Shark Bytes

As in previous posts, Andy Griffith was funniest and warmest in the first 5 seasons. The last three seasons paled in comparison after Barney Fife left, the more experienced writers left, and the show went to color.

Barney served as the comic foil to Andy's straight man role. After Barney left, Andy became boring, irritable, not as compassionate nor understanding, and no fun.

The newer writers gave the later episodes a more generic and at times surreal quality. The warm quaint southern North Carolina charm was gone. On occasion the later shows tried to emphasize the small town charm, but this often came across as forced and stuffy, almost a caricature of the earlier shows.

Then there's the color. The soft focus B&W gave the show it's authentic rural small town feel. The color just emphasized the artificiality and fakeness of the sets and location scenes.

As I stated, Andy's kind of a jerk, Opey's no longer cute, Goober is a pale comparison to Gomer as well as irritating, and Howard is just plain weird and creepy.

There's the unsettling feeling that in the later color episodes, even the small town oasis of sanity in an increasingly crazy world is being spoiled. In an apparent attempt to appeal to younger viewers, the color episodes sometimes brought in elements of the mid to late 60s that didn't fit the image of Mayberry that the earlier B&W episodes established and portrayed so convincingly. Sad to see such a good show go down in flames.

the color episodes were SO extremely lame and IRRITATING to watch

here are just SOME examples:

Barney hosting a summit meeting between Russia and the USA at Andy's house

Andy firing his gun at a pair of counterfeiters driving down Main street and making the car crash. He fired a gun on a crowded street? Ridiculous!

Aunt Bee taking flying lessons

all those STUPID episodes with them going to Hollywood

and any episode with Howard in it

and Goober too

Goober was okay in the BW eps but not the color ones

I grew up with Andy and always hoped to move to a town similar to Mayberry...many years later I did..age 50.. though not Mayberry it's the closest I could find..My family loves life in Indian Trail NC..Oh,BTW..I was born in Cuba.

It jumped when Barney Fife left the show and when it went to color. It just didn't have the magic as it did in it's earlier seasons, and the actors felt as if they would rather be somewhere else.

A good, light-hearted show in the first 5 seasons, but irritating and medicore in the last 3 seasons.

I've only started watching AG recently, so I cannot comment on when/if AG jumped.

The reason I am posting is because I am shocked/surprised at some of the early episodes that I have seen. I had always assumed AG was a silly light-hearted sitcom as they were in the 60's.

Yesterday, I saw my least favourite episode in my short time viewing AG. It was the one with the quarelling couple throwing dishes & screaming at each other. AG gets them to be nice to each other, so they taking out their aggression on others. It ends with AG getting them back quarelling.

Other very early episodes that I didn't like was when Andy thought Ellie was out to snare him as a husband just because she readily agreed to a date with him & and the one Andy was against Ellie running for council because she was a woman.

I would think AG gets better since it did last 8 years, although I do know that it's not like there were a lot of sitcoms in the early 60's.

Everything's so GREEN......!!

I really think I am a simpleton..or just merely simple.

I do think the show was fresher during it's black and white run...maybe by the time of color..well,"familiarity breeds contempt". Still..I haven't seen all the episodes, so I can't really say if the show ever jumped the shark.

Whoa..simmer down..I didn't say I don't believe in the Shark..bless it's ever-hungry, entertainment improving, culling the weakest of the herd maw.

Nah...I just love black and white...I almost wish I was color blind. I like the contast, the highlights and shadows...the artifice of it.

I wish they could de-colorize shows...

Even garbage like "Date My Ex" might benefit!

According to Carmen (my thoughts interspersed) on the good, the bad & the ugly of TAGS:

Helen (the harpie) Crump
A lot of folks here share similar sentiments. I don't think she was that bad; she was cute to boot. Is it me??

Aunt Bee - Didn't you always get the impression that she was a tight ass in real life.
Well, yeah. I agree.

Barney
One of the 2 brilliant things about this show. By brilliant, I mean truly revolutionary. I'll comment on the other later.

Emmitt and Howard - It's hard to imagine a more boring pair to deal with, day in and day out, year after year.
Yep

The Darlings
The 2nd brilliant thing about this show. In real life, the Dillards, a truly revolutionary group that ushered in country/folk rock. "Wheatstraw Suite" is perhaps the best, albeit most underrated, album of the 60s (that includes the Beatles, Byrds, etc.) Check it out.

Gomer
He was 5 times better than Goober.

Well, there are many comments on this site concerning Andy's morphing into a glum or even borderline angry character. Would'nt you be if you had to hang around the Mayberry bunch after a while.
Let's look at the character around him.

1) Helen (the harpie) Crump - If you had an uptight, high maintenance beeyotch wouldn't it get you down. Especially after you thought about Ellie, the rich girl, and one or 2 others you could have had.

2) Aunt Bee - Didn't you always get the impression that she was a tight ass in real life. It seemed she could barely constrain it on camera (off subject a bit, buy she was my personal least favorite on the show)

3) Barney - Barney kept his life interesting but left a big hole

4) Emmitt and Howard - It' hard to imagine a more boring pair to deal with, day in and day out, year after year. I'm sure dealing with the Emmitrs wife and Howards mother must have been fun

5) Clara - She was OK on some levels buy, but he had to turn his house over her and Aunt Bee a lot

6) Otis - Weekly dealings with a town drunk

7) Goober had to be a total annoyance at times. (Gomer was much more fun)

8) Floyd - He was the funniest character on the show, but after his stroke they couldn't use him to his full potential

In fact, was there anyone in the town that had a sense of humor or a spark of life. Yes, a few.

1) Thelma Lou - The best Barney would ever hope to do. But she disappeared when Barney left. Most likely, to avoid having to be around Helen Crump.

2)The Darlings were fun and could have been used more

3) Charlene Darling - The character with the most personality of anyone in the history of the show. They really mssed the boat by not having her and Andy together. She would have put some fun in his life and the show overall.

4) Ernest T. Bass - They used him exactly the right amount of times.

5) The fun girls were fun and might have made an extra appearance or 2. But Helen wouldn't have like that.

6) Gomer

Unfortunately, the writers kept the interesting / fun characters to an absolute minimum.
No wonder Andy got more and more sullen as the years progressed.

Instead of Helen Crump, she should have been named Helen Cramp because she acted like she had continual PMS and she cramped Andy's style. What were the producers thinking?

Yes, I agree that the show lost most if not all of its charm with the departure of Don Knotts and going to color. In those later episodes, Andy seemed grumpy and irritable all the time and the show ceased to be a sitcom by any measure. It was not surprising to be when I learned the actress who played Aunt Bee was in reality of humorless, mean, fussy old woman. The only ones I liked all the way through the series were Thelma Lou and Oppe.

I still love TAGS to this day for one primary reason: Instead of characters speaking to each other as if they were Hollywood writers dropping pop culture references left and right, they speak like real people in real life.

Unlike today's shows which feature smart-ass kids constantly making adults look stupid, there was a sense of propriety and mutual respect in Mayberry...no wonder it's a Rockwellian fantasy.

The loss of Don Knotts (whose grave I saw last week at Westwood Memorial Park in L.A.) was huge, of course, but even bigger because it also took away Betty Lynn as Thelma Lou. Barney Fife's comedy source was always screwing up everything, and they lost that story engine when he left.

The color episodes were sooooo boring, with a detached, older, heavier Andy dealing with bores like Howard Sprague and his fussy mother; ultra-irritating Emmitt and his Fix-It Shop; and Goober replacing Gomer. I did, however, really like the character of Millie, by pretty Arlene Golonka, though I found it hard to believe she'd fall for an anal mama's boy like Howard.

My alltime favorite "Andy" was the one with startlingly beautiful Susan Oliver, complete with late-night sexy saxophone riffs. She was 30 when she filmed that episode, and died at only 57, from lung cancer.

BTW, if you're a fan of both TAGS and "The Adventures of Superman" (George Reeves), those streets and buildings should look familiar: They're one and the same, both shows filmed on the same outdoor set at the old RKO/Pathe (now Culver Studios) "back forty" property, where they also filmed scenes from "Gone With the Wind". Yes, hard to believe as it is, Mayberry was also Metropolis.

Remember the pretty blond nurse Andy "dated" in the early episodes (not to be confused with Ellie the pharmacist). Anyway, I read on TVland.com that the producers thought she was too pretty and glamorous for the series. I guess that took of that with fugly Helen Crump!

How the heck did Helen ever get to Mayberry in the first place? Given her accent, she clearly wasn't from the South. Same for Emmit & Howard. I suspect the Marshals used Mayberry as a location site for the Witness Protection Program & relocated their most annoying witnesses there.

Obligatory Answering of a Ridiculous Rant: of course TAGS represented an idealistic picture of America. Just read some of the things written at that time and you'd know it. But to call it "conservative" is short-sighted in the extreme. Sure, many of the values you see on TAGS we would call "conservative" today - but in that time, the great mass of people, however they would identify politically, looked back at such an idealistic America with nostalgia. To maintain otherwise is to be lost in your own political ideology.

Now here's something on-topic: The loss of Barney was regrettable. But I never really liked him that much anyway, and we got plenty of Barney messing up at a higher "pay grade." The change to color made the cheap sets that had looked quaint in black and white just look cheap in color. But that's no more true than for Star Trek.

No, the true shark-jumping moment was the creation of Helen. What a whiny, witchy character, always critical of Andy. Andy always grovelled before her; and what's worse, started lying to avoid confrontation with her. And it's not that I'm afraid of a "strong woman" - Ellie was also a strong woman yet you didn't see Andy behaving that way with her.

Helen, the definitive shark jumpage