I'm surprised to find a message board for this series being so recently active. I don't know why, though. In my own family there are many fans of the series, and none more so than my mom.
I guess I'm just writing this because seeing the messages made me think of her great disappointment in the TV movies that followed after the series ended.
I remember my sister and I were talking to her one day after she turned off a rerun of one of the movies in exasperation.
She didn't like the characters staying static over the years, never changing at all or growing. Never chanbging clothes. I'm sure she knew it was that innocence that was the appeal of the original series, and hard core fans didn't care that no one ever changed. She cared, though.
She always imagined Elly becoming a veterinarian and having a private zoo on the property. There was, apparently, one older vet on the series who had a professional interest in her and could have helped her get into college.
OK, yeah. It could have happened. Ellie wasn't stupid. She was pretty smart and more headstrong than her Granny thought she should be. I can buy her knuckling down to become a vet and help and care for animals for the rest of her life.
Mom also thought that Dash Riprock would come back into Ellie's life after his career hits the skids - the coming of the antihero and all that. His leading man, romantic idol image would play against him, so he'd finagle his way into the Clampett studio through Jethro and eventually meet up again with Ellie. They would get married and as Jed's new son-in-law, he'd have clout in the studio. Being an old matinee idol would work for him behind the camera. He knows the business.
This is where we let our imaginations run wild. My sister and I got into making things up with Mom and we came up with ideas of our own.
Ellie and Dash have three or four kids who become young teens in the 80s - just in time for Dash, as director, and Jethro, as producer, to start making a string of coming of age John Hughes-type rip-off movies starring the children. They grow up before the eyes of America as the stars of their father's movies.
The Clampett studio becomes a money-maker with this string of B movies that imitate every trend that the big studios start. Teen angst, teen horror/slasher, cheap science fiction, etc.
The youngest son follows his dad's footsteps and gets in on the new interest in pirate movies, and American Pie type of movies.
Through it all, Ellie keeps them on the straight and narrow with the character, strength and intelligence she got from being raised the way she was. Despite the fame and fortune and the temptations that come with both, life goes on inside the Clampett mansion.
You can let your own imagination tell you what Jethro's life is like through all of this.