And Barney Fife is possibly the funniest character in TV history.
He also played an innocent (punk) kid, wrongly accused of a break-in, and Aunt Bee (serving on the jury) gets him aquitted, while Andy successfully fingers the Real Criminal.
That’s true. Especially when the Griffith show started 3 October 1960 (imdb says that’s when the first episode aired). AFAIK there weren’t any blacks on tv then. They started appearing on shows like Star Trek, Hogans Heroes, and I Spy (Bill Cosby) in 1965.
Heck, there weren’t any blacks on Gilligan’s Island either. It was a different world before the civil rights movement.
okay, and as the OP, I would request that a civil rights discussion about this show, or others be opened in another thread.
I want to hear about how Sheriff Taylor didn’t act like hisself…
Back on topic. 
It always bugged me when Andy didn’t use common sense with dangerous criminals. There was one episode where the state police left 3 dangerous felons in Andy’s jail. Andy leaves Barney and Gomer to guard them while he goes to search the woods for another felon. Barney gets locked in a cell, Gomer is on the roof and drops his gun. A total screw up.
I’d barely trust Barney and Gomer to pick up ice cream at the store. Andy wasn’t supposed to be stupid. I hated it when they made him a dumb country hick. Most of the time Andy was the smartest guy in town.
That jail break episode was The Big House from season 3. George Kennedy guest starred.
A good episode, but Andy being dumb was out of character.
Helen’s (Aneta Corsaut) hairstyle in the show distracted from her appearance. Makes her look asexual. But I think she was attractive if you can picture a more flattering hairstyle.
She was also the daughter, Betty Anderson, in Father knows best.
Another tidbit: Many many shows were filmed on the “mayberry” set. Known as the 40 acres backlot. In the Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock go back to 1930’s earth, Capt. Kirk and the Joan collins character are walking through the town and walk right past Floyd’s Barber shop.
If andy and barney had made a right after walking out the door to the courthouse and walked a block they would have found themselves at the train depot from Gone with the Wind.
Aerial view of the set with the various shows filmed there pointed out:
Eddie Anderson on The Jack Benny Program in 1950–65, Louise Beavers and Amanda Randolph on Make Room for Daddy in 1953–64, Nipsey Russell on Car 54, Where Are You? in 1961–62, and Cicely Tyson on East Side, West Side in 1963–64.
No black people at all for a small Southern town made no sense then and makes no sense now. But enough of that. (I find that their version of “diversity” that involves the Italian migrant workers who pester Andy no end in one episode hysterical).
I thought Andy was out of character when he castigated Opie for not being truthful about the problems his bicycle had, then turned around and did it himself when a couple arrives who are interested in buying his house. I don’t think Andy would have done that.
There was an episode in which Barney, thinking he was alone in the courthouse, makes up a little song about himself, to the tune of Clementine:
In a jailhouse, down in Dixie
Fightin’ crime an riskin’ life
Lived a Sheriff and his buddy,
Pistol packin’ Barney Fife.
He doesn’t realize that Andy is there and listening. After a couple more verses about Barney catching some bank robbers, Andy suddenly cuts in with:
Oh, my Barney
Oh, my Barney
Had a jail and couldn’t lock it
Had one bullet for his pistol
Had to keep it in his pocket
Kind of funny, but I always thought that was pretty mean and degrading of Andy.
There was an episode where some conman was trying to take advantage of Aunt Bea by pretending to want to marry her. Andy has a talk with him while cleaning a shotgun to get his point across…that was a little un-Andy like.
Now for an un-Aunt Bea moment, when Barney buys a motorcycle and is driving everyone nuts, she suggests they string a piano wire across the rode at neck level like she saw some commandos do in a war movie.
Ah, but Andy learns his lesson and sees the error of his ways in this episode. Likewise, in the episode where Andy is initially horrified at the notion of Ellie running for city council (A woman on city council!!!), when he hears Opie parroting his bigotry, he is enlightened and becomes her biggest advocate.
There is one black person in a major role during the final season, when things were beginning to change on television. He is a former Mayberry native who has been away playing in the NFL, who returns to his hometown and coaches Opie and his friends’ football team.
Helen Crump: Helen Crump - Wikipedia
Ellie Walker doesn’t have a Wiki page with a picture, but the actress does for her ST:TOS appearance: Elinor Donahue | Memory Alpha | Fandom
I rarely watch this show, though I have vague memories of watching it as a kid. Not too long ago there was an episode where Aunt Bee buys a wig. That coincides with a visiting preacher from Mount Pilot(?) who takes a shine to her and hilarity ensues when she tries to hide the fact that she’s weraing a wig. Anyway, my first reaction was to puzzle over how Andy gets uncharacteristically judgemental and demands that she take it off. That really stood out for me and it’s kind of a funny coincidence that someone should start a thread about that very kind of thing.
Anyone notice how stiff and uncomfortable Andy was around his girlfriends? He never stands close, holds hands or kisses them. I read an interview with Griffith and he talked about the problem of finding someone he connected with. They tried Ellie, then there was a county nurse for a few episodes, and then Helen. Helen and Andy never had much on screen warmth either.
That’s out of character. Andy had been married and had a kid. I don’t think he’d spend years with Helen without spending the night.
Helen Crump was good looking in The Blob, but yeah, I’d take Elinor Donahue any day of the week.
There were black people in the background occasionally in the black and white episodes, and while I hear rumors there were blacks in actual roles on the color episodes (such as Flip Conroy, the retired NFL player who’s also good at music!), I don’t know for sure because I refuse to acknowledge the color episodes exist.
A lot of Andy’s un-Andy moments were really very Andy moments. He was the benevolent dictator of Mayberry. He routinely misused his powers in pursuit of a greater good. He was the police and the justice of the peace, for starters. Someone mentioned dropping the charges in Man in a Hurry (Gomer’s first episode!). He also jailed a whole band to force them to listen to the local guitarist who Andy knew was talented (he jailed people on trumped-up charges often). He set up a fake crime with Miss Ellie just to give Barney something to do.
I think that Helen is taking an unfair hit. She was hot on TAGS. Ellie waren’t no slouch either, of course.
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Are you kidding? That is quintessential Rural Patriarch. If you ever date a southern girl, odds are, you will find yourself on the receiving end of that conversation before your first date. “Yes, sir, I will have her home by 9 o’clock, sir, and I assure you, sir, my intentions are completely honorable, sir!”
Didn’t seem strange at all to me. In our town of 200, the only minority was one family of Puerto Ricans.