Back when television could be funny, have a good message and all dads were not depicted as being idiots. It also demonstrates that quality time can never replace quantity time when it comes to parenting.
Moral Instruction
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
As I recall (and confirmed looking it up) part of the twist is that Charlette is an underprivileged child and Opie is saving up to get her a coat. I love the episode for its message of giving to real people and not just being satisfied with institutions doing the charity work that we are supposed to. (as well as making assumptions about what we can see based on partial info)
One thing I did appreciate in the short-lived television show “Better off Ted” is that he was a devoted single father who always put his daughter first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeXFEAA1nDU
I really don’t know anyone who consumes current American tv or movies, outside of the Marvel and DC movies. OK, one friend who loves reality tv, but that’s it. It’s all older stuff and Japanese or Korean, and that’s true of music too.
Marvel and DC movies + reality TV is easily over half of mainstream culture. So that’s a bit like someone in the 80’s saying “I don’t really know anyone who watches TV, outside of the news, sports and sitcoms.”
Off topic sir but how do i search your archives?
As I recall (and confirmed looking it up) part of the twist is that Charlette is an underprivileged child and Opie is saving up to get her a coat.
Rather like an episode where Opie is competing with another boy for a job. Opie gets the job. He then learns that the other boy was trying to earn money for his family because his Dad was sick and couldn’t work. Opie deliberately gets fired so the other boy can have the job. Sheriff Taylor yells at Opie, saying that he was never fired from a job in his life. When Opie tearfully tells him why he did it, a chagrined Sheriff Taylor tells his son that when he won the job competition he had been bragging to his friends about what a good boy Opie was. He said he had been wrong. Opie had just demonstrated that he was a good man.
“Off topic sir but how do i search your archives?”
Subject followed by The American Catholic usually works.
Yeah, there’s a lot of reality tv. She has particular tastes in what she watches, though (only the worst, by her own admission). Otherwise I really don’t think I know anyone who watches current US TV regularly, and no one who listens to current US music. I haven’t heard much about even the superhero movies post-Endgame, but that may be covid-related. I have one side of my family that follows college basketball, but otherwise I can’t think of anyone who follows sports closely anymore either (although, again, that may be covid-related).
Really, it’s odd. I haven’t heard anyone talking about the Oscar nominations or the Superbowl, outside of some political commentators talking about the halftime. Game of Thrones was maybe the last cultural behemoth outside of superhero movies, and it probably had lower ratings than a CSI rerun used to get 15 years ago.
I think all this matters. As Catholics, we worry about the decline in Mass attendance, which is the communal worship of God (although it’s more than that). I do think we’re seeing a decline in worship of God, but we also are likely seeing a decline in the concept of communal anything.
I will look for that as I believe it may have been one of the ones I’ve missed. Mr. McBebe was always a favorite. As well as the one where the crotchy old store owner gets thrown in jail at Christmas time.
Most productions from the age of the vacuous vacuum tube are fairly tame and innocuous compared to the social engineering woke propaganda emanating from gigantic flat screens. I find myself watching and rewatching Perry Mason, in b&w, which kind of flies in the face of having a state-of-the-art flat screen tv. I, too, visit Mayberry from time to time.
My bride and I watch a combination of old TV shows (Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Cheers, Barney Miller, Frasier, Welcome Back Kotter) and EWTN. Sundays in season I record NASCAR and watch golf occasionally. (I never expected to be a racing fan. And I “watch” mostly by running the DVR at 5x speed through about 75% of a race.) We record old movies and watch them at leisure. We have not, other than golf or NASCAR, watched a live sporting event on TV in at least five years. Our musical entertainment is a mix of classic rock, jazz, and classical music. Nothing “pop” recorded since about 1990 ever fills the air in our home or auto.
We went to movies for about a year in 2016-2017, and had some fun, but at about that point even the superhero movies became political screeds, so we stopped going. That was well before the scamdemic was launched.
Did our parents’ generation totally ignore current pop culture as they aged? I don’t believe so, but maybe my recollection is faulty. My Dad, a classically trained musician, hated rock and roll but he paid attention to what was popular, and he and Mom never just walked away from all current TV and movies. But they didn’t have the options we have now, so perhaps it’s not a fair comparison. In any case, I am comfortable saying that popular culture in this country has never been as manifestly awful as it is today. And as Pinky notes, a major result is a significant loss of one aspect of community. We have little or nothing in common, culturally speaking, with many, if not most, of our neighbors. This seems like a bad thing to me.
“When Opie tearfully tells him why he did it, a chagrined Sheriff Taylor”
That was a storyline in not a few of the Andy Griffith episodes. Opie would do something that challenged Andy’s trust in him, eventually Andy would decide Opie was wrong and his trust misplaced, then Andy would find out Opie was right all along. Though, like all good shows, it wasn’t always one direction in who was right and wrong (see Opie the Birdman for a famous example). I’ve always been glad that my sons count the Andy Griffith Show as one of their favorites.
Another example of that plotline (don’t remember the episode name) was one where Opie encountered an eccentric drifter. I don’t specifically remember what weird things he did, but they were enough that when Opie told everyone about it they thought he was lying. Since the drifter couldn’t be found anywhere, Andy thought that this proved that Opie lied and told Opie that it was time to tell the truth, even punishing him for being dishonest despite his father telling him to come clean. But of course by the end of the episode Andy finds out that the drifter actually does exist and as eccentric as Opie described (or maybe there was an innocuous explanation for his behavior that Opie didn’t understand; I can’t remember the specifics), and so praises Opie for remaining honest even when no one supported him.
@Rudolph Harrier – You’re confusing 2 episodes.
There is an episode with a drifter who starts having a bad influence on Opie.
The episode you’re thinking of where everyone thinks Opie is lying about a fantastical man is the Mr. McBeevee episode I mentioned above (except I misspelled his name). He’s an electric line worker who has to go to various spots for his job and is why he can be hard to find. Here’s the close to the episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odsf9aWudvI
Another fine one was Buddy Ebsen as a hobo who is a bad influence on Opie. At the end he shows himself in a bad light so Opie will not be harmed by their association, although it breaks the hobo’s heart. Ebsen was an incredible actor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2va6xv9vY2w
https://mayberry.fandom.com/wiki/Opie%27s_Hobo_Friend
Ebsen was an incredible actor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUMO26Qmlgg