Mayberry Mondays #69: “The Kid from Hong Kong” (01/18/71, prod. no. 0317)

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http://thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blo...hong-kong.html

Everybody’s favorite television small town is back after a two-week vacation (just in time to close out 2012) and while I’d dearly love to be able to report that it’s upped the laugh quotient substantially during that hiatus…that would be a big stinky fib. Particularly since this week’s installment centers on the antics of the son of poor-but-honest-dirt-farmer-turned-town-council-head Sam Jones (Ken Berry)—the adorable moppet known to one and all here at TDOY as Mike the Idiot Boy (Buddy Foster). This is such a Mike-centric episode that there’s barely room for a brief appearance from pedantic county clerk Howard Sprague (Jack Dodson), which means Stacia has now wandered off…and there will be no developments from beloved village idiot Goober Pyle (George Lindsey), fix-it savant Emmett Clark (Paul Hartman) or bakery shop doyenne Millie Swanson (Arlene Golonka). (It will not be easy to cope, chillun.)

I should also point out that after we come to the end of this write-up, there will be just nine more installments of Mayberry Mondays before the blog takes on The Doris Day Show in a new Thrilling Days of Yesteryear feature entitled Doris Days. Recently I asked volunteers from the TDOY faithful to vote on whether I should initially run this on Tuesdays in keeping with the sitcom’s debut on that night in its first season (it then moved to Mondays in Year Two, following Mayberry R.F.D. for two years) or just do it on Mondays for the entire run. By a 9-7 tally, Doris Days will take over on Mondays as soon as the R.F.D. episodes are completed. (I kind of got a chuckle at seeing the results because 56% of you were essentially saying: “You obsess over this stuff way too much.”)

On with today’s episode! It kicks off with Mike the Idiot Boy in repose in his bedroom as chief cook and bottle washer Cousin Alice (Alice Ghostley) enters with a load of clean laundry. She then grabs Mike’s shoulders and pulls him to his bed roughly, where they…hold on—that’s from some fan fic someone sent me via e-mail (and Lordy, do I wish they hadn’t). Instead, Alice does a clever bit of comic business where she raises Mike’s feet like a drawbridge in order to get to his closet…and upon opening it, is nearly buried in a pile of clothing and other bric-a-brac…

“Dadrat the dadratted…gotta straighten out that closet one of these days.” Mike then asks Alice if she wants to see “something real neat.”

“I’d consider it a blessing,” she responds, producing in me a small chuckle.