I always tried to give “My Mother the Car” a chance. Because I’m actually quite open to comedy fare with wild and surreal premises (as indeed, I love a lot early-30s anarchic comedy like Marx Bros, Wheeler & Woolsey, Clark & McCullough and such).
But even within the perimeters of wacky humor, “Mother’s” premise was lacking some very basics of sense. How can one get ‘reincarnated’ as an inanimate object? Wasn’t his mother quite alive and kicking when the car would have been manufactured? Isn’t the car supposed to be from about 1928, yet the look and design of it appears more like something from around 1916? And sometimes Jerry Van Dyke seemed to come across as more mentally ‘afflicted’ than funny, sort of like the territory that Jerry Lewis or Huntz Hall used to walk a fine-line with, but worse.
The odd thing is that it actually was a rather well-filmed and well-produced series. It “looked” slick and nicely made, not like some rock-bottom cheapo show.
I think that was part of the premise — he was the only one she’d talk to, through the radio, right? — so that suspended our disbelief, it could have been his imagination only. I remember details of but one episode, he was overheard telling his mother that she’d be much more comfortable as he troweled in concrete to fix the garage floor; instead, the police came to investigate her murder and burial by her psycho son.