MovieChat Forums > Green Acres (1965) Discussion > Anyone prefer Season 1 best BEFORE all t...

Anyone prefer Season 1 best BEFORE all the surreal nonsese crept it?


It was the best season...no credits on eggs and breaking the fourth wall. Just a funny sraight forward telling of the Douglas family settling into Hooterville and adjusting to country life.

A bonus was a LOT of PETTICOAT JUNCTION crossovers with more Kate and Uncle Joe goodness.

Once the sureal crap kicked in...it was hard to believe both shows could be in the same universe.

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I do like the few eps in which it wasn't just SOOO preposterous. But the way it was all set up, the only direction to go was farcer out. Satirady, spoofidy, the cornponium... whatever GA's loopy laughs may be called, it is something like Dark Shadows, The Twilight Zone, and The Stepford Wives rolled up together and thrown into Ma and Pa Kettle's farm.

I've stated one weird "theory" of the show before, but I'll do it again. Oliver was a highly successful New York lawyer, with a beautiful socialite wife and an overbearing snobbish mother, who had a strange ambition to be a farmer in a little farm community. But realizing this was almost impossible-- coupled with the demands placed on him by his wife, mother, law firm, and like it or not, his accustomed expensive tastes-- he finally went crazy. He was placed in an asylum, and his wife, in spite of her social position, enjoyed visiting him there and getting to know some of the other patients, humoring them. His mother, of course, hated the place and tried to convince him he didn't have to-- indeed, as her son, he was too good-- to stay there. Meanwhile, he began to live his dream, and thought his new buds were his fellow farmers. He thought they had to be crazy, and they thought he was. One was always trying to sell or trade him worthless junk; another could never keep finish a thought, et al. He could make outside calls, but they made it difficult to get to the phone he had to use. The young aide most responsible for his care was a tall ne'er-do-well he often roared at, and who would never take 'no' for an answer.

Well, if Dallas could make a whole season a dream,...

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Well your theory makes as much sense as anything seen on Green Acres AFTER the first season!

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I love the crazy, surreal episodes. I am disappointed when an episode from the first season appears, generally. But the only episodes I won't watch are those in which Oliver and Lisa go into flashback mode and relate some moments from history or their personal lives. The only exception to that is the one where he recalls the story of the farmer who ordered a cream separator but wound up with a projector, with which he found fame and fortune. To each his own!

"Truth is its own evidence." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I agree. The flashback episodes just don't measure up. Also not fond of the episode with the war-hero duck. We had a good time back in my college days watching the most surreal eps. Lots of my friends hadn't seen the show before and others were just beginning to appreciate it.

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I like the craziness of the later episodes. I don't think the theme of the first few episodes when Lisa always talks about wanting to go back to New York. I like whenn she accepts the fact they are staying and in fact fits in better with the locals than Oliver ever does.

PS... I was never a big fan of petticoat junction, but I like the way someone pointed out, to each his own

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I much preferred the 1st few Seasons, but then, Lisa, and Mr. Kimball became sillier and, ridiculous. Eb was Mouthy, and disrespectful to Mr. Douglas, and They showed too much of that Pig, Arnold in later Episodes.

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This show is a comedy like The Three Stooges, Get Smart, Airplane movies (1980 and 1982) and The Naked Gun movies (1988, 1991 and 1994)



If a person with multiple personality s threatens to commit suicide, is that a hostage situation

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If a person with multiple personality s threatens to commit suicide, is that a hostage situation - rickb69


If the person goes through with it, does it become a multiple suicide? Or a murder-suicide? If the latter, which personality(ies) committed the murder(s), and which committed the suicide(s)?

"You ask so many questions/Which answers should I choose?/Is this Plato's heebie-jeebies or just existential blues?" - Tom "T-Bone" Stankus
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"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental." - Kurt Vonnegut

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If the person goes through with it, does it become a multiple suicide? Or a murder-suicide? If the latter, which personality(ies) committed the murder(s), and which committed the suicide(s)?

Let me answer that for you. Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know. Is that you Bubba? Are you talking to me? What was the question? Can we talk? Hi there.

Now let me answer your second question...

http://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/speedbump/ In case you don't get this today, click on the red arrow above the cartoon to get to January 24, 2014

I signed up to get Garfield in my E-mail every day. Garfield loves lasagna, I love lasagna, Garfield hates Mondays, I hate Mondays, Garfield likes to sleep in, I like to sleep in, my kind of cat. You can look at one or all of the cartoons



If a person with multiple personalities threatens to commit suicide, is that a hostage situation

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Your comment has nothing to do with GREEN ACRES; it is SPAM and I am reporting abuse! If you can't talk about the TV series which is what this board is about then
you should refrain from posting,.

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My first post on this board was in reply to crlnrgbrght5» Wed Sep 11 2013 15:44:55 who wrote

I much preferred the 1st few Seasons, but then, Lisa, and Mr. Kimball became sillier and, ridiculous. Eb was Mouthy, and disrespectful to Mr. Douglas, and They showed too much of that Pig, Arnold in later Episodes.
I replied to that
This show is a comedy like The Three Stooges, Get Smart, Airplane movies (1980 and 1982) and The Naked Gun movies (1988, 1991 and 1994)
meaning yes Green Acres was sillier like the movies that I wrote about but, that was the point. I liked when Lisa read the opening credits and asked Oliver "What is an executive producer?" and Oliver would go "what"


darryl-tahirali» 1 day ago (Thu Jan 23 2014 16:13:14) replied to my signature
If a person with multiple personality s threatens to commit suicide, is that a hostage situation - rickb69
If the person goes through with it, does it become a multiple suicide? Or a murder-suicide? If the latter, which personality(ies) committed the murder(s), and which committed the suicide(s)?

He was making a joke about my signature and I replied back to him making a joke about his reply to me, that is why I put the laugh emotions in my reply to him.

The cartoon that I was referring to is from a free site and is about my signature- One angel says to another angel "He had multiple personalities, but they were all good". The third angel has 7 halos, again that was a joke to the person above me.

I did not mean for anyone to think it was spam.

I'm sorry I did not reply to him in private.



If a person with multiple personalities threatens to commit suicide, is that a hostage situation

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SCuse me, but what has THAT got to do with GREEN ACRES?

I'm flagging abuse. Unrelated comments are NOT welcome here!!

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I'm flagging abuse. Unrelated comments are NOT welcome here!! - cmulwee001


So, you're the discussion-board Nazi here, then? Lighten up, cmulwee001. I was only having a little bit of fun.

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"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental." - Kurt Vonnegut

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Get a grip, ya goof!

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Hey joe_538

ya goof!
I resemble that remark.

My first post on this board Thu Jan 9 2014 23:33 I was comparing Green Acres to the movies and TV series and that I like it better AFTER
all the surreal nonsese crept it
as the Original Poster put in the subject line


Get a grip, ya goof!
which goof are you replying to me, cmulwee001 or darryl-tahirali

darryl-tahirali replied to me goofing on my signature, I replied to him goofing on his reply to me.

You better watch out or cmulwee001 might flag and report you too




If a person with multiple personalities threatens to commit suicide, is that a hostage situation

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I was replying to cmulwee001 for overreacting.

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It would have been funny if the writers of Green Acres had injected some weird LSD type drug into Hooterville that made all of the residents who took it break through the fourth wall and land right in our living rooms.

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I like season one a lot. Not only do characters from Petticoat Junction show up frequently, most notably, Joe and Charley and Floyd, but also Oliver and Lisa make frequent appearances on Petticoat Junctions' third season.

Now if you're referring to the surreal "crap" of Green Acres, don't forget that PETTICOAT JUNCTION went that direction for a brief time mostly the second half of season 2 and the first 3 quarters of season 3.

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Green Acres is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I thought its prime was Sesason 2 - 3, like most shows. I think the episodes inovlving opening the Jenny Fighter plant and the one about the IRS are two of the most funny episodes of any show ever. However, it was time for it to end and anyone can see that they had kind of run out of ideas by season 4 and 5. I think the episodes you are talking about are not Green Acres at its best.

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I think that Petticoat Junction was the best when it dabbled in the surreal.

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Not that the surrealism was a huge problem for me but I preferred Season 1 the most. I think the surrealism is a result of Green Acres carried on because of ratings therefore pressure to keep the scripts interesting. The ratings rooted in the characters and that the show was a rural utopia for people who felt beat down by what was happening in the US during the late 1960's.

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