I know the show was wildly popular, but I am designating it as underrated because it was much more clever than commonly given credit for. Within any given episode there were two or three events going on at once with two or three parties misunderstanding the reality. Their perspectives would interweave in clever and high-larious fashion, with both subtle and obvious cues to reality interspersed. Hilarity would, of course, ensue.
Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Max Baer Jr., and Donna Douglas were very good comics given wonderful roles and scripts. It was the writing more than anything, I suppose, that I feel does not get its due.
mmm
I think so, too, especially as regards the writing. Also, the timing and skills of the actors, in particular Irene Ryan and Buddy Ebsen, were the type that we don’t see anymore, as the actors learned their craft on stage and in the movies.
Is it quotes time yet? Please let it be quotes time.
Ellie Mae: When I gits married, I want me a mountain man with a li’l old hardscrabble farm and grow turnips and raise hogs. [Exit]
Granny: Now that’s what you call optimism. As old as she is she’s still holdin’ out hope for a treasure like that.
and -
Mr. Drysdale: [flexing and beaming energetically] Do you know what time I got up this morning? Six a.m.!
Jed: Jethro slept in, too.
Granny: Some days, you just don’t feel like gittin’ out of bed.
I thought it was “stupid”* when it was new. As a rural dweller, I thought it was full of sterotypes and made fun of us. (Same with Green Acres).
My biggest complaint is that they never changed. Thye didn’t have to become “new money” poseurs, but there’s nothing wrong wth some new clothes, fer cripes sake. The Hillbillies were protrayed as folk with good common sense, but there’s no common sense in using a rope for a belt, or driving that POS truck all over LA (and it probably broke down a lot, and had a top speed of 40 mph. Great on the freeways!).
*But I still watched them every week. They were still funny, within those parameters.
Shooting flies off’n a molasses patch, Jethro being a double-naught spy, stoppping the grunion invasion. Good times.
Always been one of my dreams to sit at the family table, tell them I’ve won the lottery, then beg and plead for them not to force me to move to California like I’ve seen in the documentaries. Please don’t make me take my crazy mother, my ambitious nephew and my silly niece!
Yeah, the entire notion of a story without a story, or the zero-continuity series, is looking increasingly dated; I can’t think of a single non-legacy medium where that’s still expected. It’s just newspaper comics, the zombies among zombies, and whatever old-style sitcoms still hew to that old format. These days, even light, fluffy comedies have things like plot arcs and character development and stories which aren’t forgotten a week from now.
Of course, modern shows aren’t shown out-of-order with episodes missing unless Joss Whedon is doing another series for FOX.
It’s just a sign of the times, going forward in reverse: Netflix enables and encourages binging, which, in turn, encourages writing for the trades, making shows which can be consumed a season at a time (at least) and discourages both one-offs and endless Classic American Soap Operas, a number of which have ended. And so television returns to the classics of storytelling: First, have a story. Second, finish the story. Third, tell the story. Heady stuff.
(Heh. Netflix: Now you can binge on the Rural Purge!)
Dunno if this is threadshitting – if so, I apologize – but I hated that show. Jethro’s unremitting stupidity was just crushingly stultifying. He never learned; he was never clever.
(Compare, if you will, to Maxwell Smart, who alternated stupidity with intelligence; you never quite knew what he would do next.)
I know a lot of people who loved that show, but it turned me right off.
The same could be said for Barney Fife. And he’s considered a comic legend even among TV snobs.
The Beverly Hillbillies was a comic gem, never fully appreciated. I liked even better than Green Acres, which was a much more critically lauded show.
The double naught spy and Granny re-fighting the Civil War with a drunken General Grant impersonator episodes are classics right up there with anything Archie Bunker or Hawkeye Pierce ever did.
I loved the “Rebecca of Donnybrook Farm” episode, which was a satire of absurd television professional wrestling. Because one of the silly wrestling characters was a “sweet country girl”, Granny got fired up and went to the stadium to join in the scrap. I always loved it when a stunt man stood in for Irene Ryan and got physical. That was one small stunt man!
But it was well done stupidity. Jethro was no genius even to his family who also thought he was a foolish lunkhead, and yet he always had a cheerful outlook. Plus, in context the schemes of the “smart” characters to steal the Clampett’s money or do other misdeeds never came to fruition. Their bumpkin “ignorance” was a foil against which the smart characters impaled themselves.
Interestingly Jethro (Max Baer Jr) was zmong the most highly educated actor of the cast with an BA. Also of interest wiki up who “Jethro’s” father was!
If I’m watching MAS*H on MeTV, sometimes I’ll stick around for Andy Griffith but I’ll see what else is on if it’s an episode focused on Barney’s antics. “Mountain Wedding” and “The Big House” were on recently, watched the first but not the second. Changed the channel right after “Now here at ‘The Rock’ we have two basic rules. Memorize them so that you can say them in your sleep. The first rule is… Obey all rules. Secondly, do not write on the walls, as it takes a lot of work to erase writing off of walls.”
I watched it religiously as a kid (during its original run) but I must admit that watching re-runs tended to leave me a bit disappointed. Somehow the adult me kept expecting to find some examples of home-spun, solid wisdom and common sense arising from their poor, rural experience to have been showcased at some point. But it never was.
It still had some great bits, though. I love how Jethro bragged about knowing his ‘gazintas’ ( 2 gazinta 4 two times, 3 gazinta 9 three times, etc.)
