The Andy Griffith Show - The Complete Sixth Season

Season six of The Andy Griffith Show was the first instance since the premiere in which the producers were at risk -- it was the first season without co-star Don Knotts, the multi-Emmy winner whose comic antics had been the sparkplug for the series for five years; and it was the first shot in color, which vastly raised the series' bottom line. The loss of Knotts was critical, and it's clear from these episodes that there was a serious gap to fill; the episodes range far and wide in subject and focus without Knotts or the presence of his Deputy Barney Fife character to take center stage. In their desperation to keep the series fresh and lively, they even took a few of the characters in new directions -- Goober Pyle George Lindsey got a very tiny bit smarter, which extended the range of what his character could convincingly be asked to do; and Helen Crump Aneta Corseaut, Andy's steady girlfriend, became notably fiestier and more assertive, most notably in the episode "Andy's Rival, in which she chews the jealous lawman out for his overbearing manner over the visit of a handsome, genial, well-educated teacher-colleague of hers. Luckily, the writers also came up with generally better-than-decent scripts, and the color shooting added a fresh luster to the show. The first episode of the new season, "Opie's Job, was a rewrite of an old Make Room for Daddy episode entitled "Rusty Becomes a Man"; it features a moving performance by Ronny Howard that ought to have gotten the young actor consideration for some kind of an award. The two-part episode in which Knotts' Barney Fife pays a visit to the town also holds up especially well. The other new element to the series was the producers' attempt to replace Knotts with Jack Burns, the actor/comic, playing Andy's new deputy, Warren. The attempt to shoehorn Burns' comic schtick -- most notably his "yeah-huh" bit -- into the series seems awkward now and didn't work then, and he was quickly dropped from the show. There's also one episode, "A Singer in Town, in which a rock & roll singer Jesse Pearson visiting Mayberry latches onto a song about the two written by Bee Taylor and turns it into an uptempo number in the manner of Johnny Rivers. The song isn't much, but the instrument shots -- which include a red Fender Stratocaster -- are cool. The five-disc set contains 30 episodes, each of which gets five chapter breaks matching the breaks for commercials and credits. The full-screen 1.33:1 is crisp and bright, and the sound is mastered at a healthy volume. Each platter opens automatically to a simple, easy-to-use menu that offers access to all shows or individual episode selections.