A Look at the Andy Griffith Show

By Randy Jones

The Andy Griffith Show was one of the great early sitcoms televised on CBS between October 3rd, 1960 and April 1st, 1968. Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) played a widowed sheriff in a small fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina. The show had a great wholesome genre to it as it went from comedy to instructional at times. Sheriff Taylor could not handle the day to day tasks of caos in Mayberry without his faithful deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts).

Don Knotts seem to always add a touch of over extreme to any situation that came along in the quiet little town. With his unloaded pistol and one famous bullet in his shirt pocket he was ready to face any menace that come around Mayberry, generally giving up his pistol to Andy after misfiring it almost every time he loaded it. The Andy Griffith Show had a down home relation to almost every viewer as folks set around Floyd's Barber Shop and talked about fishing, or down at Wally's Garage sitting around drinking cold soda and fixing the world.

The Andy Griffith Show evolved through the changes of television as the showed was viewed in black and white from 1960-1965 and then was shown in color from 1965-1968. The show is still aired today as reruns are viewed across televisions and computer monitors across the nation. I guess one could say that the show is still evolving with modern day TV. One thing always remains the same though, you can set down and watch an episode or two and just relax and step back to a fictional time when the world seemed normal and good for about 30 minutes.

The Andy Griffith Show was made up of several characters which contributed to it's long running success. The Cast was made up of extraordinary people who seemed to really fit perfectly together, Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith), and appearing in the first two episodes as his cousin and long time sidekick was Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts), and the role of Andy's son Opie Taylor played by a young (Ron "Ronny" Howard), the lady of the house Aunt Bee played by (Frances Bavier), and the town barber Floyd Lawson (Howard McNear), and the two cousins who kept the local garage goin Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors) and Goober Pyle (George Lindsey), the ever loving and wandering town drunk Otis Campbell (Hal Smith), and the town gossip Clara Edwards played by (Hope Summers), then there was Barney's sweetheart Thelma Lou (Betty Lynn), and the woman that finally took Sheriff Andy Taylor's heart prisoner was Helen Crump played by (Aneta Corsaut). These are some of the main cast that for 30 minutes a day made the world a better place.

The show ran for 8 seasons and had 249 episodes which showed 159 episodes (seasons 1-5) in black and white and 90 (seasons 6-8) in color with Griffith, Howard, Bavier, Knotts, and Summers apperaing in all 8 seasons. After season 8 had finished, the show had a sequel Mayberry R.F.D and later had a reunion show which closed the show in 1986. Not to loose one of it's funniest characters the show did have a spin off after season 4 in May 1964) which starred Jim Nabors as (Gomer Pyle) U.S.M.C.