The Debbie Reynolds Show
Originally aired in 1969, in color (sort of!). Clearly patterned after I Love Lucy, Debbie Reynolds plays the ditzy wife of a sportswriter (as opposed to a Cuban bandleader) who gets into zany predicaments. But we grew up with Lucille Ball...and Debbie Reynolds was no Lucille Ball. In fact, this program seemed to be little more than a vehicle for Reynolds to overact and make annoyingly cutesy faces for the camera. Which is a shame, as this episode could have been funny, esp. when William Schallert (The Patty Duke Show) pops up as the head of a soup company. This character is quite similar to "The Admiral" that he played on Get Smart.
In this episode, another frequent guest star on Get Smart makes an appearance as well:
Upon hearing that there's a hidden camera in the local supermarket, filming a commercial for Petersen's Soup, Debbie makes a beeline for the man posing as a supermarket employee. You can guess who this is....
He asks her if she could move her cart, because it's on his foot.
Debbie apologizes, pointedly saying that the cart must be awfully heavy with so much soup in it.
When he sees all the cans of Petersen's Soup, and the crazy lady pushing the cart, he signals to the cameraman to start filming.
The stock boy she's talked to earlier brings her the case of black bean soup that she requested, and she tells the man that she's buying an entire case of it because her husband loves it so much.
The man is surprised -- and impressed -- when Debbie tells him that her husband is a sportswriter for the local news.
Then he lets Debbie in on a little secret: they've been filming her the whole time.
Debbie coyly pretends she hasn't known this all along, leading to a rather exasperating and drawn-out scene in which she overacts for a full 40 seconds.
Mercifully, this debacle ends when the man tells the cameraman to stop shooting. He says to Debbie, "There's the camera, right up there in the deli section...looking through that bagel."
She signs a release form, and he tells her that if this film is chosen for the commercial, she'll receive $100. (What she doesn't realize is that, on the same day, a rival soup company just signed a contract to sponsor her husband's sports report on the TV news.)
Excitedly, Debbie hurries off, running over the man's foot once more.