…BANG, ZOOOM! Every year on New Years Eve, the 2…

…BANG, ZOOOM!

Every year on New Years Eve, the 24-hour Honeymooners marathon on channel 11 brings me back to the eternal question:

Ralph Kramden or Ed Norton—who do ya like?

It’s one of the big questions, one I have given much thought to. And I would like this year to publicly state my preference for:

Ralph Kramden.

I’d like to explain my position, but first I must acknowledge Norton’s greatness. Art Carney is a funny man who created a unique character that lights up every room he stumbles into. Norton, I’m willing to concede, might be funnier, on a laughs-per-minute basis, than Kramden.

But one does not come to experience an episode—or 39 back-to-back episodes—of the Honeymooners simply to laugh any more than one reads, say, William’s Vision of Piers Ploghman (1380) strictly for the yucks. One comes to the Honeymooners for edification, for art, for the sublime. In many ways, I find that the Honeymooners is not at all unlike that earlier work in English, not only because the dialog is composed in unrhymed alliterative verse, but also because of its brilliant explication of our hero’s intense quest for the true Christian life, in terms of the medieval Catholic mind–except for the Christian and Catholic part.

Keep in mind that while Norton may light up a room, most of the space in the room is usually taken up—by Kramden. Ralph fills about a third of the room physically, another third metaphysically. Jackie Gleason had a presence and a kind of static behemoth grace. He added pathos to the sitcom. Sum total: Gravitas, something along the line of a Willie Lowman whose show must go on.

The beauty of Norton, really, is that he pulls back the cheesecloth to reveal this paragon, this emblem of ourselves busting the buttons of public service schmatas. The Honeymooners works on the principle of Kramden as the tragicomic hero with Norton as his foil and fool. The wisdom that leaps like uncontrollable burps from the ostensibly dim and happy Norton serves to frame our hero’s humanity. And that humanity centers on a hunger to transcend—to transcend, primarily, the stickwood-furnished New York apartment that he shares with his long-suffering wife. Alice, in fact, is the foil on the other side of the display, providing a constant contrast to Ralph’s incessant corner-cutting and reckless ambition.

Well, I’ll gladly admit that Kramden is a lot more like me than are either Ed or Alice. I’ve got a little Trixie in me, but for the most part I identify with Kramden. What is there, really, to a guy like Norton who barrels through everything with a kind of goofball joi de vivre. Give him his baloney sandwich, and he’s happy to go back down in the hole. Ralph will never settle for perpetuity at the beck and call of the MTA. He will not spend the rest of his life in that little apartment, if he has any say in it. Apparently he doesn’t have much say, trapped, as he is, in a world that he never made. But that only makes him hungrier.

Recently I was made aware of an on-line compatibility tool—Dr. Love (thanks Meg at Blogcabin). You go to Dr. Love, put in your name and your partner’s, and you get a percentage of likelihood that your relationship will endure. Ralph and Alice come up with a 33%. Dr. Love interprets thus:

“The chance of a relationship working out between Ralph and Alice is not very big, but a relationship is very well possible, if the two of you really want it to [sic], and are prepared to make some sacrifices for it. You’ll have to spend a lot of quality time together. You must be aware of the fact that this relationship might not work out at all, no matter how much time you invest in it.”

Bingo! If they still made sitcoms, Dr. Love’s spiel would be a heaven-sent premise for a new half-hour comedy that would revive Thursday night at NBC. It’s the marriage, stupid! That’s why the show is called the Honeymooners! If it weren’t for Alice, Ralph would go right off the tracks. If it weren’t for Ralph, life would be so monotonous and meaningless that Alice would rest her head on the tracks and wait for the uptown 4 or 5. Marriage, mother-in-law aside, may be the one predicament that Kramden can tolerate. It is the accepted rule of his game, his salvation episode after episode–with 33% odds. It’s beautiful, baby!

Don’t put too much store in Dr Love, however. He gives Ed and Trixie a 26% chance of making it with twaddle somewhat slightly bleaker than that accompanying the Kramden’s 33%. I think, though, that Dr. Love is simply thrown off by women with names like “Trixie”, because, from what I’ve seen, the Nortons are trapped in a marriage with a near 100% success prognosis.

Thank God for Ralph. The brooding, conflicted master of negative space. The gouty Pierrot, the tragic clown and conjurer of grand schemes. I am on his bus. Thank God also for The Great One, bartender to Crazy Guggenheim, a man who threw parties on–and for the duration of–cross-country train trips. Parties for his friends.

What’s more, I know that my mother-in-law prefers Norton.

Wake me when it’s over,
Vanx

______

Photos of interest:

Second from bottom: Crazy Guggenheim serenades the bartender on my mom’s TV at Christmastime, circa 1984

Above: The Ralph Kramden statue placed by Viacom’s TV Land outside the Port Authority bus station in New York City (TV Land was less successful in putting Samantha from Bewitched in Salem, MA, earlier this year. That’s neither here nor there.)