed his desire that his series be what he called "hard comedy", which he described as comedy that "goes for the fences. It's also what you might call take-a-risk comedy because if you don't hit a home run, you might strike out. It's either a belly laugh or it's no go and no show."
MTM Enterprises, who had produced the hit shows The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show, among others, produced the series, which was filmed with three-cameras in front of a studio audience, whose responses were "sweetened" with a laugh track.

## Cast

* Bob Crane as Bob Wilcox
* Patricia Harty as Ellie Wilcox
* Todd Susman as Marvin Susman
* Jack Fletcher as Dean Lyle Ingersoll
* Ronny Graham as Ernest Busso
* Erica Petal as Pam Wilcox
* James Sutorius as Jerry Mallory
* Source:

## Episodes

| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original release date |
| 1 | "Mid-Term Blues" | Jay Sandrich | Martin Donovan | March 6, 1975 (1975-03-06) |
| Bob Wilcox returns to medical school, leaving the responsibility for supporting the family on his wife Ellie and facing mid-term exams. |||||
| 2 | "Not with My Mother You Don't" | Norman S. Powell | Arlene Stadd & Leonard Stadd | March 13, 1975 (1975-03-13) |
| Bob's mother (Audra Lindley) moves in with a man the same age as Bob. |||||
| 3 | "The Incredible Shrinking Bob" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | March 20, 1975 (1975-03-20) |
| Bob's anxiety over leaving his wife as sole financial supporter grows. |||||
| 4 | "Ellie's Sister" | Norman S. Powell | Jim Allen | March 27, 1975 (1975-03-27) |
| Two of Bob's classmates fall in love with his visiting sister-in-law. |||||
| 5 | "One Summer of Misery" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | April 3, 1975 (1975-04-03) |
| Bob receives a summer scholarship to Columbia University but frets that Ellie, who can't afford to go with him, is a little too eager to see him go. |||||
| 6 | "But I Love My Wife" | Jack Shea | Martin Cohan | April 17, 1975 (1975-04-17) |
| A South African exchange student zeroes in on Bob with her swinging singles approach to medical studies. |||||
| 7 | "Acute Bussophobia" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | April 24, 1975 (1975-04-24) |
| Bob's old skills of salesmanship come in handy when he has to persuade his landlord to enter the hospital for an operation. |||||
| 8 | "Grin and Bare It" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | May 1, 1975 (1975-05-01) |
| Ellie decides to supplement her income by posing as a nude model for art classes at Bob's college. |||||
| 9 | "A Case of Misdiagnosis" | Norman S. Powell | Jim Allen | May 8, 1975 (1975-05-08) |
| Bob treats an old friend (John Astin) and is surprised to learn the man is a prominent gay activist, prompting concern that people will think he is also gay. NBC, worried that the script might be offensive to gay people, refused to approve the episode until it was reviewed by gay media activist Newton Dieter. |||||
| 10 | "The Lyle Principle" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | May 15, 1975 (1975-05-15) |
| Bob and a friend give the newly appointed dean a pep talk. |||||
| 11 | "An American Fiasco" | Norman S. Powell | Martin Donovan | May 22, 1975 (1975-05-22) |
| The descent of a pair of young documentary filmmakers on the Wilcox household creates havoc in domestic tranquility for Bob and Ellie. |||||
| 12 | "The Doctor Sings the Blues" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | May 29, 1975 (1975-05-29) |
| Bob's burgeoning friendship with his anatomy professor backfires when the man unloads his marital problems on Bob. |||||
| 13 | "The Embezzler" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | June 5, 1975 (1975-06-05) |
| When the last man he hired before resigning as an insurance company executive embezzles thousands of dollars from the firm, Bob is suspected of having been an accessory. |||||
| 14 | "The Son of the Campus Capers" | Norman S. Powell | Unknown | June 12, 1975 (1975-06-12) |
| A campus flirtation of 20 years before causes some anxious moments for Bob when the lady turns up married to the dean of the medical school. |||||

## Reception

The Bob Crane Show finished the season in 65th place with a 14.9 Nielsen rating, a disappointment to the network. NBC cancelled the series after 13 weeks.
Series star Crane blamed the failure on the lack of chemistry among the characters. He compared The Bob Crane Show to its fellow MTM series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show, in wishing that the same sorts of character relationships on those series had been present in his. "I had nobody to talk to....In my series, I had no Bill Daily."