The Andy Griffith Show

The first three seasons of The Andy Griffith Show are, quite simply, the most important three seasons of any sitcom, ever.

I said what I said.

This time around, I’m watching it all the way through. I usually avoid the episodes in color, because they are…well, a little hard to watch. But in watching them, I get to see an entirely different show than what our collective memory shows us.

This is a show about how life turns us into dumb assholes. It’s about the painful destruction of ego, and the bitterness that remains. In simple terms, it’s about the devastation of a broken heart. It’s really very bleak, and I don’t exactly recommend watching the episodes in color. But it IS fascinating.

Because Andy/Andy Don/Barney are SOULMATES. And the season before Barney leaves, you are watching the disintegration of their deep and gorgeous love. And it’s just exceedingly painful. You can start to see Andy begin to fray for a while. But there comes an episode–Don/Barney has been taking leaves from the show/station lately–and Andy says (paraphrasing), “I’ve just had it with everything!,” and Barney says, “With me, too?” and Andy says, “Well, to be honest yes.”

And from that point on, the joy is gone from Andy’s eyes. I mean, he’s just fucking broken. He barely tries. His optimistic, ever-patient character becomes instantly surly, mean and done with everything. Soon after, Barney leaves. And the world turns a frightening technicolor.

There’s Andy, in a house with those creamy, saturated colors favored by Doris Day, with crappy wallpaper thrown in, and he’s dour, furrowed brow, clad in khaki: He is sepia and the world is on fire.

And suddenly, that is, quietly, what the show becomes about. He is frustrated and out of place in every scene. He seems old beyond his years. Everything is wrong. And he obviously hates everyone and everything. The quirks of every town person sends a tired wave of nausea over him that he can’t conceal–made more horrifying by how purely he once loved them all. Even Opie seems a nuisance he can’t bother to pay attention to. And when he sings songs around the fire, they’re all keening tunes about death. I mean, fucking hell. Andy was completely out of fucks, and he didn’t care how much he ruined anyone’s good time.

He gets a new deputy he hates from the start. I assume Andy and Andy both, because he’s gone in 11 episodes. He eases up slightly when Howard comes around. But there is only one type of occasion where we see a glimmer of his former self.

That’s when Barney comes a-visiting. His tired, busted bones start brimming with life. But still, his eyes are sad. Every moment with the two is heartbreaking. Their every line, becomes a plea of, “Just a little longer…” But they know it has to end. And the twinkle fades from Andy’s eyes again.

I’ve honestly never seen love so purely conveyed on screen. Their bromance is the stuff of legend. It’s horrible and beautiful and tragic and subtle. It’s just, you know, not exactly what you want from the Andy Griffith Show.

I wish Andy in Color could discover the first three seasons of the Andy Griffith Show, and take his eyes off Don for once and look at himself. What a model of a man he was. Beyond any other TV Dad of the time period, he was the Dad with honest to God lessons you could use. That I use. That Americans striving to be decent people still use.

In the later seasons, he was a bit frightening and misogynistic. He started treating Helen badly. He was a man afraid to love. Anyone.

Andy Griffith shows us how we lose the wisdom of naive youth. To stay the Andy Griffith Show, it would have to have also shown us how to mend that broken heart, and take on the wisdom of age. But instead, it shows us how, when left untreated, coldness grows in the cracks and we become frozen in time, even as time marches on. Which is a story that needs telling, and it is something to be so lulled into optimism only to be faced with such a horrible possibility of what life may become. He’s like the ghost of Christmas Future…

Andy Griffith…You endless son of a bitch. You will fascinate me forever…

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I’m looking for ten people to become absolute heroes when they sign up to get zines delivered to their door to celebrate the holidays All Year Long! The V-Day Zine is about to go out in coming days, and there are many more holidays to get in on.

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Here’s a song. It’s appropriate for fundraising.

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