1st Season DDS and TAGS

[JaneTVFan]

Someone mentioned similarities between the first season of "The Doris Day Show" and "The Andy Griffith Show." In watching these first season episodes, I'm finding those similarities to be quite extensive. In fact, in several episodes, they even have Hal Smith, who played town drunk Otis Campbell on TAGS, as the town drunk in Cotina. There's also a character (Mr. Foley) who reminds me in some ways of Ernest T. Bass from TAGS. What's more, Bob Sweeney is credited as director of many of these TDDS episodes. He was also a TAGS director. And there is at least one writer that came from TAGS, Sid Morse. In fact, one episode is a direct copy of an episode of TAGS. It's the one where Doris is in charge of putting on a school play. The principal refuses to allow the play to go on after seeing the rehearsals and observes the children doing modern day dancing, which he considers immoral. To try to get a point across to the principal, Doris rewrites the play with a 1920's theme and a storyline in which parents of that generation are complaining that the "current" dances are immoral. This very script was produced two years earlier for TAGS (and also written by Sid Morse), with Helen Krump in the Doris role trying to put on the school play.