Prime-Time TV’s First Counterculture Hero: Mr. Ed

“[T]here was the … comedy of seeing a gawky animal enjoy the sacraments of postwar culture. Ed submits to psychoanalysis, goes to costume pageants, orders shoes over the phone. The joke is not just that he acts human; it’s the implication that the better part of early-’60s home life could be managed, quite adeptly, by a horse with a vocabulary.”