wirelesstecheric
As a kid my sister and I were not allowed to watch Green Acres. My dad said it was too stupid to watch and this made it all the more attractive to us kids. At the time I did not understand the deep hidden comedy within the comedy. Now I am living in a small town in upstate NY very much like Hooterville. For instance when I went to the dump to get rid of some stuff the man there explained to me that "this is not a dump, it is a solid waste transfer station!"... and I needed a permit and had to pay for a sticker etc. This was the same guy who I met at several other town government offices..sort of like Mr. Haney. Our electric and phone service go out all time. I just love it!
Bryce Kingswell
Green Acres was a very very weird show. It was about this rich guy who really wanted to move back to rural America and live on a farm which is the environment that he grew up in.The problem is he was married while he lived in the big city, I think New York City, he married a European woman who is very materialistic and was born wealthy and is used to the high life, who really hates the idea of living in the country and on top of that has a horrible allergy against hay.They have a pet pig and some weird neighbours and they do really bad jokes that are somehow so bad and they all seem so weird that it kind of works.
Jeffrey R. Dzik
I watched this show every Saturday night on and off with my babysitter through much of its run. For someone 10-15 years old, it was funny slapstick with eccentric characters. As an adult, recently, I reviewed the DVD's and discussed it with other adults. Oliver was supposed to be the "voice of reason" although he reveals that he can be a bit eccentric himself. Lisa is the ardent consumer. Mr. Haney is the capitalist and Mr. Kimball is the inefficient bureaucrat. You've got Mr. Drucker trying to sell whatever he can get his hands on. The Monroe brothers represent the shady repairmen we deal with everyday who can't fix it right the first time. Others are just simple country folk. The show mimics real life in many ways and the real humor is how Oliver Wendell Douglas deals with the incompetent, inept bureaucrats and society as a whole. Kudos to the cast of supporting characters. I loved Barbara Pepper as Doris Ziffel. Eva Gabor was wonderful as was Eddie Albert, one of the great "straight man' roles of television.
Harv Spangle
I just got off of the IMDb message board for Green Acres where there is an ongoing debate about which state Hooterville is supposed to be located in. All kinds of hints were apparently spun out during the show --- from Sam Drucker mentioning that the state capital was Springfield to the number of connecting flights from Hooterville to Chicago to pointing to series creator Paul Hennings' Ozark roots and the presumed locale of Petticoat Junction. Some think then that Hooterville must be somewhere in the Illinois or Missouri sticks. Others back their way through what they suppose to be the origins of the Beverly Hillbillies and think it must be somewhere in Tennessee and even a few others point out that some of the place names used on the show can be found in central California -- which would explain the 81 degree Christmas temperatures experienced one year in Hooterville. Some of the posters on the board who harbor more sensitive, philosophical tendencies are eager to persuade that Hooterville isn't in any state in the U.S.-but is only a state of mind. One especially keen minded poster even carries this metaphysical exercise to the extreme by pointing out that Hooterville exists only on a Hollywood sound stage and no where else. I just can't buy that though.I spent a lot of time as a kid in the late sixties and early seventies in Southern Illinois and Missouri. Everything I see on Green Acres whether placed there by the producers by accident or by design -- from the opening credits aerial shots -- to the Douglas homeplace with its rusting farm machinery in the yard remind me of that part of the country.Rod Serling once introduced an episode of the Twilight Zone (The Last Rites Of Jeff Myrtlebank) by describing the setting as "the Midwest...... the southern most part of the Midwest." It's a very intelligent distinction to be made. Once you cross I-70 in Southern Illinois you have crossed a border of sorts. You are still in the Midwest to be sure, but in this region the accents stretch out just a bit. When you hear Tom Lester's (Eb) Missisippi accent or Pat Buttram's (Mr Haney)twangy patter on the show you are hearing a voice not that far off from what you would find in any small town off the road in Southern Illinois or Missouri. But it's still the Midwest and not the "real" South. Make no mistake about that.Green Acres, as I remember it, was a big hit among my Southern Illinois relatives back in the late sixties. They loved the show--but the question is why? My Uncle Richard and Aunt Rosalie were not great connoisseurs of absurdist, self referential humour. If you pointed out to them that this was one of the first shows on TV to "break down the 4th wall" they would have slapped themselves silly trying to figure out what you were talking about. They loved this show simply because the it bore some resemblance to the world that they lived in. Nothing else on TV then or even up till now offers such a view of that part of rural America.
