Green Acres

[Two Lane Blacktop]

My partner and I are currently working our way through the second season of Green Acres on DVD, and I have to say, this is one of the only sitcoms that I loved as a kid, that is actually FUNNIER when I watch it as an adult.

Was there any other American sitcom, especially from the mid-60's "golden age" of sitcoms, that owed more of a debt to Luis Bunuel and the Surrealists?  Hell, the show had gone off the air before The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgousie even released, but Green Acres was every bit as absurd as that film.

Oliver Wendell Douglas is like a 1960s Alice in Rural Wonderland. Dream logic runs the show. Consider: Oliver's socialite wife, Lisa, can apparently talk to barnyard animals. The Douglas' handyman, Eb, pretends to be their son so often that they even try sending him to college. The Ziffel's son, Arnold, is a pig, but only Oliver seems to realize that fact, while everyone else insists he's human. One of the house-painting Monroe brothers, Ralph, is actually a girl, but again, only Oliver seems to notice. Phone calls, the only contact with the outside world, have to be made from a phone pole swaying in the sky. Mr. Kimball, the county extension agent, only seems capable of carrying on a conversation with himself, who he always disagrees with.

Every episode is full of strange little dreamlike twists... visitors coming in through a window, people talking with each other's voices, elaborate plans stymied by a pregnant cow or a case of mistaken identity. There wouldn't be another sitcom this blatantly surreal until David Lynch and Mark Frost did On The Air in 1992...  another one of my favorite series, but anyway.  

2LB