Petticoat Junction

When this show first premiered its biggest attraction were the three Bradley daughters. However, you really got to see a great comedy and the real stars were the late great Bea Benederet as Kate and the late and equally great Edgar Buchanan as Uncle Joe, who was always looking to get rich quick. The girls themselves were pretty well fleshed out characters themselves. Billie Jo was the ambitious star-struck one, Bobbie Jo was the somewhat dim bulb and Betty Jo was the tomboy. Betty Jo became the most evolved character as you saw her grow up from being a girl who was pretty much pre-occupied with sports into a beautiful young woman who eventually settled down and married the man of her dreams. Too bad Bea Benederet passed away. When that happened the wind seemed to go out of the show and within two years it was gone. Perhaps it was a precursor of things to come becuase within a year after it had gone off the air all the great rural television shows were virtually wiped out in the infamous purge of 1971.

Petticoat Junction will always be revered as one of America's best television sitcoms, home-grown. The characters were so innocent. Who wouldn't fall in love with the Shady Rest Hotel and the Cannonball?

"Petticoat Junction" was a great, heart-felt show that would stand alongside "The Andy Griffith Show" in all-time popularity, if only some mucky-muck at Viacom (the distributor of the rerun package) hadn't, in the early 1970's, decided to exclude the first two seasons from their syndication package. Not only were those some of the funniest and most genuine episodes of the entire series, but eliminating them from public memory cut out nearly half of star Bea Benaderet's time on the show (she died of lung cancer shortly after the start of the 1968-69 season). If you ever get a chance to view the first two (black & white) seasons of this series, do so...you will see what I mean.

A time of simplicity and tranquility. What young man who ever saw this heartwarming show, never dreamt of spending the rest of his life in wedded bliss with one of the Bradley girls? Great writing and characters that make you wish time would have stood still. It gives you hope that someday in your travels, on some unfamilar road, the Shady Rest is just on the other side of the hill.

One of the most underrated sitcoms in television history, "Petticoat Junction" is a fine example of character-driven comedy. Though it is overshadowed by the other rural comedies, "Andy Griffith," "The Beverly Hillbillies," and "Green Acres," "Petticoat Junction" had a warmth that continued throughout its 7 year run. The episodes before Bea Benaderet's untimely death are perhaps the best, but "Petticoat Junction" remains one of television's undiscovered gems.