Last Call to Hooterville…and bring Friday

If you’ve followed this blog lately I’m sure you’ve noticed all I’ve written about concerns our collision with socialism. There’s no getting around it—capitalism is on life support and socialism just went into labor. One dies and one is born, the cycle of politics I guess. Anyway, I need a respite from my, “We’re-all-gonna-die” rants and “They’ll remove the constitution from my cold dead fingers,” routine.

To battle this feeling of impending doom I take part in a nightly ritual that I’ve found relieves stress and centers me from this paradox we call life. Some may say it’s a guilty pleasure or perhaps a tool used to deny reality. Whatever the case, I record two shows during the day through the miracle of the digital video recorded, or as I like to call it, “the magic box.” Then at ten o’clock each evening I slip the bonds of anxiety and drift into tranquility. Think of it like Petula Clark when she goes “Downtown.” Who? Forget it, just play along.

When I settle in the first television show on the docket is “Dragnet.” You remember this show starring straight-laced button-down cop, Joe Friday. Sure there’s bad acting, stiff dialogue, and a lot on awkward nodding, but this show is my portal to a world we’ll never see again. Dragnet was filmed in a day when guys smoked inside and coffee was considered lunch. There’s not a cell phone to be found and computers took up whole rooms. In those day’s men weren’t afraid to be men while women loved them for it. Political-correctness didn’t exist when Joe Friday pinched a suspect. In fact, the criminals actually confessed after Sergeant Friday went off on a five minute monologue about long hair, God, and country. His deep two-pack-a-day voice hardly came up for air when dressing down a suspect or lecturing a rookie officer on what it takes to be a cop. To Friday everything is black and white; gray areas are for punks, winos, hippies, and every other nonconformist that litter the streets.

What I wouldn’t give to have Joe Friday address Congress. I can just imagine Friday throwing Barney Frank in a chair and then spin him around.

Friday would say something like this, “Now you listen to me mister and listen good. I don’t know how you get your kicks, son, but I’ve dealt with your kind before. You think that socialism stuff you’re pushing is pretty cute, huh? Using tax payer’s money to redistribute wealth might get you a membership down at club Pink-O, but it doesn’t work with me. You sell that jazz to the useful idiots you call constituents or the freaks so loaded up on goofballs they buy into your warped sense of government. You may fool them, buster, but I’m armed with something you’ll never understand… (Pause for effect)… The Constitution.” (Cue the musical zinger.)

Sorry, my mind started to drift into another socialism rant.

So back to Dragnet, the lameness of the show is its beauty. It’s really nothing more than a thirty minute promotional film for the Los Angeles Police Department, but the matter-of-fact narration by Joe Friday made this show a classic. The concept of Friday, a confirmed bachelor, is a hoot. He has the same no nonsense approach with his dates as he does with the potheads he collars. Barney Fife (or Frank) is more comfortable with women, but that’s another show for another day. Watch this clip for a great Friday speech.

The second show of my nightly double feature is “Green Acres.” You know the story, a big city lawyer, Oliver Wendell Douglas, moves to the country to become a farmer. (What could possibly go wrong?)

This show is absolutely brilliant. The wit and satire (if you get it) is better than any shallow-minded-predictable-sitcom today. The plot is pure genius. This isn’t some cornpone “Hee-Haw” grits and gravy humor. Its high-class comedy cleverly wrapped around uneatable hotcakes, a telephone on top of a pole, and a pig that watches Westerns.

The entire town of Hooterville with the exception of Oliver Douglas is insane. By contrast this makes Oliver the crazy person. Okay, Oliver does wear a three-piece suit when planting corn, but he does take his jacket off when plowing the fields.

The show is capitalism at its best. Sam Drucker’s general store is the Walmart of Hooterville. Sam has everything from pickles in a barrel to tractor parts. Of course there’s Mr. Haney who could sell light bulbs to Edison. He’s dishonest as a day is long, but he always manages to have something Oliver needs and usually Haney closes the deal.

County agent, Hank Kimball, is a piece of work. The man hasn’t a clue as to who he is or what he does. In other words, Kimball is the typical government worker. Hank Kimball is the best character on the show, well not the best character on the show, maybe the second best, no he’s not that either. Who’s not? Kimball. Oh him, who’s that?

Another tour de force is Arnold Ziffel, the son of Doris and Fred Ziffel. One problem, Arnold is a pig and Oliver is the only one who understands this and refuses to accept the pig as an equal. It doesn’t help that everyone, except Oliver, is pig-lingual and can communicate fluently with the Arnold. On a deeper scale it could be a commentary on our social and economical intolerance as it relates to farm animals and the injustices the white man has incorporated to gain fiscal superiority. Put simply, to Oliver the pig is nothing more than a dollars worth of bacon. (I may be over analyzing.)

Oliver’s famous speech about “planting little seeds in the rich soil,” was a running gag. It was always accompanied with a fife solo that played “Yankee Doodle” as Oliver rambled on. Oliver never heard the fife, but his wife would always comment and look for the source. This is called breaking the fourth wall and proof that Green Acres was ahead of its time. They used the same trick by letting the characters see and comment on the opening credits—now that’s comedy.

So the country can fall down around me, just give me a nightly dose of Joe Friday and Hooterville and for one brief hour all is right with the world.