Sketch o’the Week: Green Acres!

Fresh Air! Times Square! Goofy caricature! We continue our sketch series of classic sitcoms with Eva Gabor and Eddie Albert from the 60’s series “Green Acres”. Much like the “fantastical gimmick” trend in sitcoms in the 60’s, there was a mini “rural” trend featuring three shows that all existed in the same world: “The Beverly Hillbillies”, “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres”. You should probably include “The Andy Griffith Show” with that group as the original rural show, but there was never any crossover there. Petticoat Junction and Green Acres were actually created based on the success of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Petticoat Junction and Green Acres were set in the same fictional town of Hooterville, and there was a fair amount of crossover with the characters. One thing I remember about Green Acres that I noticed set it apart from other shows was it sometimes made fun of itself and broke the “fourth wall”. For example Eddie Albert’s character Oliver would often launch into some speech about living his dream of being a farmer and the value of the simple life, and this fife music would start playing while everyone else in the scene is looking around trying to figure out where this music is coming from.

By the way, that is not “Arnold Ziffel” the pig in the background of this sketch. That’s just a regular old pig. Arnold never got dirty. He mostly watched TV, went to school, and oinked in a way everyone but Oliver could understand.