An 'Andy Griffith Show' Episode Sampler
Five episodes to get started.
Growing up, I would stay at my grandparents' after school. My mother couldn't pick me up until she got off work around 6:00p, so when I got to Grandma and Papa's around 3:30p, I'd have my Goldfish snack and finish my homework. Every day when 5:00p rolled around, I'd plop myself in front of their console tv and we'd watch the local evening news on WDBJ7 before 5:30p brought syndicated reruns of The Andy Griffith Show. When I say every day, I mean it. I think I've seen every episode of the show's first five seasons a dozen times each.
Why just the first five seasons? The show went to color in Season 6 and if one of those episodes came on the tv, my Grandma turned it off. "It just wasn't the same!" she'd say. I don't think I've seen a single color episode.
If you're looking to try out this classic sitcom, you've come to the right place as I'm something of an expert on those first five, black-and-white seasons. Continuity never mattered too much (I'm not certain, but I think the reruns ran out of order), so here are five sample episodes to get you started.
“Citizen's Arrest” (Season 4, Episode 11)
This is sort of the episode, so it'll be a good litmus test for whether or not you should proceed, though I argue you should at least try the entire list.
Mayberry was full of colorful characters (and we’ll get to them), but the core of The Andy Griffith Show was the relationship between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife, played so iconically by Don Knotts. Andy was the straight man to Barney's antics and there were always plenty of those. Barney always took his job as Deputy very seriously, even though nothing of particular police importance ever seemed to really happen in town. The job was so relaxed, in fact, that he was only issued one bullet...which he carried in his shirt pocket.
In "Citizen's Arrest," Barney pulls over town goofball Gomer (played by Jim Nabors, a side character so popular he got his own spinoff show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C, which ran for 150 episodes) for making an illegal u-turn in the street. When Barney pulls off from issuing the ticket, he makes his own u-turn, which inspires Gomer to make a citizen's arrest in retaliation. Barney gets so embarrassed, he'd rather lock himself in the jail cell and resign from his position than pay the ticket (essentially pleading guilt), so that's exactly what he does. That also means that we see what jail life is like in Mayberry, where town drunk Otis checks himself in every Saturday night and Andy's Aunt Bee brings in a hot breakfast for the "prisoners."
Not only does this episode show off their dynamic, but it also shows how, in the end, nothing is too important. Oh, and it also gives us Gomer's yokel delivery of "Citizen's arrest! Citizen's arrest!" which became a common refrain among my family.
“Opie the Birdman” (Season 4, Episode 1)
Like many mid-century family-friendly sitcoms, quite a few episodes of Andy Griffith taught us a lesson. As a young boy never too far from Andy's son Opie's age, I took many of those lessons to heart.
In this Season 4 opener, Barney makes Opie a slingshot and tries showing it off, only to embarrass himself and break some office glass in the process. That's just about the end of this episode's comedy, however, as Opie soon uses the slingshot to accidentally kill a bird. He begs of the bird, "Fly away, please fly away!" as he breaks down and cries in the front yard.
It doesn't take Andy long to figure out why young Opie is in such a down mood, so he steps in to do some loving but firm parenting, which wasn't exactly commonplace in the '60s. "You gonna give me a whipping?" Opie asks. "No. I'm not gonna give you a whipping," Pa answers as he opens the window to hear those baby birds chirping for their mother. Opie knows what he must do, raise the birds to health. He becomes so attached to them that he finds it hard to let them go when they get big enough.
TV Guide put this one at #18 on their "Top 100 Episodes of All Time'' list and it's easy to see why. Watch young Ronny Howard (who was such a great child actor, before he grew up to be Ron Howard and a great director) go through these emotional ups and downs and tell me that a tear doesn't come to your eye once or twice...
“The Haunted House” (Season 4, Episode 2)
This might be a controversial pick because there are probably "better" episodes of the show, but I wanted to follow up one of the more sentimental episodes with one of the sillier ones, which is probably what the cast and crew thought too. There isn't really much to this one. Andy, Barney, and Gomer have to explore Mayberry's old spooky abandoned probably-haunted house to retrieve a baseball. Hilarity ensues.
This one always sticks out in my mind because it's basically a trial run for The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, a Don Knotts vehicle that came out just three years later. That picture was in pretty regular rotation every October growing up. I'm pretty sure we caught it on the big screen at the indie movie theater once or twice - I cannot overstate how big this show was in my hometown, even four decades after its premiere. We used to go to the minor league baseball team's Mayberry Night, where they had a Don Knotts/Barney Fife impersonator.
“Convicts-at-Large” (Season 3, Episode 11)
Earlier in this list, I promised some episodes with some side characters and guest stars, so that's how we'll wrap this sampler with our final two picks. Some were so popular that they came back again and again and we'll see that in our final episode, (I must mention, again, that this list should really include some Ernest T. Bass and I wish I had the column inches for it. Just know that an Ernest T. episode would be an honorary sixth pick.)
In this episode, three escaped women convicts hide out in the outskirts of Mayberry and end up taking Barney and town barber Floyd (another great character by Howard McNear, who would soon suffer a stroke and be absent for the next year-and-a-half of the show's run) as hostages. Big Maude, Jalene, and Sally didn't return to the show (presumably they were, uh, in prison) but were plenty memorable nonetheless.
The Andy Griffith Show Wiki's page for this episode includes the trivia fact, "It is revealed in this episode that Barney likes his hamburgers cooked medium-rare." Sure, Barney is a man of taste, but I have to ask: who bothered to type that up on the wiki?
“The Darlings Are Coming” (Season 3, Episode 25)
The Darlings, meanwhile, were introduced in this Season 3 episode and would come back for five more. They're a bluegrass-thumpin' family band of hillbillies and they're presented like The Beverly Hillbillies, but Mayberry is no Beverly Hills, so that's how country bumpkin they are.
This isn't exactly the best Darlin' (that's how you say it) episode, but it does teach us everything we need to know about them. City livin' ain't for them and they seem to break a local ordinance just about everywhere they go, from stealing water out of the town's horse trough to shackin' up, all six of them, in a single occupancy room for rent. This episode is plenty fun as Darlin' daughter Charlene falls head-over-heels for Andy and literally chases him around the jailhouse. As a young boy, I didn't see why Andy was so scared.
It's later on that the Darlin's become fan favorites, even co-starring in their next episode with Ernest T. (that's my final mention, I promise) which is one of the show's more iconic episodes. I'm partial to their performance of "Boil Them Cabbage Down" in a Season 4 episode. I don't know why that one in particular sticks out in my mind, but it's probably because I always liked it when Andy joined them singin' and playin' the gee-tar. Actually, I liked it when Andy did just about anything.
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