Father Knows Best, a family comedy of the 1950s,
is perhaps more important for what it has come to represent than for what it
actually was. In essence, the series was one of a slew of middle-class family
sitcoms in which moms were moms, kids were kids, and fathers knew best. Today,
many critics view it, at best, as high camp fun, and, at worst, as part of what
critic David Marc once labeled the "Aryan melodramas" of the 1950s
and 1960s.