La tropa loca

Without a doubt the funniest thing to come out of America. It also sums up the time when it was made and I can't see anything similar ever being made again.

As children we watched it but now as I watch it again and again I realize that I never got the jokes the first few times through anyway.

e.g. Agarn needs to see the medicine man at the Indian camp to find out whether he's a kleptomaniac so the medicine man gives him some deer skins to look at that have berry blots on them (i.e. a Rorschach test) and asks him what he sees. In explanation the medicine man say that this test was invented by a great Indian medicine man called Roaring Chicken. For short they call it the RoarChick Test!! Now that is clever AND funny.

Many other similarly clever jokes. Great scenes of pathos with lots of sentimentality before the days of the studio audience which nowadays bursts into sickening applause over that sort of thing. Catch it if you've never seen it... or watch it again if you have. It's still funny.

There was a time, perhaps when our better sensibilities knew it, when we were allowed to laugh at all races, religions and socio-ethnicities without being labeled "racist". It was a gentler, more naive time indeed, and the airwaves broadcast TV aimed at the silly side of life. "Gilligan's Island", "The Beverly Hillbillies", "I Dream of Jeannie", "Petticoat Junction", "It's About Time" and of course, "F-Troop".

There is a common thread in all of these shows: Simple, honest people are ennobled. Officious, pompous people are made fun of. Everyone is fodder for fun - no-one is above being poked at.

Ken Berry as William Parmenter is amazing in his comic timing (Mayberry RFD was a big step down for me). Melody Patterson is absolutely delicious jail-bait as "Calamity" Jane, and of course Frank DeKova and Don Diamond as Chief Wild Eagle and Crazy Cat, and Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, as Sgt. O'Rourke and Corporal Agarn, respectively, are mirror-images of avarice and opportunity.

The relationships of these last 4 characters were the most typical of TV, but smartly turned on it's head: Agarn and Crazy Cat, full of ideas and energy, scheming and snatching at everything that moved, in their climb to "success". Sgt. O'Rourke and Chief Wild Eagle, as the "Establishment", wisely knowing when to take opportunities, but at the same time wringing their hands about their underlings almost as to say "What is it with the kids these days"?

This was wonderful social satire loaded with sight-gags, something for young and old. Unfortunately we Americans seem to have lost the knack for subtle comedy, as we now linger under the thumb of blistering insults and mechanical obviousness. I don't know if we get it ourselves these days - perhaps that is why people look at the show and react first without giving the show any thought.

I don't mean to discount the valid views of other, more PC posters, but they're missing the point. TV and film are just time capsules...you can no more examine history through something like "F-Troop" than experience the future through something like "2001". Ultimately, they're both the '60s.

What you can do is understand the period and sensibilities of that time, and remember one major lesson - something we were learning then but have perhaps since forgotten: That we are all the same under the skin. And at best, we should be taken very, very lightly.

F Troop was without a doubt a victim of it's own genius and thus in my mind ranks as the SINGLE greatest example of a television show that was way ahead of it's time. Perhaps, too far ahead. As correctly pointed out in previous comments, the show ran for two seasons on ABC from 1965 to 1967. One season in black and white, the other in color. 66 episodes were produced and every one of them was a comedic masterpiece. Despite poor ratings and eventual cancellation, the show went on to become extremely popular in syndicated reruns and develope a large cult following. So what happened? Here is my opinion. At the time F Troop made it's debut, Television was still in it's infancy and America was use to either the "family" sitcoms such as "Donna Reed", "Beaver", "Ozzie and Harriet", etc... Or, the "idiot" sitcoms such as "Gilligan", "Bewitched" or "Jeannie". The nation was not ready for, nor did the understand the "Satire" comedy. Two came out in 1965. One worked, the other didn't. "Get Smart" was a satire of the secret agent phenomenon which was sweeping the country. America could relate to that because of "James Bond" and the cold war so "Get Smart" was a success. Plus you had the great talents of Don Adams and a superb show to boot! But a satire on the American west? The nation didn't get it or take to it thus "Troops" fate was sealed. Despite the fact that the show is brilliant, the chracters are funny and endearing and the writing was superb and ahead of it's time, America just didn't get it. Only when times changed in the 70's and 80's and the show was in syndication did America start getting the humor and understanding what satire really meant. "F-Troop" paved the way for satires like "Police Squad" and "The Naked Gun". To this day the humor is fresh and funny and even relevant. I have seen episodee hundreds of times and still laugh and still find things I didn't notice before. And hats off to Televisions most underrated physical comic, Ken Berry. I urge anyone to find this show on video and enjoy it for the classic and genius that it is.

I watched this in re-runs throughout the '70s. The "Old West" setting is just that - a setting. The real laughs are how they put in 20th-century gags ranging from old showbiz groaners to mid-'60s topical events like the Playbrave Club and a rock group called - wait for it - "The Bedbugs" (don't ask where they got the electric guitars.)

The show ran on ABC for only 2 years, one in b/w, one in color; even so, it's still better than 90% of what's been aired as "comedy" since then. I wish somebody would put it out on video.

I truly loved this show. Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch were a great comic team and they had a great chemistry together and Ken Berry was great at slapstick and this show was truly a showcase for that talent. It also could be seen as a parody of capitalism, especially in the case of the Hekawwe's. Wild Eagle had to have been one of the great con men in the history of television.