In Ernest T. Bass Joins the Army, they have him as a bit of a magician, they lock him up in jail but he has no problem getting out.They chase him back to the courthouse only to find him back in the locked jail.
Its the only time they have one of the characters portrayed like that.

I never understood that. Was he some kind of magician or did he have an identical twin? I think TAGS overdid it with him. One or two appearances would have been enough.

For a show where the central character was a Sheriff, they should have shown some consequences for all the property he destroyed.

But, yes, the only logical explanation would be an identical twin.

In Ernest T. Bass Joins the Army, they have him as a bit of a magician, they lock him up in jail but he has no problem getting out.They chase him back to the courthouse only to find him back in the locked jail.
Its the only time they have one of the characters portrayed like that.

I've always seen it as Ernest T. having Harry Houdini skills, either lock picking, squeezing between the bars, maybe having abnormally long arms to (like Otis so often did) reach out and grab the keys off the hanger, or simply cheated, and had a copy of the key.

Maybe there's a clue somewhere in the episode we've yet to spot?

I've always seen it as Ernest T. having Harry Houdini skills, either lock picking, squeezing between the bars, maybe having abnormally long arms to (like Otis so often did) reach out and grab the keys off the hanger, or simply cheated, and had a copy of the key.

Maybe there's a clue somewhere in the episode we've yet to spot?

Thats a good point knowing what a character he was and how sloppy the jail was run stealing a set of keys would be the only logical explanation.

Thats a good point knowing what a character he was and how sloppy the jail was run stealing a set of keys would be the only logical explanation.

Very sloppy, how many emergencies were missed because there was nobody there to take the call?