Hardly.
Eddie Albert played straight man, endlessly screwing up his face with questions that he should have eventually realized was a waste of time asking.
The logic seemed to be he was more Andy Griffith. "I'll make all the sense and everyone else will be silly."
Newhart would at times try to reason with the locals, but the joke would just as often be his as it would be theirs.
Now the one I watched this morning had the fire chief say no one can drive the fire truck until they have been a fireman for ten years.
It is revealed over the episode that numerous sets of keys to the fire truck have been lost throughout the years; accidentally taken home, lost, etc.
Dick AND George Utley ask isn't that risky. Someone could just come in the station and steal the truck.
The chief responds, nobody is allowed to drive the fire truck until they have been a fireman for ten years.
Now comparable to Green Acres, but it was solid. It wasn't just the mindless rambling Kimball or Eb would do. We had heard the statement made earlier in the episode. Nothing Eb, Kimball or Ralph and Alph ever connected to a previous statement or event.
When Peter Scolari enters and says, where's that little girl I like to call (wide-eyed pause) Stephanie?
Newhart responds with, she's in what we like to call (wide-eyed pause) her bedroom. This was Newhart's joke.
When Julie Brown made her second appearance as Buffy Denver, she says she will spend the afternoon with Dick. He says no she won't, and races her up the stairs all the while laughing just like her behind her. That was Newhart's bit.
There was rumors of aliens being seen. Everyone was panicking, huddled in the inn and turn out the lights. Larry, Darryl and Darryl enter the darkened inn with only a pair of flashlights and Larry makes his intro.
All you hear is Newhart, that would explain a lot. That was Newhart's joke.
By comparison, Albert never got off a funny bit like this, and these are just some of my favorites from Newhart.
The meeting of quirky characters who remotely make sense in what they do really began with Mary Tyler Moore's show.
I've been catching old Abbott and Costello reruns and the shows are just set up to make Costello look flustered as tho that is funny.
This is about the same thing with Albert on Green Acres, but in the end, Albert wasn't a brilliant straight man of any kind and the antics of the others was never overwhelmingly funny.
Tom Lester just blathers on and Kimball just makes no sense and nothing he says connects.
The strongest one of GA really is Haney, who could have been a town preacher or something the way he spoke and responded. Or a town politician.
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ragingbull1965
9 years ago
Yes Richard. you're right in what you say. This is why I'm stressing the point that Newhart was not a direct remake of Green Acres. Of course, both lead characters are different and will react differently in the same situation. The point I'm making is that the concept of both shows are similar. In both cases, a relatively well-educated couple move from New York to settle in a small rural community and find themselves surrounded by eccentric, off-the-wall characters who think the newcomers are the strange ones because they don't think the way the townsfolk do. I agree the supporting characters themselves and their personalities are different in both shows but that was as it should have been because even though the small town on Newhart is in the country, the residents were not farmers. Such changes had to be made to reflect these differences. But the concept remains similar, IMO.
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richard.fuller1
9 years ago
Green Acres was by and large a reversal of Beverly Hillbillies, wanting to show the rich city people in the country. In essence, in both instances, the country people were idiots.
But on Newhart, other than Larry, Darryl and Darryl and Tom Poston, no one else is really 'countrified'.
Newhart encountered 'crazies' on The Bob Newhart show as well, both in his sessions and with Marcia Wallace, Peter Bonerz and Bill Daily, among others.
But that was the entire focus on Green Acres, Eddie Albert being flustered by the so-called locals and trying to reason them.
Newhart was hardly the 'outsider' to things going on at the Stratford Inn and in Vermont.
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