Rural Comedies is the Place Ye Ought to Be

Eli Varnadore as Jed Clampett and Nadine Borrelli as Granny..  come watch their outstanding portrayals this weekend!

Watching WACT perform The Beverly Hillbillies (a great show that if you haven't seen yet, you need to get out this week and sit a spell at the Ritz), I became nostalgic for those times with my Dad when he used to watch that show and laugh and laugh and laugh.

My Dad was not a big TV watcher.  He was a very busy high school principal, working many hours and attending many meetings in the evenings.  But if he was home, he wouldn't miss The Beverly Hillbillies.  He also loved the other rural comedies, although he was more sporadic in catching them, including Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and The Andy Griffith Show.  Later on, he was a big fan of Hee Haw.  It was odd because other than Hee Haw, I never really heard listen to country music.

I was not as thrilled with these shows.  They were not my cup of tea.  I was more of a Twilight Zone/Star Trek kind of kid.  Even in comedies I preferred things more like Get Smart and My Favorite Martian.  But there was something special about being able to share a program with him, listening to him laugh and enjoy it.

Dad grew up on a large farm in southern Michigan, and the shows must have resonated with him. Sometimes we don't realize how recently it was that most of the population was rural, with large numbers making their living from agriculture.  So for many of my Dad's generation, this was a glimpse backwards into a way of life that was disappearing.

At first brush, with it being awhile since I had revisited these shows, I thought maybe the shows were based on laughing at characters like The Beverly Hillbillies because they were kinda stupid and ignorant.  There is a certain genre that I have come to greatly dislike, that promotes the idea that "our character is so dumb that he is actually bright".  Examples are like Forrest Gump, Dave, Dumb and Dumber, Being Alone and countless sitcom characters.  For me, the idea that the truly ignorant are a font of wisdom was permanently ruined by George W, Bush, Jr.

But having refreshed myself with WACT's fine play version of The Beverly Hillbillies, I discovered that's not the case. Yes, it's true - Jethro is bone stupid.  But the rest of the family are just culturally different, and carry a wisdom and intelligence that is often missing from their sophisticated Beverly Hills neighbors.  You find yourself laughing as much at the stuffiness and  cultural straitjacket that those around the Clampetts have, even more than the Clampetts themselves.  Jed may have been the wisest character in all of TV land back in the 60s.

And now all that is gone.  There are no more rural comedies.  That time period, even to reach back in nostalgia, has passed us by.  Oh, sure,  We still have nostalgia comedies.  But they are more like The Wonder Years and The Goldbergs, with suburban settings, in a time period where the middle class had not completely receded, like it is on the verge of today.

Do I miss The Beverly Hillbillies?

The show itself?  Not much.

What I miss is hearing my Dad laugh, this great big wonderful man, this hard working school principal dealing with a thousand stresses, being able to unplug and set back a spell, even if just for a half hour.

I do miss that.

I miss that a lot.