"New York is where I'd rather stay. I get allergic smelling hay! I just adore a penthouse view. Darling I love you but give me Park Avenue!" - Eva Gabor as Lisa Douglas in the "Green Acres" Theme Song
Green Acres: The Complete Second Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Throughout the 1960s, CBS found great success with a string of rural-based sitcoms, running the gamut from the sweet pastoral comedy of The Andy Griffith Show to the cornpone goofiness of Hee Haw. One of the most enjoyable (and highly rated) of these shows was Green Acres. The premise is a simple inversion of another CBS hit, The Beverly Hillbillies. In that brilliantly-named Buddy Ebsen sitcom, a clan of mountain folk move on up to a dee-luxe Beverly Hills mansion after striking oil, much to the consternation of their snooty neighbors. Green Acres explores what happens when snooty New Yorkers move to a backwoods burg.
Oliver Wendell Douglas (the amusingly prickly Eddie Albert) is a lawyer who decides to abandon the big city for life as a simple farmer in Hooterville. His wife Lisa (Eva Gabor) would rather stay in their Park Avenue penthouse, but gamely agrees to try farm living. Together, they make the unlikeliest farm couple ever. They do, however, have the dubious "help" of various Hooterville natives: farmhand Eb (Tom Lester), snake oil salesman Mr. Haney (Pat Buttram), grocery store owner Sam Drucker (Frank Cady), incompetent agricultural agent Hank Kimball (Alvy Moore), fellow farmers Fred and Doris Ziffel (Hank Patterson and Barbara Pepper), and the Ziffel's "son," Arnold the pig.
That entire back story was set up in the series' brilliant first season in what almost amounted to a sitcom miniseries. Each episode of the season's first half dealt with a different continuing aspect of the Douglas' futile efforts to settle in on their rundown farm, Green Acres. The second season is not quite as terrific, but select moments still manage to be psychotically funny.
Take, for example, the sophisticatedly stupid party line scene in "It's So Peaceful in the Country." When Oliver's mother (sublimely cast Eleanor Audley) becomes ill, Lisa rushes back to New York to be by her side. It turns out that she's just exhausted, and her doctor suggests that she rest in a locale that guarantees no parties, no excitement, and no fun. What other place would be better than Green Acres? Lisa places a call to Oliver to give him the good news. Oliver shimmies up the phone pole (the phone company ran out of wire before they could actually run a line into the house) to answer the call, only to encounter problems with Hooterville's party line phone system:
Oliver: Hello?
Lisa: Oh, hello Oliver!
Oliver: Lisa?
Lisa: How are you, darling?
Disembodied Voice: I'm fine. Who's this?
Lisa: Who is this?
Mr. Drucker: Sam Drucker.
Lisa: Hello, Mr. Drucker!
Oliver: Mr. Drucker, I'm talking to my wife. How are you, Sweetheart?
Doris Ziffel: Fine, Honey! How are you?
As the scene continues to build, more people join in on the conversation, each one blithely ignoring the fact that the call is meant for someone else. The scene is cannily written and executed. Unfortunately, the second half of the episode (involving an Indian tribe that takes over the farm) isn't nearly as clever or as entertaining.
Eva Gabor particularly shines in the second season. One of the series' funniest running gags involves Lisa's lack of cooking skills - she thinks that cupcakes are cakes baked in teacups. Even with the help of her trusty cooking manual, Cooking is What You Make It, Lisa's creations have the ability to drive wild animals away. In "School Days," Oliver convinces his wife to take a home economics class at Hooterville High School. When the principal enrolls her in a full course load, however, Lisa proves to be a menace to her fellow students: she blows up the chemistry lab, wrecks the driver's ed car, and disrupts her history class after correcting the teacher's account of Hungarian history. The episode's final sight gag - involving Lisa's being named head cheerleader - is not to be missed. She becomes the head of Hooterville's "Human Humane Committee" in "It's Human to Be Humane." At first, Oliver thinks this is the perfect task to keep his bored wife occupied. Soon it becomes apparent that she's taking her appointment a bit too seriously. She prevents farmers from harvesting eggs ("It's like stealing babies, but with shells"), insists that poisons should be banned in order to prevent "insecticide," and forces Oliver to sit on the floor rather than disturb their tiny dog, Mignon, who is resting comfortably in Oliver's chair. (When she takes in a gaggle of stray animals, be on the lookout for the chicken who sits atop a dog who, in turn, rides atop a small pony.) Throughout it all, Gabor is immensely likeable and proves to be a gifted comedic actress. Who else could perform such silly antics and not have her character seem dumb?
The series is filled with absurdly surrealistic touches. Several episodes present differing stories of how Oliver and Lisa first met. In "Wings Over Hooterville," airman Oliver meets resistance leader Lisa when he parachutes out of his disabled airplane during WWII and lands in Hungary. Seven episodes later, in "Ed Discovers the Birds and the Bees," we discover that the Douglases met aboard the Titantic. (As the ship's life preserver proclaims: "S.S. Titanic - Not the One You Think.") Oliver continues to wear a three piece suit and tie to perform chores like pulling up tree stumps. "The Hooterville Image" finally confronts Oliver's sartorial quirks when the men of Hooterville decide to show him that his wardrobe is highly inappropriate for farm work. Of course, their plan backfires - Oliver ends up wearing a hideous pair of overalls made by Lisa's dressmaker (two words: mink and velvet) while the other Hooterville wives decide that their husbands would look better in suits. Another funny touch is that Lisa's malapropisms carry over to world at large. In one episode, a bored Lisa asks Oliver if he'd like to play "Scribble, Cabbage, or Monotony." Oliver corrects her mistakes.but later discovers Scribble, Cabbage, and Monotony at Drucker's store.
Green Acres' surrealism spills over into our living rooms when the series breaks the fourth wall. In one episode, Lisa walks out of the house as the opening credits runs. Of course, she notices them, and asks us quizzically "Whose names are those?" In another episode, she comments on the fact that the opening credits are listed on eggs laid by her chickens. A third episode lists "Carpentry by Alf and Ralph Monroe," prompting Oliver to exclaim that "they're not supposed to get credit."
In a rather ridiculous move, someone decided that each and every episode should be preceded by the MGM lion's roar logo and the Orion Pictures logo. The episodes end with even more logos and copyright screens. All of this is a bit highfalutin for a show featuring a pig who watches TV and a chicken who lays square eggs.
The thirty episodes that make up Green Acres: The Complete Second Season are divided onto two double-sided discs. The discs are housed in a standard sized keepcase with an interior swinging arm to hold the second disc. A booklet lists episode titles, airdates, and plot synopses. A photo from each episode is also included. The keepcase slides into an outer cardboard sleeve.
As in The Complete First Season, the main menu features Arnold Ziffel and funky animation. Viewers can either play all of the discs episodes or choose an individual one. The individual episode menus helpfully include both episode numbers and plot synopses. Unfortunately, the episodes are not divided into chapters.
