Oliver Goes Broke

[Duster76]

Oliver Goes Broke, season 6 episode 5 is one of the strangest episodes of the series. The episode houses two different stories that run consecutively, one story is completed and then the second story takes place. I don't think any of the other episodes in the six year run of the series are structured this way, as a matter of fact I couldn't think of another episode of a comedy series done in the sixties that had such a format.

The first part of the episode features three scenes centered around Lori leaving Hooterville, scene one takes place in the kitchen of Oliver and Lisa with Lori trying to deal with one of Lisa's famous hotcakes. The second scene takes place at Drucker's store with Lori saying goodbye to Sam and Oliver cashing a check, and Sam having a problem with the store safe. The third scene takes place Pixley airport with the usual wackiness that takes place whenever Oliver and company visit the airport, Lisa, Oliver and Eb say goodbye to Lori and that ends the first story.

After the break, Lisa now missing Lori looks for work to fill her time. This is the beginning of the second story as Sam, Haney and Kimball assume Oliver has gone broke. The rest of the scenes center around this misunderstanding before the misunderstanding finally gets resolved. There is a closing scene where Lisa and Oliver discuss the difference between country and city people.

Very unusual episode, even by Green Acres standards.

[Alan Brady's Hair]

I've always assumed that they realized pretty quickly that Lori wasn't contributing much comedy, so they moved on from her. Obviously, they could have done that in different ways, like just saying that she had left the previous day, but they decided to show her departure.

The whole episode gives off a sense that they're stalling - long dialogues and no physical/sight gags. Maybe they just couldn't come up with another Lori episode, and cobbled something together before resetting the next week.

There's a Frasier episode, "You Can't Tell a Crook by His Cover," that's kind of a half-and-half episode. The first half is Frasier trying to guess which of Martin's friends is an ex-con. The punch line to that is that Daphne made a date with the guy, so after the break the scene shifts to a pool hall, where Frasier and Niles are trying to "protect" her. I've assumed the reason for that is just to put Niles and Frasier into the foreign territory of a pool hall.