Posted on 03/15/2024 5:30:34 PM PDT by DallasBiff
can unpack this a little bit, but the basic reason why the color episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show" don't run as often is because people don't like them as much.
"Stations have historically recognized that the first five seasons ... are the most popular and considered, as a grouping, better than the final three seasons, which happen to be the color seasons," Jim Clark of the Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club (yep, that's a real thing) said in an interview with the Winston-Salem Journal.
Recognizing this, stations often choose not to air the latter three seasons, instead just starting over at the beginning after Season 5.
The answer to why they don't like them is complicated somewhat by the timing. CBS began shooting the show in color in Season 6, which also happened to be the first season without Don Knotts as the lovable loser-y Deputy Barney Fife, one of the all-time great sitcom sidekicks.
(Excerpt) Read more at decoy.tvpassport.com ...
As a side note. I’m from NC. Met Andy a couple of times. He is an A 1 asshole. Also he smoked like a train drank like a fish. Total dick. But he was a raging liberal. He did go to UNC Chapel Hill. Explains a lot.
I see it on TVLand.
Color episodes playing right now.
It is an issue of cost. A&G probably doesnt run on enough channels to make it worthwhile.
AI may change thar, since it would be able to do it on the fly.
Aren’t the color seasons sometimes shown in syndication as “Mayberry RFD?”
On old color TV sets, you could sometimes carefully tweak the channel knob and shows would switch from color to grayscale (black/white).
Finally, was it the loss of Knotts that took the needed spark out of the show? Did other actors/actresses leave the show, too?
Notice how Andy's country accent went away as the show progressed. By the color episodes it was gone.
> Did they have any blacks on that show? <
That’s actually a very good question. Andy Griffith (the person, not the character) was very liberal. Yet there were almost no blacks on his show in the early seasons.
The few blacks who did appear were in the background, standing in a crowd. Griffith could have pushed the issue. He certainly had the clout. He could have argued that there were many blacks in small southern towns like Mayberry. So why not include them?
But like a typical liberal, Griffith talked big but did little.
The color episodes broke the verisimilitude for me. The black and white episodes felt like all the old WWII movies, but the color episodes made it look like the show was filmed on a back lot (which it was).
-PJ
Channels usually buy up a few seasons of a series. I remember Wagon Train had one season in color, but it was 90 minutes long. That was the second to last season. The last season they went back to black and white and 60 minutes long.
“The color episodes of The Saint and Danger Man aren’t as good as the black and white ones.”
For some reason you just reminded me of The Prisoner with Patrick Goohan. Great series.
Thanks!
Same with the Dianna Rigg episodes of The Avengers. The black/white episodes are smarter. Emma seems more capable and professional. The color episodes themselves are more fantastic and weird. And Emma a bit whimsical and silly. Steed changed some, too, and in the same way. But overall acted more like the expected smooth secret agent.
..”how do you know he doesn’t start howling at the moon when the sun goes down?...those are your true schizophreniacs!!....”
—Barney
..”maybe we can go down to the duck pond...”
-—Rivals
...”don’t worry Aunt Bee, you leave it to Big Barn”
“Atten hut! “
“Citizens arrest. citizens arrest”.
“they fly onto your head and lay their eggs and you go crazy” “What are you worried about, you have a hat on ..”.they lay their eggs on that too and you go crazy”
...”and they are different, ...exactlioso...”
....”their doin it!, their doin it!, “ “pipe down this isn’t a ball park,” “way to go Andy, and you too Helen!...”
...”and deputy Barney Fite”
“... let’s hit it..”
“Your the only girl I love”
...”I can’t hear you”
“Your the only girl I love”
...”I can’t hear you”
“I said, your the only girl I love!”
I was born in 1947, and I did watch the show at some point with my parents, but wasn’t a regular viewer. I was in high school when the show started. The biggest kick I ever got was that they wouldn’t let Barney Fife (Don Knotts) have more than one bullet for his weapon.
It was also the era of Southern Democrats keeping negros on the social plantation. I doubt in the early 60s racial equity even crossed his mind. (He was too busy being frisky with the women in the cast, save for Aunt Bee)
-PJ
Before the 1964 Civil Rights Act segregation was legal and the color line was (mostly) accepted and enforced by law and by custom.
A black person on television with a speaking role was as rare then as an intelligent white person with a speaking role is today in an advertisement.
I always get a kick out of that still. That’s old TV for ya!
Color costs more to transmit.
M:I had a lot of the same ensemble actors as Star Trek, too.
-PJ
No it doesn’t.
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