One of the Funniest

vox-sane

Many in my generation (too young to be a boomer and too old to be an "X"er) think this is one of the funniest shows ever.  It doesn't have any deeper meanings or ramifications or redeeming social importance.  It's funny, and for the sake of being funny.  This show proves that humor rises from character.  Too often a show gets by on a series of insults, or double entendres, or one-liners.  "Green Acres" had characters who were rich and diverse, who might be funny by what they say, or by the fact that they're saying it, or just because they show up at a certain moment.  "Hooterville" could, I suppose, be construed as a Kafkaesque construct where even the woman who doesn't want to live there understands what's going on there, and only the man who wants to live there can't comprehend what's going on, or understand what the pig is saying.  But why bother with such interpretation? This show is funny, well-written, and performed by fine actors.  Shot on a sound-stage, "Green Acres" nevertheless opens out where most shows seem claustrophobic -- there are fields, roads, houses, barns, cows, jeeps, tractors, and all the great outdoors.  I'm a country boy myself, and I appreciate that, unlike most shows written by high-handed cityfolk that show country folk as either ignorant bumpkins whose foolishness is the basis of laughs, or makes them more sagely inscrutable than smugly-superior urbanites, "Green Acres" gives the people of Hooterville thier own mindset that is neither better nor worse, just different.  And the show itself is different from anything else on television until the arrival of "Newhart" which, for all its humor, nevertheless remained stagey and claustrophobic. "Green Acres" is funny.  Enjoy it.

score /10

vox-sane 26 October 1999

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0087953/