Andy and Barney... and Blanche
Happy Summer Sunday.To celebrate, here's a collection of scene summaries from "The Andy Griffith Show," compiled at the AV Club. They're 20 leisurely-paced conversations between Griffith's "Andy Taylor" and Don Knotts' "Barney Fife," sometimes even composed as extemporaneous filler, but all gentle, slice-of-life exchanges, deepened in audience recognition of the two distinct characters, that today stand as some of the most brilliant ever delivered upon screen or stage. Take #14 as representative:
A local chicken farmer protests the county's decision to build a road through his property, and when he gets the townsfolk on his side by giving them presents, Knotts tells Griffith, "We could book him on a 204."
Griffith: What's a 204?
Knotts: Bribery, collusion, and/or tampering with a material witness.
Griffith: That's a 204?
Knotts: It's kind of a catchall.
I googled my name together with Andy Griffith's and it turns out I already linked this piece-- back in March of 2006. But here it is again. Just goes to show how well they all hold up. Though always critically-popular, "Griffith" is sometimes plainly categorized as middle-of-the-road, inoffensive television fare, but these chestnuts contain some of the most surreal juxtapositions and non sequiturs. The program was also representative of one of the most radical periods in television history-- when rural Americans were portrayed as wiser than their urban counterparts, and relaxation and even lethargy were portrayed as valued traits over ambition and consumption.
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If you're finished with that, and you feel as if you're now ready to spend three more hours with Don Knotts, here's the comic actor's interview with a representative of the Museum of Television from 1999 prior to his death, as opposed, I guess, to the one he did after his death.
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Emmy-winning actress Rue McClanahan died this week. Of course she portrayed that endearing Southern belle Blanche Devereaux on "The Golden Girls" from 1985 to 1992, a 50-something woman presented on TV actively enjoying her sexlife at middle-age. The character's bedroom escapades made her the target of seven years of barbs from her three roommates, (like this one: "When Blanche Devereaux meets a man, she does not stand on ceremony." "Or the floor."), but Blanche was simultaneously a pioneering sex-positive television character championing the idea that women could own their lives at any age. She also helped to liberate a generation of young boys and men, allowing them to grow up recognizing and appreciating the allure of a mature lady like her, even one who had been "cursed with devastating beauty."
TMZ, of all sources, has given us a great tribute to Rue this week-- a clip of the actress and castmate Betty White (as themselves) exchanging smutty, bestiality-related jokes on the set of GG.
posted by CM @ 12:54 PM
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