Andy Griffith 1926 - 2012

Andy Griffith’s passing got me thinking about how little television I watch nowadays. In fact I watch so little TV anymore that I got rid of my extended cable package in favor of the basic offering of only three major broadcast networks and a handful of PBS and local channels. I did this a little over a year ago, and I have to say I don’t feel I’m missing all that much.

The 24 hour “news” channels became so loud and obnoxious with nothing but shouting ideologues hurling lies and misrepresentations at each other, that I, like so many have turned to the web and the handful of local newspapers left to get the news.

The variety of sitcoms and TV dramas that could reasonably pass the time a few nights a week has dwindled to such a precious few that it hardly justifies paying out all that money for an expensive cable TV subscription.

Nowadays we’re bombarded with useless “reality” programs that flood the airwaves with no intellectual or educational value at all. My guess is that the only reason they have become so popular is the cornucopia of “real” persons who make up the casts whose only talents are stripping down and behaving badly in front of millions. Whenever I come across someone behaving ignorant or rudely in public anymore, I can’t help but feel that they are influenced by watching others act so selfishly on TV.

So, when the news of Andy Griffith’s death came I found myself longing for that time when I huddled around a TV with my family and watched the old TV shows of my youth. Shows like “The Andy Griffith Show” which besides being riotously funny could be wholesome and genuine and so appropriate for the entire family. I don’t think we could ever find room for a show like that on modern TV anymore.

In 1979 Griffith tried for a television comeback with the short-lived Sci-Fi series, “Salvage 1” that captured my 13 year-old imagination and made me believe that I could build a spaceship in my backyard just as he did on the show. But, this would not be his triumphant return to a weekly TV series, it would only last 19 episodes, and we would have to wait till “Matlock” for Griffith to find success again on the small screen.

Ironically Mr. Griffith’s passing also reminded me of his great performance in the 1957 film, “A Face In The Crowd”, where as the character Lonesome Rhodes, he eerily foreshadows the likes of Glenn Beck and other modern day charlatans of our airwaves. It’s a mesmerizing performance and an acting lesson that will be studied for generations to come.

Those who create most of what we watch on TV these days haven’t an ounce of the grace that could be found in a man like Andy Griffith. He made a hit out of a TV show that during the turbulent changing times of the 1960s, spoke to a simpler more humble way of life that those of us watching even in reruns could somehow identify with. What Andy Griffith will most be remembered for is the eight seasons of great television he created that offered a sense of family and community in a fictional but so very familiar town called, Mayberry!