Sitcoms didn't really start trying to make statements until Norman Lear came along in the 1970s. Then they tried to make statements about life, values, politics, etc. However, "Petticoat Junction" makes so many statements without even trying to. It tells us how life should be, how people should be, and gives us a standard to strive for.

I hear people say all the time, when they see shows like "Petticoat Junction" and others, that life was never really like that. But, actually it was in many parts of the country. The community where I grew up used to be a lot like Hooterville. It was an unincorporated community located between two small towns. At one time, it even had a school of its own. My grandparents attended school there for the first several grades before going to high school in town. I never really saw our community when it was like Hooterville because things had changed by the time I was born. Still, I can certainly remember it being different when I was a kid, before a lot of people from the bigger cities started moving there and changing the whole landscape and atmosphere.

When my grandparents and my parents were growing up, it was a place where moral values meant something. Doing the "right thing" and keeping one's word was important. Children respected their parents and and their teachers and all other elders. Everybody knew everybody else and pitched in to help when someone needed something. Most people went to church on Sunday and came home and ate Sunday dinner as a family. People worked hard and earned their way. Life was simple and good.

Places like this *did* really exist. I don't know why people nowadays are so insistent that they didn't. They weren't imagined or dreamed up. Paul Henning didn't just make it all up one day. Sure, life wasn't this way in all parts of the country. There has always been bad things in this world, but life used to be more simple. Right and wrong were more black and white. I know people have never been perfect. However, I think years ago people tried harder to be good. I think they wanted to be good, in contrast to how people today take a more lax attitude. I think society used to have higher standards.

"Petticoat Junction" makes a loud statement that this is how life should be. The people in Hooterville worked hard, they helped their neighbor, and they had good values. Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, and Betty Jo respected Kate and Uncle Joe. If Kate told the girls something, it meant something. I don't know why life can't be this way anymore. The life in my childhood community has changed drastically over the last 30 or 40 years. I'm not saying people never had problems. They did. They had sadness and tragedies. In "Petticoat Junction", the girls' father had obviously died young. He either got sick or got killed. Or, he might have even killed himself. We just don't know. They had to grow up without a father which wasn't fair. Life has never been perfect, but it can be good if we want it to be.

That's the statement this show made: life is grand when you keep it simple, respect those around you, and embrace good moral values. Some of the episodes reflect this better than others. Some of the episodes are pretty silly, but others are very heartwarming and telling. Certain episodes could actually be used as teaching tools. The Shady Rest Hotel had no telephone, no televisions, etc., but I would still love to go stay there for a week! It would be so much fun, getting to eat with the family and hanging out and talking to them.

By the time the series ended, issues were being touched upon that revealed a "nod" to how the world was changing. For example, there was an ep with Alex Karras about a Vietnamese orphan girl who wasn't legally in the country, and also an ep where Uncle Joe and Orrin confront very unsavory bikers.

Even early on, there were times when worldly cynicism crept in -- as in the episode "Bobbie Jo and the Beatnik" where the girls' world is questioned, and also a few seasons later when Betty Jo visits New York City and begins to believe Hooterville is far too backwoods to be of value -- until her new friend turns out to be a horrible snob. Later yet, Billie Jo explores feminism and there's a lot of discord as a result.

Anyway, one of the main themes with Homer Bedlow is how the spur line and Cannonball were out-of-step with the times and threatened to be discontinued. Right from the beginning, the resulting threatening of the Shady Rest's existence (from the potential loss of the rail line) is an acknowledgement of a changing world.

Anyway, one of the main themes with Homer Bedlow is how the spur line and Cannonball were out-of-step with the times and threatened to be discontinued. Right from the beginning, the resulting threatening of the Shady Rest's existence (from the potential loss of the rail line) is an acknowledgement of a changing world.Well, I say poo poo on the "changing world"! I like it much better before~

Well, I say poo poo on the "changing world"! I like it much better before~
You and me both!

You and me both!Oh, Iola! Fancy meeting you here! :) [hehe! Love your avatar!]

How right you are Robmic. Life was like that even in larger cities. I grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, a city of about 250,000 people in the 1960s and early 1970s and life was a lot like it was in Petticoat Junction in terms of people's manners and actions.

Children were taught to respect their elders and to respect other people's property. Family was very important as well. My guess is that all through out the South during that era, life was much like that. I know people who grew up in Tulsa, OK, in the 1960s and life was also like that in Petticoat Junction.

My guess is that the sexual revolution and drug culture that really took over in the mid-1970s degraded our society. And now we're left with a country that is a mere shadow of its former greatness.

THE town I live in, is getting to be like Petticoat Junction. It is very safe but a little dull.

By the time the series ended, issues were being touched upon that revealed a "nod" to how the world was changing. For example, there was an ep with Alex Karras about a Vietnamese orphan girl who wasn't legally in the country, and also an ep where Uncle Joe and Orrin confront very unsavory bikers.

Even early on, there were times when worldly cynicism crept in -- as in the episode "Bobbie Jo and the Beatnik" where the girls' world is questioned, and also a few seasons later when Betty Jo visits New York City and begins to believe Hooterville is far too backwoods to be of value -- until her new friend turns out to be a horrible snob. Later yet, Billie Jo explores feminism and there's a lot of discord as a result.

Anyway, one of the main themes with Homer Bedlow is how the spur line and Cannonball were out-of-step with the times and threatened to be discontinued. Right from the beginning, the resulting threatening of the Shady Rest's existence (from the potential loss of the rail line) is an acknowledgement of a changing world.

That was NOT Alex Karras in the Vietnam episode. It was a singer/actor named Glen Ash. And BTW I think that is one of the series' worst episodes, along with THE CHRISTENING, AND LOVE REARS IT'S UGLY HEAD Don't know WHERE you got the notion that it was Alex Karras. Looks and sounds NOTHING like him

Viewed through enlightened 21st century eyes, 'Uncle Joe and the Master Plan' is probably the most thoroughly despicable episode, not just of PJ, but of any sitcom in TV history.

Viewed through enlightened 21st century eyes, 'Uncle Joe and the Master Plan' is probably the most thoroughly despicable episode, not just of PJ, but of any sitcom in TV history.
I just watched this episode...

Ok, what am I missing as to why this episode is so horrible? I don't get it.

I just watched this episode...

Ok, what am I missing as to why this episode is so horrible? I don't get it.

I just watched the episode, after seeing your question, and I don't get it, either. :eek: As far as I can tell, there was nothing wrong with it.

I just watched the episode, after seeing your question, and I don't get it, either. :eek: As far as I can tell, there was nothing wrong with it.
The ONLY thing I could think of is everyone assumed the person from "Master Plan" was the man and didn't even consider it being the woman. Heck, that still happens today so I don't see how this would make it a horrible episode.

The ONLY thing I could think of is everyone assumed the person from "Master Plan" was the man and didn't even consider it being the woman. Heck, that still happens today so I don't see how this would make it a horrible episode.

That makes it the "most thoroughly despicable episode of any sitcom in TV history"? :lol: That seems like a stretch, but I know what you mean: what else is there?

I thought maybe it was because two of the Jos were dressed as maids. But Uncle Joe was dressed as a butler, so...

I just don't know.

Same thing happens with me. I’ll see a comment about how horrible such and such was, but when I watched I saw absolutely nothing wrong. Guess, I just ain’t a snowflake with modern day ever so sensitivities. Thank Gosh.:D

Thanks to tlc38 for bringing this thread back to the top. That was a wonderful writeup by Robmic, and several great comments by other posters.

I too grew up in a small town, but I think one major difference between then and now is the term, respect. As kids, we were taught to, and did, respect our elders. Now, they mostly aren't taught to, and don't.

I'll take sitcoms like this vs. a lot of the loudmouth ones of the 70s any day.

I would take living in the Petticoat Junction world any day. Life was simple and good.

I would take living in the Petticoat Junction world any day. Life was simple and good.

"Yepper!"

This thread remind me too much of better days long past. "News" is not news for a long time, and "politics" is too pornographic to be in an Adult Boookstore.

I started in a small town. No problems: Eveybody was so poor that they squeezed a nickel until the Indian rode the bison.

The available DVDs do not have the whole PJ story, but I watch it for nostalgia, and am almost afraid that the later seasons will start to make statements of how repulsive the culture was becoming on its way now. The "Ladybugs" episode shown what could come, but back then, enough confusion left it clean.

When my family moved here, we had a distinct "wrong side of the tracks" culture. We were on the wrong side. But in the decades since, this community grew until we became Five-times Over - populated and I will not back down from three-fold. Where are those "time slips" they talk about on Coast-to-Coast AM? Well. Withdrawing from my Real computers could be like an alcoholic's recovery.

Another thing PJ showed, and the first couple seasons of Happy Days even produced in late 1970s, is a long forgotten concept of "allure." By the end of the '70s, it was hanging red meat out where a hound dog could get it.

I remember walking with my Dad, downtown for some reason long forgot, about 1973, when we spotted a trim youg woman wearing a dress of very modest length with the full skirt free to sail in the breeze. We eye-balled her until Dad walked *Bang!* Right smack into a lamp post. She had allure. Who say women do not have Power! Some may say that is sexist, but the young women I respected dished the banter right back, and would not have had things any other way.

Many thoughts are about the hows and the whys or whether or not the changes have been improvements or dilapidations. My experience has things have been going downhill for more than a century. Also, I learned that the difference between a teacher and a bucket of manure is the bucket, and had NO exceptions. Of course, the laws of averages suggest exceptions exist, but in 65 years, I am wild to meet one. Regrettably, my test is severe, and right.

Buggers! It is so easy to be vexed by the here and now and the recollections seem to increase the misery.

Same thing happens with me. I’ll see a comment about how horrible such and such was, but when I watched I saw absolutely nothing wrong. Guess, I just ain’t a snowflake with modern day ever so sensitivities. Thank Gosh.:D

Snowflake my boring aunt Hazel. The only way the they could justify the good folks at the Junction being so put off by (and ultimately unwelcoming to) anyone was to make him a queer. A vicious old queer from Haight Ashbury. Gotta love how they turned the ostracization of gays on its head by having him insist on having the dining room to himself, Jesus!

So just to be clear, they apparently felt they needed a character whom the audience would understand and agree should be unwelcome at the all-welcoming Shady Rest--and that pathetic stereotypical queen fit the bill.

And please--PLEASE--don't tell me I'm reading more into this than what's there, it's all plainly there, you're just A-OK with it, even if Kate "can't quite put [her] finger on it."

False dichotomy much? Besides, I've known far too many of both for there to be any confusion.

I know one thing, if this politically correct snowflake doesn't like it, I will definitely love it. And the more "offended" "Porch" is the more I love it. By the way YOU offend ME. Happy Trails:wave:

Heh, see, everything with you people is projection. I offend you, do I? I guess that means you should seek shelter in a safe space. I might suggest the other side of, ahem, the block assuming that isn't what's already implied by the waving hand.

Oh no, I never block, that's how Snowflakes keep themselves safe and comfy.:rolleyes: Hope you're nice and comfy in your P.J.s in that safe basement.:o

I've watched Petticoat J. for a long, long time, since it was on for the first time in fact way back in the swingin' '60s, yep I'm haggard but I'm always right, and I don't ever recall seeing a homo in the show. Isn't it grand? But those on the, oh, so sensitive left always seem to be seeing homos and offenses wherever they look. How often have we been told, "Did you know so and so was a homo?" When no one in their right mind would ever have considered so and so a homo. I'm a dern poet.:D But what I love best is the ever constant feigned claims of shock & offense by your "sensitive" ilk. I so hope I'm offending you, now that would really make my day.

But, just in your grand honor, (since I don't even remember the episode) I, El Greato, (that is how you may address me) shall watch this, oh so offensive episode, Joe The Master, or whatever, this Friday. I watch Pet. Junc. every Friday anyway, so I'll go out of my strict orderly episode guide fashion just this one time, no more, just once.

I hope my wee widdle feewings can stand the oh so terrible story and the awful, awful people I'm bound to encounter. Pass me your Teddy Bear to hold as I buck myself up to be "offended".:lol:

IOW, you really had no idea what the **** you were talking about and still don't. Well that's par for the course and it's certainly never stopped you before on any topic. But you will love this episode--you MUST love this episode!! You already said so. Because I dislike it, you are honor--nay--DUTY bound to love the episode no matter what. I'm green with envy at your freedom of thought and expression.... :lol:

It must be so troublesome living in your make-believe world where you're just not happy unless you're pretending to be "offended". Reading false motives amongst all good people, working yourself up to be offended at just about any banal reason you can conjur up.

Really, doesn't it get tiresome? I know your type boars me and amuses me too with all the feigned indignation. It's quite hilarious.:lol:

Oh, I haven't forgotten, tsk tsk, you must address me as El Greato, you wouldn't want me to be offended would you? I hope you do spend all your time desperately looking for false motives and hidden offenses in every episode of every great and wonderful All-American programs like Petticoat Junction. Your type deserves to be miserable on a constant basis. Just knowing how offended you are by this episode is sure to make me enjoy it even more tomorrow, when I dare to test the "offensive" waters. I should thank you in advance, for the sure fire laughs I'll be having.

By the way, Uncle Joe doesn't want you in the dining room, you inspire indigestion. The porch is OK though. :happyface

...Says the snowflake whose melting flooded rivers when I pointed out Hazel is boring as hell.

Projection, projection, projection.

Really, are you really trying a ploy that is always practiced over and over by your liberal ilk, what's that? He asked innocently? Assigning your very crimes and tactics to others who oppose you. Yes, I accept the burden of being brilliant, always right and quite handsome to boot, oh, and modest too, but the one thing I ain't is what perfectly describes you, a snowflake. I pride myself on being as politically impolite as possible, the exact opposite of you, the always offended "snowflake" looking for safe spaces where you won't be frightened by such horrors as Petticoat Junction and their oh so offensive ways.

Now leaving my least favorite subject, you, we turn to the supposed crime, the "offensive" episode, "Joe & The Master Plan". I broke out of my episode guide order on Fridays for P.Junction just to see how offensive this episode was.

Hold on to your panties, Porch, but I thought the episode was one of the better written shows and it even included one of my favorite character actors, Reginald Gardiner! Gardiner was one of those actors who always played the same character, I can't say he played himself because I don't know how he was in real life, but in anything I see him in he always plays the same funny guy. From one of my favorite Christmas movies, Christmas In Connecticut to an episode of Hazel where he plays an elegant TV repairman, to his appearance in Bewitched (though I forget the details of the story). He was a great character actor and funny, not offensive. As to the supposed offensive way the Pet. Junction characters treated Gardiner (who's supposed to be an artist in this show) I should only wish that I could be treated just as "offensively". They literally waited on him hand and foot, even to the point of my personal fantasy to be served by 2 hot babes dressed as French maids, complete with eye popping short skirts.:eek: Oh, what nightmares Reginald must have suffered from this horrid treatment:rolleyes: . In case you still don't get it, I'm being sarcastic.

And one of the better written scenes is the one where they talk of treating Joe with more respect the way he was treated out of town, instead of laughing at him as they usually do in the Shady Rest. I thought this was a thoughtful and unusual treatment of Uncle Joe, one that was long overdue for him. They considered and reflected on themselves and how their treatment of Uncle Joe wasn't right. This was nice.

This was one of the best written episodes of Petticoat Junction and in some scenes I actually laughed out loud (which I don't often do with this program, though it's still one of my favorites) when they sprayed Gardiner with the fire extinguisher I had to laugh. Actually, I wonder if Gardiner was injured doing this scene, fire extinguisher propellant, I believe is very cold. But he seemed not affected;) .

OK, for the record, I was not offended in the least, you, the genuine snowflake are the one pretending to be offended, so let's not assign your shortcomings to others, shall we? Now, the Great One has stated the final word on this episode, and if you were offended by this great show, I say, what I always say to you Snowflakes, "GET OVER IT.":lol: How's that for sensitivity?:wave:

tl;dr

When I watched this one, the guest struck me as snobby, not gay. It’s a stock characterization we’ve seen many many times over the years - think Gil Chesterton on “Frasier” (and Gil was straight).

With the "controversy" here regarding this episode, I watched it again for the first time in over 20 years and I failed to see it being offensive or subversive. Not trying to start an argument, just my observation. I doubt any of the Henning shows (or any of the '60s sitcoms for that matter) would have addressed such an issue, even subtly.

With the "controversy" here regarding this episode, I watched it again for the first time in over 20 years and I failed to see it being offensive or subversive. Not trying to start an argument, just my observation. I doubt any of the Henning shows (or any of the '60s sitcoms for that matter) would have addressed such an issue, even subtly.
They wouldn't have. Not in the 1960's.

Reginald Gardnier also played the uppity fashion salon owner in Hazel season 3 "The Fashion Show"

Oh, right, I knew he played in a couple of Hazels but couldn't remember which other one. That's where Hazel participated as a model in Deidra's fashion show and Reginald kept getting calls from his wife to bring home the "pork chawps" as he put it. See, his wife, that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was totally straight.

Mr Montys wife Agatha wanted veal chops and broccoli ! I love how the "snowflakes"compare the 50's and 60's to 2018's uber PC world!