F Troop

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.

My favorite episode of this show, which ran way too short of its potential was the episode where Agarn managed The Bedbugs (which were actually an L.A. band called The Factory which included Lowell George and Ritchie Hayward, later of Little Feat) and then in order to convince Agarn back into the service, F.Troop had its own band, The Termites, that had some of F.Troop in hilarious wigs, compete with the Bedbugs for the Playbrave Club circuit, and at the end of the show, The Termites do "Mr. Tambourine Man! What a riot! There are other episodes just as hilarious, too many to mention. I also think Gilligan's Island got screwed, mainly because Bill Paley wanted Gunsmoke (a true TV dinosaur already at that time) to continue, but Gilligan's Island was in its time slot that year. What a shame that two great shows got canceled way before their time.

I saw this show during it's regular run. I thought it was hilarious.

It's so easy now to pick on things that are not politically correct.

If people can't see the characters for what they were, caricatures, then obviously you have NO sense of humour. If you can't laugh at yourself, why bother at all?

It's so easy to apply today's standards to people from a different time. It would be more appropriate for us to understand that different time. I suppose we should criticize the way blacks were treated in movies made in the 1920s, 30s 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and so on. America's perceptions, values and morals were different then. If you can't understand that, I would suggest you don't watch any movie or TV show made before 1995.

F-Troop was totally fictional. And it WAS, for it's time, very funny. I liked it then, I like it now. But I guess we just can't have a show that shows EVERYONE as inept. I mean we have a white officer who's clumsy, and most likely would have never qualified to be a private, let alone an officer. There's the Sgt. who's always scheming to make a buck. And the Indians, cowardly, perhaps, but they also have their own shining moments too. You have to watch the entire series to see all the different things that go on. The Indians are not the only ones made fun of in this COMEDY. More often than not Chief Wild Eagle got the better of his white partner in what ever deal they were cooking up.

I somehow doubt that it would succeed today. Most of it's humour would go over the heads of many people today who would instead focus on the "demeaning" way the Indians are treated. More's the shame we forgot how to laugh at ourselves.

Although it only ran for two seasons, "F Troop" was a consistently hilarious western spoof that should have stayed on much longer. It didn't just stick to satirizing westerns--the show managed to throw in vampires (Vincent Price showed up in one episode), James Bond-ish secret agents (Pat Harrington as "Agent B. Wise"), rock bands (Agarn leaves the army to manage a group called The Bedbugs) and just about anything else they could think of. The show was crammed with memorable characters: Ken Berry's well intentioned but bumbling Capt. Parmenter, Forrest Tucker's scheming capitalist Sgt. O'Rourke, Larry Storch's loyal but not particularly bright Cpl. Agarn, Joe Brooks' sight-impaired lookout Cpl. Vanderbilt. The real find, though, was Frank DeKova as Chief Wild Eagle. DeKova parlayed his sinister, menacing appearance into a career of playing cold-hearted killers and various psychos. As conniving Chief Wild Eagle, though, he showed a flair for comed y that was wholly unexpected. Although he went over the top sometimes, he was consistently fun to watch, and you really looked forward to his appearances. There were some truly funny running gags (Parmenter's "Please Jane, not in front of the men" whenever Jane tried to put the moves on him; directions to Fort Courage that always went, "Make a left at the rock that looks like a bear, then a right at the bear that looks like a rock"), but the one that everyone remembers is when O'Rourke would say to Agan, "I don't know why everybody says you're so dumb", and then ten minutes later, in the middle of another scene, Agarn would turn to O'Rourke and say, "Who says I'm dumb?" A truly funny show that should have lasted longer than it did.

P.S. There's a blooper reel in circulation that has about 10 minutes of "F Troop" outtakes on it. If you ever come across it, snap it up. It's even funnier (and far dirtier!) than the stuff that made it into the show.