YMMV / Our Miss Brooks

• Adorkable:
  • Miss Brooks' Love Interest, Oblivious to Love Mr. Boynton. Mr. Boynton takes Miss Brooks on dates to the zoo, has an avid interest in frogs, and is painfully shy when it comes to romance. Mr. Boynton and Miss Brooks finally marry at the end of The Movie Grand Finale
  • Squeaky-voiced teenager Walter Denton, who drives Miss Brooks to school.
• Anvilicious: ''Mr. Whipple" sees Miss Brooks and her friends try to help an old man whom they believe is destitute and starving. It turns out he's a rich tycoon on a diet. However, the generosity of Miss Brooks and her friends so affects Mr. Whipple that he takes them out for dinner, and decides to lobby for a new school gymnasium. It's an entertaining episode nonetheless.
• Die for Our Ship: Our Miss Brooks has a unique example from its final television season. Marriage to Mr. Boynton has always been her series goal. Executive Meddling saw Miss Brooks take a new job teaching at a private school when Madison was torn down for a new freeway (somehow Madison High ended up in Los Angeles after having previously been located in Madison). Miss Brooks found herself chased by the school's gym teacher. The new format was unpopular among show fans, and even Eve Arden herself. Mr. Boynton was brought back toward the end of the season in response to popular demand, and the last few episodes saw Miss Brooks pursue him as of old.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Our Miss Brooks was a hit show, in spite of its star character being a spinster English teacher whose Series Goal was marriage to biology teacher Mr. Boynton Miss Brooks finally marries Mr. Boynton in The Movie Grand Finale. The show's humor was based on Constance Brooks' sardonic wit, as the only sane woman dealing with a cast of characters including Oblivious to Love Mr. Boynton, her Cloud Cuckoolander landlady Mrs. Davis, blustery principal Mr. Conklin, and comically dumb students Walter Denton and Stretch Snodgrass. In 1954, Eve Arden won the "Best Female Star of a Regular Series" Emmy Award for her portrayal of Miss Brooks. This shift into a larger audience can be gleaned from what brands bought ad-space in the middle of the show. At the start of its run on radio, Colgate-Palmolive used the half-hour slot to sell articles to women, i.e. Luster-Cream Shampoo, "men folks love it too". Later, they made a 180, switching to promoting Colgate Toothpaste and (men's) Shaving Cream. Anason was a later radio sponsor, while the Armed Forces Radio Network played the program in reruns. On television, the program eventually was used to showcase products aimed for kids, like breakfast cereal and a new type of chocolate milk mix!
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In "The Pet Shop", a misunderstanding has Miss Brooks and Mr. Boynton decided to stand each other up. At the last moment, Miss Brooks decides to wait outside the pet shop during a shower of rain. It turns out Mr. Boynton can't stay away either, and meets Miss Brooks. The misunderstanding cleared up, the weather also turn sunny, and the two walk away for their date.
  • Miss Brooks keeps missing Mr. Boynton in "Mr. Boynton's Return". She finally catches him at the airport as he's about to leave town to visit his parents. Mr. Boynton decides to skip his flight, and spend the weekend in town so he can spend time with Miss Brooks.
  • The end of the cinematic Grand Finale, where now engaged to be married, Miss Brooks and Mr. Boynton leave the zoo together arm-in-arm headed to setup their new home and live Happily Ever After.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Mr. Conklin is referred to as fat on several occasions throughout the series, although he wouldn't be noticeable in a crowd.
• Replacement Scrappy: Gene Talbot, who initially replaced Philip Boynton as Connie's Love Interest in the last season of the television series. However, Mr. Boynton ended up returning by the end of the season, and marries Connie in The Movie.
• Retroactive Recognition: For those wondering, yes, that's Colonel Trautman playing the dorky teenager Walter Denton.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • There is a contingent of fans who prefer the show’s radio incarnation, feeling the humour didn’t always translate well to television, along with Robert Rockwell being generally regarded as more wooden than the charismatic Jeff Chandler. This may also be partly attributable to the radio episodes being much easier to find than the bulk of the television series, meaning more people nowadays are likely to be familiar primarily with the radio version.
  • Again, the controversial final (1955-1956) television season. Marriage to Mr. Boynton has always been her series goal. Executive Meddling saw Miss Brooks take a new job teaching at a private school when Madison was torn down for a new freeway (somehow Madison High ended up in Los Angeles after having previously been located in Madison). Miss Brooks found herself chased by the school's gym teacher. The new format was unpopular among show fans, and even Eve Arden herself. Mr. Boynton was brought back toward the end of the season in response to popular demand, and the last few episodes saw Miss Brooks pursue him as of old.
    • The events of the final television season were ignored on the radio season, where Miss Brooks continued at Madison as per usual. The theatrical series finale ignored the events of the final television season, and concluded the story at Madison High School (which was in the City of Madison and definitely not in Los Angeles!).
• Unconventional Learning Experience: This is unavoidable, given that the program is set in a High School and stars an English teacher. For example, in "The English Test", Miss Brooks tutors Harriet Conlin, Walter Denton and "Jerky" McGuirk for an upcoming examination. Connie Brooks covers such topics as "Concord and Governance", "Gerundial Phrases" and "Sentence Structure". Humour is provided by Walter and McGuirk trying to crib off Harriet. Similarly, the episode "Yodar Kritch Award" features Connie attempting to tutor Bones Snodgrass. Here, she covers the subjunctive mood, using the phrase "If I were John the Fisherman." This is a Sound-to-Screen Adaptation of the radio episode, only substituting Bones for his brother Stretch. Our Miss Brooks similarly covers scientific topics, due to the fact biology teacher Mr. Boynton is Miss Brooks' Love Interest. The episode "Life Can Be Bones" relies heavily on a discussion of paleontology. A good deal of time is also spent relating the idea of a "Missing Link".