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This to me was one of the very best heart-warming situation comedies ever on television.
The premise of a widow raising her three daughters with the Uncle Joe as a surrogate father to these girls and all of the joys and challenges of running the Shady Rest and keeping Homer Bedloe from shutting down the Cannonball (only means of transportation) has provided many with a wonderful "escape" of real life and lots of wonderful laughs.
I cannot write about this show without giving the proper kudos to its central character and matriarch, Kate Bradley played by the wonderful actress Bea Benaderet. She was to me an unsung actress who not only played every role quite well. She played Pearl Bodine in the Beverly Hillbillies and always stole the show with her great comedic talents.
Kate was the one who held everything together. Uncle Joe made a lot of noise sometimes, but was very protective of Kate and her girls. He always had his "get rich quick" schemes and always felt the Shady Rest was just as good (if not better) than the Conrad Hilton Hotel--or was trying to cook up a scheme to bring it up to the standard of the latest resort.
Her girls? I am sure some may feel they were just TOO GOOD to be true, but that is the great wonder of this show. Each daughter had their own personality and I imagine many young men wished they had a Billie Jo/Bobbie Jo/ or Betty Jo they could take home to meet his parents.
I enjoyed the story of Betty Jo falling in love and marrying the Air Force pilot Steve Elliott. I always wished all of the daughters could have married sometime in the course of the show.
The saddest loss of course was when Bea Benaderet succumbed to cancer in October of 1968. It left many voids in the hearts of viewers. Since this was a situation comedy, death was a very delicate subject. Even through her radiation treatments they were stories of Kate "being away" and a brief return by Bea in hopes that the treatments had taken all of the cancer. I am sure CBS and the Petticoat Junction crew were having quite a challenge on how to handle the loss of their central character.
Bringing June Lockhart to the cast as the lovely Dr. Janet Craig was a delightful change and she added a different dimension to the show (it was the late 60's and many women were becoming career women), but it was not Kate.
TV Land was the last station I know of to show this wonderful show. I hope they or another channel will air it again.
score /10
BennettManor 13 April 2002
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0080183/ |
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19-10-2020 02:33:08