Mayberry R.F.D.

So "Mayberry R.F.D." was to "The Andy Griffith Show." M-R.F.D. was a pale imitation of the original, merely an attempt to keep TAGS rolling without Griffith & Co., who made the show what it was. I disliked M-R.F.D., and felt that there was no reason (save sheer greed) for the TV Execs to prolong the format with this thing.

And Buddy Foster was no Ron Howard, blond hair and plaid shirt or no.

As many people know this show is essentially a sequel to the Andy Griffith Show. The producers decided that instead of canceling the show all together, they would continue it with essentially the same cast except for the leads. Ken Berry and Arlene Golonka were okay replacements for Andy Griffith and Aneta Corsaut, but Sam and Millie were no Andy and Helen. Also, even though this show was still popular at the time of the rural purge of 1971, I don't think that its cancellation hit people as hard as the cancellations of The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.

Andy Griffith made an end to his TV show but the citizens of Mayberry still had a couple of years of life left in them with Mayberry, RFD.

Sheriff Andy Taylor and school teacher Helen Crump married and moved away from Mayberry. To give the new show a central character Ken Berry fresh from F Troop plays Sam Jones, a farmer just elected to the Mayberry town council is brought in. He's a widower like Andy Taylor was and raising a small son Buddy Foster. He even hires Aunt Bea to be his housekeeper now that Frances Bavier no longer had to keep house for Andy and Opie.

All the other Mayberry regulars and semi-regulars were retained and the show did well for two seasons. But at that point CBS pulled all its rural based shows to get a different market. And at that point those Mayberry characters like Paul Hartman, George Lindsey, Jack Dodson etc. all went to television Valhalla.

Sad the show ran into CBS's determination to get younger viewers. It's the seniors who watched this and other rural type shows and the seniors least likely to respond to advertising pitches.

Other than reunion movies this ended our look into Mayberry, North Carolina.

I am about to say something that no-doubt will annoy many. While "The Andy Griffith Show" was one of the best shows in television history, after a while it really outlived its usefulness. Without Barney as a series regular, the show tried a variety of either annoying replacements (Warren!!!) or insipid ones (Howard and Emmett)--none of which gave the show the wonderful comedic balance it once had. To make matters worse, after the show limped through three mediocre such seasons, the powers that be at CBS decided to continue the show even when Andy left!!! The 'clever' plan was to introduce a widower, Sam (Ken Berry), who would move to town with his son AND apparently buy Aunt Bee! Talk about a contrived premise--and a poor copy of the original. So now without either leading man, the show was nothing but insipid characters...period. That, in a nutshell, is "Mayberry R.F.D."--like the original show but with none of the humor or interesting characters. Now this isn't to say that the show was bad--it just was bland and inoffensive and that still made it better than some shows. But who wants to live on a steady diet of bland toast--which is, metaphorically speaking, "Mayberry R.F.D.".

I've never seen more than a couple of episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. But for some reason, I saw probably the entire run of Mayberry RFD in reruns during the mid-70s. Mainly because it happened to be on after I got home from school, most likely.

What surprises me looking back is how good an actor Ken Berry was. Generally a comic actor (and a fine dancer to boot), as Sam Jones he was essentially a straight man and his performances here were always nicely understated (too much so for some people, judging from other comments here) and very believable. From time to time, he showed quite a bit of depth.

I'm thinking right now of a couple of episodes. 1) Sam's struggling with a mild depression after some of his crops fail. 2) He and Millie are in Los Angeles (don't remember why), they have a fight and make up. Something about the emotion Ken Berry delivered in these - not too much, always knowing just how far to step outside his character's ordinary range - made then unexpectedly powerful.

I also remember an episode in which Sam does a very funny eccentric dance as part of a talent show of some kind.

The secret to a really good sit-com is that it convinces us we're watching real people, even when some of the characters are a bit outlandish. Ken Berry in this show always kept me believing I was watching real people.