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The Best of "The Andy Griffith Show"

J

johnbasalla

In rememberance of Mr. Griffith and the first of his two hit TV shows, what is your favorite episode(s) of "The Andy Griffith Show"?

My favorite will be strange to many as it involves "Warren Ferguson", the Deputy who took "Barney's" place when Don Knotts left to seek motion picture stardom (bad move Barn-Don... at least for fans of the TV show). Anyway, it's when Andy ...and Helen want to spend some lovey-dovey quiet time alone but Warren and Goober keep interrupting them as they think that Andy wouldn't be safe without them watching over him. The laugh-out-loud climax is when Andy and Helen are out to have a picnic in the park, and for the last time Warren and Goober are caught spying on them on the pier to the lake. Andy walks over to Goober with anger on his face. He picks Goober up and throws him in the water. Then he turns to Warren who, after a tiny bit of hesitation, does the job for Andy by jumping into the lake on his own.

My second favorite Andy Griffith show episode is a morality tale as strong as the 'respect-for-life' episode when Opie killed a mama bird, leaving the baby bird with no parent. The episode I'm referring to occurred in 1966 or 1967. Aunt Bee has grown a beautiful flower which she is sure will win the Best Flower contest, and beat her nemisis, Clara, who wins almost every year. Unfortunately Opie and a friend smash the flower when an out of control baseball flattens it. Clara is sure to win now. As the end of the episode draws near, Clara is her usual annoying, egotistical self. However, when she finds out that Bee's flower was destroyed by accident, and she sees a picture of the flower that Aunt Bee was going to enter, Clara announces that Bee Taylor's flower is the best of the year, and graciously hands the trophy to Aunt Bee. Deep and heartwarming are two good words to describe this episode. Happy at the outcome of this phenomenal episode, I am saddened by the realization that there is almost no way that a prime time show of this caliber would be produced today. Even if they tried, they'd likely muck it up with blue humor and/or a sub story involving sex.
 
I have quite a few favorites:

Barney's First Car
Aunt Bee's Medicine Man
The Christmas episode
Sermon For Today
Man In A Hurry
The Loaded Goat
Citizen's Arrest
Opie and the Spoiled Kid
Andy and Barney trying to sell the cannon and then selling it to the antique dealer after Andy lies about the history of it and Barney making faces
Aunt Bee and her pickles
All of the Fun Girls episodes
Andy tries to calm a bickering couple
Gomer becoming Andy's houseguest and making all sorts of noises and they can't sleep because of it
Andy saving Gomer's life when a small oil fire starts up in a barrel at the filling station and Gomer makes Andy's life a mess trying to help (all of the wood on the porch and in the house)
Goober fixing the car inside the courthouse
The episode where Ellie fixes Andy one of her "special sodas" (in which contained hot mustard and milk of magnesia)
Barney dressing up as a little old woman going undercover when Floyd gets a new barber who actually turns out to be a part of a gambling ring
The Haunted House
The pilot to Gomer Pyle, USMC
Barney's motorcycle
Barney and Gomer disguising themselves to get the salesmen to buy back the Miracle Salve cream that Opie and his friends were selling
 
I also like Barney's motorcycle and "Citizen's Arrest." I also like
the one where the newspaper editor, having been given a parking
ticket, decides to exact revenge by sending a female reporter posing
as a college student and intern on the newspaper, to find out more
about Andy's methods. The result is a hearing, and Barney makes an
absolutely-straight and impassioned case for why Andy doesn't carry
a gun, uses the squad car for things like taking groceries to sick people,
etc. It's a side of Don Knotts we don't often see but it's certainly effective.

Along the same lines, I rather like the time Barney gave a parking ticket to
the governor's driver; the governor was coming by Mayberry later in the day,
and Barney--not knowing that the governor was coming to shake his hand for
being so conscientious--proceeded to get drunk after Otis spiked the water cooler.
Even better is when Mayor Stoner drinks from the same cooler and ends up on the
floor in the back room.

I also like any episode with Al Melvin, either as good guy (twice) or bad guy (five
times). Don Knotts once again showed his capacity to play straight when he finally
confronts the two farmers (Melvin and I-don't-know-the-other-guy's-name) who are
illegally selling produce in the wrong part of town. And of course, anytime Ernest T.
Bass is in town. And when Ken Lynch, as a state police officer, invariably gets one-upped
by Andy's instincts and knowledge of Mayberry and its citizens.

One other I like is when the gold shipment is coming through; Barney is supposed to keep
quiet but he spills the beans to Juanita at the diner and soon the whole town knows and
turns out to see the truck. Fortunately for Barney's reputation, the truck is a decoy.

Two episodes do bother me: the last appearance of Dud Walsh, suddenly being played
by Bob Denver instead of Hoke Howell; CBS claimed Denver needed the exposure (he was
about to start "Gilligan's Island") but he had played Maynard G. Krebs for four years on
"Dobie Gillis"--on CBS. The other is when Andy goes ballistic over Opie's poor arithmetic
grades; Andy's demeanor seems to be a precursor of the color years and shows his
unlikable side as well.
 
The episode with the broken freezer that Aunt Bea wouldn't get fixed, where Andy's catch phrase was, "Aunt Bea, Call the man". "Call the man" was actually the headline used by The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at Andy Griffith's alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to announce his passing.
 
RadioDaze said:
The episode with the broken freezer that Aunt Bea wouldn't get fixed, where Andy's catch phrase was, "Aunt Bea, Call the man". "Call the man" was actually the headline used by The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at Andy Griffith's alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to announce his passing.
Click to expand...

YouTube has an overdub parody of that. [Warning: strong language NSFW]

My favorite was when the baby hated Aunt Bee's guts.
 
Another favorite was when Ernest T. Bass wants to go to school to get an education and winds up in Helen's classroom and then he talks about the possum under the rock and Helen slaps his hand with a ruler after disrupting the class because he couldn't write his sentence on the blackboard.

Also the episode where Ernest tries to join the Army but when he fails the doctor's exams and fails to join up, he threatens to break every window in town. Barney tries to intervene when Ernest wants to throw a rock at the new courthouse window that the glass people are carrying but Barney breaks it anyways with his gun and Ernest runs away in glee.
 
No particular order:
The Pickle episode
The Loaded Goat
The Christmas episode
Barney's First Car

And anything with Ernest T Bass. ;D
 
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