Wednesday, December 23, 2009

10 Reasons Why the Colored Episodes of The Andy Griffith Show Sucked

Every morning, I watch two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show on CBS. Im not sure why, but CBS feels that it is necessary to show the colored episodes of TAGS which ran from 1965-1966. There are ten reasons why the colored episodes suck. Here are those reasons.

10. CBS

Between 1965-1970, executives at CBS began to feel that there were too many hicks on TV. The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction had all been very popular shows that featured simply country people without the worries of life in the city. The conflicts these characters encountered usually involved things like drinking too much hard cider or livestock causing problems for the townfolk. These executives began to influence how the shows were written by taming the weird ways of the shows bumpkin characters. By 1971, the executives had cancelled all of them to promote a young, urban lifestyle.

9. The Young, Urban Lifestyle

The Andy Griffith Show started featuring episodes that catered to teenagers. The Senior Play featured high school kids trying to show the principal that the type of dancing that was popular in the mid-1960s was no more scandalous than in his own teenage years. Opies' Group featured the redheaded boy-wonder playing guitar for a rock band while that old moron, Clara Edwards, tried to get him to pay more attention to his schoolwork. These episodes suck. Dont bother watching them.

8. Opie Wasn't Cute Anymore

He was an adolescent and extremely awkward. I believe that everything changed after the black-and-white episode, Opie the Birdman, in Season 4. The innocence of the boy seen in the episode titled Opie's Charity was gone forever. After that, he was a jealous (episode 110), egotistical (episode 190), lying (episode 239) little turd.

7. Floyd Left

Howard McNear, who played the town barber Floyd Lawson, suffered a stroke early on in the series. After that, he was only filmed sitting down and his mannerisms changed considerably. This new Floyd was funny but for entirely different reasons. Despite his condition, he frequently appeared on the show until he suffered another stroke and was forced to call it quits before the start of the final season. His shop was then given to Emmett, of Emmett's Fixit Shop fame. Emmett never uttered one funny line on the entire show. When Floyd left, any possibility for a humorous situation disappeared. If a colored episode is on and Floyd isn't in it, dont bother.

6. Warren Ferguson

The writers of the show tried to replace Barney Fife with a similar by-the-books deputy who would let no crime go unpunished. Unfortunately, Warren was not funny. He was a straight-man. The reason why Andy and Barney worked was because Andy was the straight-man and Barney was the clown. You can't have two people on the screen who aren't trying to be funny! That is why Warren was dropped in the middle of the Sixth season. It is important to note that Jack Burns (who played Warren) was very funny and even went on become the head writer for the Muppet Show.

5. Andy Was Forced to Cover His Southern Accent

Listen to his dialogue in Seasons 1-5 compared to Seasons 6-8. It is like night and day. This falls under the same crap described in #10 but it was so bad that it needed its own section higher up on the list.

4. Goober Was No Gomer

Don't get me wrong. I love several episodes where Goober is the main attraction. I wouldn't take a bag of severed leprechaun heads for my VHS tape of the Goober Takes the Car Apart episode. But as soon as the show went to color, they had taken the character as far as it could without being annoying. See Episodes 186, 196, or 199 for proof. I think the problem was that he was an idiot but not a complete idiot. I mean, he has the ability to take a car apart and put it back together again several times within the span of a single episode. Gomer, on the other hand, was a complete and total idiot. He was so much of an idiot that his idiotic exploits forced the creation of his own spin-off show, which was very popular during its five year run.

3. Howard Sprague, the County Clerk

Here was a middle-aged man who lived with his mother and had a boring job. I felt sorry for Howard. He tried to move to an island in the Caribbean and he was miserable. Then, he moved back to Mayberry to continue his sad, boring life. He even turned away Millie, the only girl who ever loved him. Here was another character who wasn't funny and delivered lines that were followed by a laugh-track despite the fact that they weren't jokes. Even the episode that featured Howard as a stand-up comedian on Colonel Tims Talent Time wasn't funny. I will admit that I am a little jealous of the bachelor pad that he had in Episode 246.

2. Everett Greenbaum, Jim Fritzell, and Harvey Bullock Quit

The three names associated with the best Andy Griffith Show episodes are Everett Greenbaum, Jim Fritzell, and Harvey Bullock. They wrote some of the most memorable moments in sitcom history. Read the book Mayberry 101 to get the inside scoop on the episodes they wrote. When they left the show, a new team of writers came in who were all too willing to give the CBS executives the show they wanted, a sappy and dramatic piece of crap.

1. No Barney Fife!!!

When the show began, Andy Griffith had only planned to do the show for five years. With this in mind, Don Knotts signed a movie contract that would begin as soon as the fifth year was over. Andy later decided to continue the show but Don Knotts couldn't get out of the movie contract. Despite his 5 guest appearances, the show never recovered. Bernard P. Fife (or Bernard Milton Fife/Bernard Oliver Fife due to inconsistencies over the years) was too important to the show to lose. I will say that I love The Incredible Mr. Limpet and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken which were filmed as a result of this awful movie contract.



If it's any help, my cousin pointed out that the colored episodes are much better when you turn the color all the way down on your TV. For some reason, your brain tries to trick you into thinking the episode is funnier than it actually is. Try it sometime or just watch the 700 Club like I'm forced to do some mornings. God, I need cable.

24 comments:

  1. i can c y u aint got no members yet, count me out 2!!!

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  2. Ignore the illiterate J. Raven. A very informed and astute post.

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  3. BRIAN SQUISH, THE COLORED EPISODES ARE THE BEST, FLOYD WAS IN MANY OF THEM, DROP DEAD BRIAN SQUISH, HOPE YOU GET SQUASHED

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    1. Dude calm down it's just an opinion about an old tv show. Drop dead? C'mon. Andy would be ashamed.

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  4. Actually Jack Burns is a great comedic actor. However his Deputy Warren Ferguson character was merely his same taxi passenger character from his legendary routine done with Avery Schreiber as the cabdriver with Sheriff Andy Taylor replacing cabdriver Avery as his straight man. He was okay but was never given a chance to catch on as Barney's replacement. Know what I mean? Huh? ... Huh? ... Huh? ... ☺ [Hey! Maybe Joe E. Ross' Gunther Toody could've been a good replacement deputy.] ☺

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. I really like Warren and thank's a lot for the info regarding the genesis (wasn't that a band, huh? huh? huh......)of how Warren's character came to be...was??!!!!! Toody was/is a real hooty....hoot!! Jack Burns did a great job playing Warren, and being Floyd's nephew is/was a nice touch, he really has gotten(?) unfair criticism at the time and throughout the years, I know Don Knotts is irreplaceable, but Jack/Warren was very unique and an enjoyable character, goofy and always making things more interesting than they normally would be............

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  5. Not to mention that Andy's character in the colored episodes became grumpier and was more of a jerk. In fact, in one episode where Howard couldn't sing with the barber shop quartet, He initially refuses to let the guy in jail out to sing with him (even though he had let others out at the risk of being reported by Ben Weaver, Mayor Stoner and the others in the Black and White Episodes). It is also noted how he treats Opie in a hateful manner, constantly gets into fights with Helen, and berates Aunt Bee(No wonder Francis Bavier didn't like Andy Griffith!) I don't know which is worse, Sheriff Taylor's grouchiness or Matlock's cussing in Matlock.

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  6. Just finished the first 5 seasons. Very enjoyable. Started Season 6 & couldn't get past the first 7 minutes. The acting was awful and I absolutely couldn't handle the horrible laugh track. So I'm done with TAGS

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  7. When you say "the show never recovered" youre a little off. When the show went off the air it was still rated number one

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    1. it's final season it reached it's only #1 season ending spot and overall it did better in the ratings in color seasons. mayberry rfd was doing well when it was dropped

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    2. Season 3 and 4 had better ratings a simple google search could have told you that.

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  8. I agree that the show was not the same in color. I can still watch the black and white episodes but not the ones in color.

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  9. I agree that the show was not the same in color. I can still watch the black and white episodes but not the ones in color.

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  10. Great article. Another important factor is that the color brings out the flaws in the sets and the horrible in-studio lighting of the time. TV finally figured this out in the 90s allowing for more realistic lighting and shadows. The sets were horribly bland and the street backdrops were still b&w photos. Anytime they weren't actually outside on the lot, it just looks horribly fake.

    Without color, these imperfections disappear and the indoor lighting skews toward white. So yes, turn the color down and it fixes a lot of these flaws and looks more realistic. Unfortunately can't turn the color down on Andy's grumpiness, however!

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  11. For me it's not so much the color as it is the writing. The writing peaked with season 3. There were some nice 'returns' to form along the way, but not that many. The funniest episodes are when various mishaps befall Andy due to characters like Goober. I almost get the feeling that Andy Griffith is the reason why the Warren character was dropped--he probably pointed out that the thing he had with Don Knotts was gone, and he was carrying the comic load anyway.

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  12. Well get ready, Metv is going to show color episodes May 29th

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  13. color shows sucked. hated almost every one of them. sorry if this offends but call as i see it.

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  14. I hate the first season in B&W. Andy seemed like a total hick.

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  15. I agree with the poor writing comments. The jokes were flat and the plots were homogenized for a laugh track audience.

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  16. Another element that made the colored episodes trash (a fan of the show made mention of this in a YouTube comment section) was the fact that the colored episodes focused more on Andy's family life and less on Andy fighting crime and dealing with criminals of various sorts.

    My mom believes Briscoe Darling should've been the replacement for Barney.

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