I Dream of Jeannie Season One

A few weeks ago I bought season one of I Dream of Jeannie. I bought it in its original black and white as I didn't think I had any other choice. I have since found out that they did release a colorized version. This was a wonderful DVD set as I never saw the first season of this show. It was fun to see how Major Nelson, well Captain Nelson during this season, first met Jeannie. His space capsule went off course and he landed on an uncharted island. It was while gathering debris that Tony Nelson came across Jeannie's bottle. When he opened her bottle it was love at first sight for Jeannie who Tony could not understand as she didn't speak english. He wished for her to speak english and then he wished for a helicopter and one arrived for his rescue. As a way to thank her he gave Jeannie her freedom. This part esplained the rest of the series to me. When she would get mad she would always leave but would come back by the end of the episode. I always wondered how she could do that as once the bottle is open the genie is suppose to always be with you. Now it was clear that she stayed by choice. So everything that she did. No matter if it was using her magic to help Tony and his friends or if it was just calling him Master it was always because she wanted to do it. I loved hearing Barbara Eden, Larry Hagman and Bill Daily comment on the first episode. It was not just 3 former co-workers but 3 old friends who were remembering old times and joking around. Another surprise was to see that Bill Dailey's character of Roger didn't know about the existance of Jeannie when the series started. Like everyone else he thought Tony was going crazy. The one constant in the series was Haydon Rourke as Dr. Bellows. He always suspected that Major Nelson was up to something but he couldn't figure it out. By the end of the series he was still trying but not nearly as hard as he had before.

The stars of this series had been knocking around for a few years in movies and other TV series. Barbara Eden holds another place in TV history even before I Dream of Jeannie. The movie How to Marry a Millionare that starred Marilyn Monroe as Loco Jones was made into a TV sit-com in 1958 and Barbara played Loco Jones on TV. This was the first time that a movie was made into a TV series.