... although this episode woke me out of a sound sleep for two reasons. One, when was the last time you saw an obscure TV show/movie from 56 years ago on late late night TV instead of somebody peddling something you don't need and even sprucing up the set to make it look like it is CNN to add credibility? Well, that is how I ran across this first season 1963 episode of Petticoat Junction.
Betty Jo (Linda Henning), the youngest of innkeeper Kate Bradley's three girls, and the - what was called back in the day - "tomboy" of the family, is the first woman to ever enter the Shady Rest's Annual Horseshoe Tournament. The winner has always been "Pixley Fats", I guess a take on Minnesota Fats the famous billiards player, and remember this was only two years after the movie "The Hustler" back when films had much longer running times.
Well, as Betty Jo gains on the usually suave and together Pixley Fats in the contest, you might think this is going to be an episode about female empowerment, about how women can do anything if they put their mind to it. But then Kate comes to Betty Jo's room one night while the contest is ongoing and talks to her about how sad it is that Pixley Fats has nothing in his life but this horseshoe contest, and then how Betty Jo has many things in her life now, but has "the greatest thing that can happen to a woman" to look forward to - a husband and children. If I wasn't awake BEFORE I was awake NOW.
Petticoat Junction season one is available on DVD, so I'll say watch and find out what happens, but you know I was almost six when this first aired, and our family used to watch this show. So this sexist drivel is buried deep in my subconscious. I'll never know how I ended up in engineering before many women were going into that field, unless it was constantly being told that homely gals like myself have to learn to make their own way in the world. So there's THAT buried deep in my subconscious too. But enough about me.
Petticoat Junction started airing in the fall of 1963. This was only the seventh episode. This was before JFK was assassinated, before the Beatles came to America, years before college kids were burning draft cards, before the Civil Rights era began to bear any real fruit. So the America portrayed here is still very firmly rooted in the culture of 1950s America. So it is interesting to watch because of that.
Also it is great to see Bea Benaderet and Edgar Buchanan looking so well and ambulatory just after the show premiered. Bea Benaderet was diagnosed with cancer in 1967, had to leave the show, and died in the fall of 1968, a couple of years before Petticoat Junction ended its run. Recommended for the time travel aspect of it all.