MeTV has gotten to the latter half of season 5, where Kate is missing (and before Aunt Helen shows up). These episodes are just awful. I can’t remember if it’s better when Rosemary DeCamp shows up as Helen. But Kate’s unifying presence is sorely missed right now. The show doesn’t work without her. At all.

MeTV has gotten to the latter half of season 5, where Kate is missing (and before Aunt Helen shows up). These episodes are just awful. I can’t remember if it’s better when Rosemary DeCamp shows up as Helen. But Kate’s unifying presence is sorely missed right now. The show doesn’t work without her. At all.

I totally agree. Kate was the heart and soul of the show!

I’ve posted this before, but back in the days when the B&W episodes were sitting on the shelf, having all of those non-Kate episodes in the syndication package really hurt the show’s reputation. You only had two full seasons with her before she started missing shows.

Oh well, thankfully we can see her entire run on the show these days. But will stop recording the MeTV shows until they cycle back to the beginning.

Certainly the shows were at their best when Kate was there. But the shows were still worth watching just for Uncle Joe and his antics not to mention the irresistible Lori Sanders or whichever Blankey-Jo she was.

But reality is what it is and I think the closest and best replacement for Kate was Rosemary DeCamp. Her character resembled Kate and was most like her, good sense and loving at the same time. I think the show could have gone on almost like it was had Rosemary stayed on for the rest of the run. I don't know if it was Rosemary's decision or the producer's decision to have Rosemary leave the show, but it was a big mistake.

As much as I like June Lockart (Lochart?) in Lassie and Lost In Space, she was perfect in those 2 shows, she was just wrong in Petticoat Junction, didn't seem to be part of that gang of characters at all.

Interesting comments.

With respect to season 5, that must have been a very difficult year for what seemed like a close knit cast. Charlie played by Smiley Burnette had passed away after the conclusion of season 4, so that black cloud hangs over the show as season 5 begins (his passing is indirectly referenced in the second episode of season 5). Then Bea Benaderet takes ill missing 10 or so episodes in a row battling the illness that would take her life. The writers had to rewrite scenes and episodes on the fly as the magnitude of the health challenges ahead for the star who was also the heart and soul of the show came into clear focus. Bea wasn't just the star she was one of the most underrated talents in television history. Her body of work in television between 1950 and her death in 1968 is amazing. She was a regular on 5 different series plus the voice over actress for Betty Rubble. the only season she was not working on a series from 1950 on was the 59-60 television season. She was trained by the Mount Rushmore of comedy talent, the three Bs, Ball, Benny and Burns and she learned her lessons very well. She was a master at double-takes, line delivery and comic timing. It's no reflection on DeCamp or Lockhart, but Bea was one of a kind.

I give the entire production team and on screen talent a great deal of credit for dealing with the behind the scene circumstances. There were many good episodes in season 5, and the final episode of season 5 is a love letter to the star who would appear in only three more episodes of the series.

Agreed on Benaderet being underrated. She was a huge talent. And “Kate’s Homecoming” is a great episode. I wish the series had ended there. I believe it was the producers’ decision - not Rosemary DeCamp’s - not to bring her aboard full time (she was on “That Girl” at the time, but only as a guest star). They wanted to bring in a different character rather than a clone of Kate. Didn’t work, though. The lady MD always seemed like an outsider.

Yeah, I've long thought that Rosemary DeCamp as Aunt Helen was a good replacement for Kate (though of course I preferred Bea as she initiated the role). But Aunt Helen was very similar to Kate and the remainder of the shows/seasons would have been better with her in my opinion since Bea was gone. Of course, the best case scenario is for Bea to have lived thoughout the run of the series.

I do want to say that while the eps with Rosemary DeCamp and June Lockhart were good, they pale in comparison to Bea who was utterly fantastic on the show.

So when you go from utterly fantastic to good, you have basically jumped the shark.

Agreed on Benaderet being underrated. She was a huge talent. And “Kate’s Homecoming” is a great episode. I wish the series had ended there. I believe it was the producers’ decision - not Rosemary DeCamp’s - not to bring her aboard full time (she was on “That Girl” at the time, but only as a guest star). They wanted to bring in a different character rather than a clone of Kate. Didn’t work, though. The lady MD always seemed like an outsider.

A couple of things, from a production standpoint Bea was the star of the series and beloved by the audience, so finding someone who would fill that void was going to be a staggering task. To make matters worse this was taking place right at the start of the season. CBS may have stepped up and recommended Lockhart, in the prior 10 TV seasons she had been a regular on two different CBS series playing a mother in Lassie and Lost In Space for a total of 9 seasons. The one season she was not in a series she was very active appearing in everything from Perry Mason to Bewitched. Again, no reflection on DeCamp, but she was not a popular star in the same sense as Lockhart. I don't think the production company or Lockhart wanted the role to be a related character (aunt, cousin), rather than a mother figure the role was played as a mentor.

I thought Lockhart did a good job, this was an impossible situation and the show was devastated beyond repair, there just was no replacing what Benaderet brought to the table, she was glue that held the series together.

Bea was absolutely the heart of the show, and I agree that it’s painful to watch the show struggle on without her. I think ending it after Season 5 would have been the best thing to do. So many cast changes had already happened at that point (Charlie was gone, Meredith McRae replaced Jeannine Riley/Gunilla Hutton as Billie Jo with a very different take on her character) that the show hardly felt the same anymore.

Unfortunately I think the show was already slipping in quality around the 4th season, when the writers started filling the episodes with singing segments. I find those boring and tend to skip them. I think it would have been better if PJ ended after Bea’s death and the girls and Uncle Joe migrated over to Green Acres.

Yeah - the first three seasons are best for me. Season 4 is when the deadly dull duo of Steve and Billie Jo III arrived, the singing started, and producer Jay Sommers left to focus on Green Acres full time.

I always loved the crossover episodes when Green Acres, Petticoat and BHB visited each other. Such fun to watch these actors together.

Yeah, the singing parts of season 4 were always awful to me. Don't know why they ever added so much singing. A little was okay because that is truly what many people who lived in the country did once in a while, but not nearly as much as season four features.

I think it would have been fun with Bea there as grandmother to Kathy Jo. She could have babysat and had all kinds of fun interactions with the baby.

I always loved the crossover episodes when Green Acres, Petticoat and BHB visited each other. Such fun to watch these actors together.

Yeah, the singing parts of season 4 were always awful to me. Don't know why they ever added so much singing. A little was okay because that is truly what many people who lived in the country did once in a while, but not nearly as much as season four features.

I think it would have been fun with Bea there as grandmother to Kathy Jo. She could have babysat and had all kinds of fun interactions with the baby.

I think it is sad too that Bea wasn't there when Kathy Jo came along!:( Kate would have been a wonderful Grandmother! :)

I actually like the singing but I grew up listening to my Dad's LPs. However, I feel the comedy started going away and the singing was all that was interesting in the episode. Also the singing put PJ in the 1960s before it seemed like nostalgia. However, the 1960s saw a lot of rural America slipping away like in VT and northern Maine so it is a reflection of the times.

I agree that without Bea the show suffered greatly. I liked Rosemary more than June. This might have to do to scripts not the actress. Rosemary was taking Kate's part in scripts June had a different character. Except for the first episodes that were good when she was a lady MD moving into an old fashioned town, June seemed wasted and never part of the show. She just filled in scenes. She didn't have as big a role as Bea oddly. She didn't need to be a mother but more of a friend would have been nice.

Unlike some sad the show was cancelled; the show had run out of steam

The only singing I enjoyed on PJ was when Floyd and Charlie would sing "Steam Cinders and Smoke." To me, that song captured the spirit of Hooterville, which is something the other singing lacked.

I would've liked to hear more country songs on the show, instead of the easy listening tunes. The 60s had some wonderful country singers (Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, etc.) whose music would've suited the show perfectly. Maybe it was a copyright problem?

That's true the songs weren't that country. "Steam, Cinders, and Smoke" is Hooterville most of the other songs are bubblegum pop. I think they did a spiritual too which is more country.

I hated the musical segments, that said, the real question to ask is this, was the entire idea as bizarre as it now seems. I think the answer to that question is no. The Lucy Show was full of music especially the last three years of the series. The Dick Van Dyke Show had episodes that featured music, The Monkees (obviously), Ozzie and Harriet, and later on The Partridge Family. The networks were full of variety shows and shows dedicated to music, so mixing that into a comedy series wasn't as wild as it now seems. Again, I didn't like mixing music into the show at all, but what is now cringeworthy wasn't so cringeworthy back then.

Time changes so many things, METV has a promo where Ward and June are sitting in the living room and June picks up the paper to see the tv listings, we all remember the way June dressed just to do household chores but I was looking at Ward in this promo, the time of day is approaching 8 in the evening, Ward is in the living room in a jacket and tie and the jacket is buttoned. Like I stated before, what seems bizarre in 2020 wasn't back in the day.

I hated the musical segments, that said, the real question to ask is this, was the entire idea as bizarre as it now seems. I think the answer to that question is no. The Lucy Show was full of music especially the last three years of the series. The Dick Van Dyke Show had episodes that featured music, The Monkees (obviously), Ozzie and Harriet, and later on The Partridge Family. The networks were full of variety shows and shows dedicated to music, so mixing that into a comedy series wasn't as wild as it now seems. Again, I didn't like mixing music into the show at all, but what is now cringeworthy wasn't so cringeworthy back then.

That is a very fair point. Now that you mention it, I really enjoyed the musical segments on Dick Van Dyke, because they did them in moderation (only a couple per season). If they sang in every single episode, then it wouldn't be as special. Also, the segments they did really highlighted the individual strengths of the cast (Dick and Mary's dancing abilities, Rose Marie's torch songs, Morey Amsterdam's cello playing, etc.)

On PJ, it seems like they just stuck the singing in the scripts to fill time, so it doesn't feel special to me (except for Floyd and Charlie's singing, as I mentioned previously). Steve and Billie Jo have nice voices, but I think it's their choice of songs that I don't like (I would have preferred country songs over the old-timey show tunes arrangements).

Lucy had a ton of musical numbers because her writers ran out of material after all those years on the air, so a “let’s put on a show” episode was an easy go-to.

I will say that I think Season 7 wasn't as bad as Season 6. I liked that Betty Jo and Steve moved back to the Shady Rest, because it gave the show more of a family feel like in the early episodes. Also, some of the duller characters from Season 6 like Wendell were gone, and Dr. Craig was more of a background character than a main focus.

It's nice that Bobbie Jo finally got a boyfriend (it took the writers WAY too long, imo). It would've been nice if Billie Jo found a boyfriend too and/or had a more successful career. It's a shame that Bobbie Jo and Billie Jo were sidelined after Betty Jo and Steve got married.

Rosemary DeCamp did a fine job and would have worked as the new star, but she was busy with That Girl and may not have been able to get out of her contract for a starring role, if it was even offered to her. She fit far more than June Lockhart, who I have always enjoyed seeing in roles. Of course, no one can completely replace Bea Benadaret.

I agree on the singing segments being awful and just episode filler.

Well, what a brilliant observation I agree with totally, "someguy". In fact I already made the same point in the above message #4 here, I quote that brilliant statement here too:

"But reality is what it is and I think the closest and best replacement for Kate was Rosemary DeCamp. Her character resembled Kate and was most like her, good sense and loving at the same time. I think the show could have gone on almost like it was had Rosemary stayed on for the rest of the run. I don't know if it was Rosemary's decision or the producer's decision to have Rosemary leave the show, but it was a big mistake."

I have been reading a book on Old Time Radio and Bea was quite a radio voice too in the early years. I still love to hear her as Betty Rubble on the Flintstones

Rosemary DeCamp was really good on The Bob Cummings Show (Love That Bob) as well. She obviously had roots in the Paul Henning shows, and did a memorable guest role on The Beverly Hillbillies as the historical society lady. It's a shame it didn't work out for Petticoat Junction, she was ideal for the series.

Rosemary DeCamp was really good on The Bob Cummings Show (Love That Bob) as well. She obviously had roots in the Paul Henning shows, and did a memorable guest role on The Beverly Hillbillies as the historical society lady. It's a shame it didn't work out for Petticoat Junction, she was ideal for the series.

She was good....but...Bea was out of this world! She WAS Petticoat Junction. (At least for me.)

Season 6 had a definite decline but season 7 got funnier again.

They wanted to bring in a different character rather than a clone of Kate. Didn’t work, though. The lady MD always seemed like an outsider.

(I would have preferred country songs over the old-timey show tunes arrangements).

I've mentioned this before: I suspect that the people who made the rural shows saw the purge coming, and for several years before they were eliminating broad country behavior, modernizing, and generally trying to fit in with the other shows.

June Lockhart of course had a background with the rural show Lassie before getting lost in space, and her Lassie experience reportedly was a selling point for her obtaining the Dr. Janet Craig part. But in the PJ hotel setting, in her role she is always dressed in New York City style, so to speak.

I agree with Alan Brady's Hair, there was definite movement toward a non-country atmosphere late in the series. Oftentimes contemporary pop songs were covered. Even when the group goes camping in Season 7, despite the outdoors environment in that episode, there's little if any effort made to embrace a country setting (a campfire is ideal for country/western singing, not done as far as I can recall).

It's interesting that Uncle Joe Carson is so hostile toward Orrin Pike (again S7, final season), whereas in earlier seasons such angry behavior was reserved for the villain of the series, Homer Bedlow. Although funny at times, it seemed out-of-character for Joe as we'd come to know him, representing another change of direction.