Laughter IS Good Medicine: Feel-Good TV Shows & Films

I love to watch a good movie or television show, but for whatever reason, I usually gravitate toward the darker types where the main characters are either in a state of mental distress, fostering suicidal or homicidal thoughts or are practically comatose with depression. And when it all gets too much to bear, I start to crave an honest-to-goodness, all-out silly or ridiculous comedy. Instead of getting a headache from grinding my teeth, feeling the distress of all the characters, my jaw pleasantly aches from laughing. What a nice change of pace.

Laughter doesn’t just affect the way your jaw feels: it has an effect on your whole body. Researchers at the University of Marylandstudied people as they watched either comedies or dramas. They found that blood vessels of the group who watched the comedy expanded and contracted normally, while the blood vessels of the people who watched the drama actually tensed up, reducing blood flow. Other studies have found that the ability to use humor may actually raise your body’s immune response and lower blood sugar levels.

So I asked friend and fellow blogger Jane Boursaw, the queen of all things cinematic, to share her well-researched list of movies and TV shows that are bound to leave you cheerful and buoyant instead of making you wish you’d never been born into an awful, depressing, dark and hopeless world. Jane is a family entertainment writer who specializes in movies, TV and celebrities. If anyone knows, Jane knows.

It’s so easy to turn your attitude around with a good laugh…take it away, Jane!

Five Feel-Good Films and TV Shows

It’s a tough world out there, and sometimes you just need to settle in with a movie or TV show guaranteed to take you to a happy place. I polled my readers at Film Gecko recently, who kindly replied with a wide array of great ideas – everything from ‘The Gilmore Girls’ to ‘When Harry Met Sally.’

It got me thinking about my own favorite shows and movies – the ones I turn to when the world closes in or when I need to escape for a while. It’s tough to narrow it down, but I’ve managed to pick my top five:

1. ‘My Three Sons.’ You’d think that a show about a widower left to raise his sons would be somber at best. Not so with ‘My Three Sons.’ Maybe it’s the fact that Fred MacMurray as the cardigan-wearing Steve Douglas always knew just what to say. Maybe it was Bub’s dry wit or, later, Uncle Charlie’s tough love. Maybe it’s because I identified with the kids, having grown up in that era myself. Whatever the reason, watching ‘My Three Sons’ is a sunny day in the storm of life.
2. ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show.’ I loved watching this show with my parents every week, because it had something for everyone. My Dad loved watching Ted Baxter make a fool of himself, and Mom and I loved watching Mary “make it after all.” There’s no denying it had one of the best casts in TV history, including Betty White as the ditzy Sue Ann Nivens. And even though Mary Richards seemed like she had it all, I could still identify with her “off” moments, like the time she went to the awards banquet with a nasty cold and her hair all puffed up. But she got through it. She had spunk, after all.
3. ‘M*A*S*H.’ No matter where I am in my life or the world, there’s one show I can always count on to get me through. ‘M*A*S*H’ still airs somewhere on my TV every day, and watching the doctors and nurses at the 4077^th struggle through as best they can – even as the war rages on -- gives me hope that I can get through life, too. And I still have a major crush on Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce.
4. Any Doris Day Movie. I’m partial to the movies she did with Rock Hudson, including ‘Pillow Talk,’ ‘Lover Come Back,’ and ‘Send Me No Flowers.’ But she also scored with every other male star with whom she was paired, like Cary Grant in ‘That Touch of Mink,’ James Garner in ‘The Thrill of It All,’ and Rod Taylor in ‘The Glass Bottom Boat.’ I love her early movies like ‘Romance on the High Seas’ and ‘Tea for Two,’ as well as her TV series – especially the later seasons where she gained more control over the direction of the show. I’ve read several books about Doris Day, so I know she hasn’t had an easy life. But you’d never know it watching her on screen. She just exudes grace and style and a happy outlook on life that makes you feel like anything is possible.
5. ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’ Is there anything more calming than the life Andy Taylor led in Mayberry? With Aunt Bee cooking up a pot roast at home and Opie stopping by the courthouse after school, you get the feeling this must be the happiest, most stress-free place on the planet. And the comical capers of Barney Fife (“Nip it in the bud!”), Gomer Pyle (“Citizen’s Arrest!”) and the rest of the gang just add to the homespun goodness of this show.

So there you have it. When my life is crashing down around me, these are the shows and movies that get me through. And there are plenty of others, including any romantic comedy starring Andie MacDowell, Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts; holiday movies like ‘White Christmas’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’; any episode of ‘Modern Family’; and one of the best musicals ever, ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ The scene where Gene Kelly dance-splashes his way down the street is one of my all-time favorite movie scenes.