In 1960s television, serialization and continuity were seldom considerations as series were often canceled abruptly and with no alerts given to audiences. Similarly, story arcs were almost unheard-of, and a season's (or series') final episode was hardly ever accorded any kind of special status.
The final episode of "Petticoat Junction," ending the gentle, Middle American situation comedy's seven-year run on CBS, was no exception. The series had actually been slated for termination following its previous season, although the sentence had been stayed for another year to generate more episodes for subsequent syndication, and much of the final season conveyed the sense of simply going through the motions.
So, this makes the final broadcast episode of "Petticoat Junction," "Betty Jo's Business," rather surprising because it suggests a sense of continuity, a story thread that could have been revisited in a subsequent season, at least initially, anyway. One night, Betty Jo comes downstairs to find Steve sweating the bills. He's got plenty of work crop-dusting; the problem is that his customers aren't paying him for it, creating cash-flow problems. That's when Betty Jo decides to get a job to help with the family finances.
And that's when executive producer Charles Stewart and script consultant Dick Conway, who scripted the bulk of the series' second-half episodes, show their inherent conservatism that epitomized the show's tone--as well as fostering appeal for significant sectors of the viewing audience--while suggesting why "Petticoat Junction" was among the first to experience the "rural purge" of the early 1970s when television programming considered to be behind the times was canceled and replaced by more contemporary fare.
The first to rain on Betty Jo's parade is Janet--ironic in that she was a working woman herself--who keeps asking her if she's gotten Steve's permission to work while reminding her that she's already got a job as a wife and mother, although even as a doctor, Janet is portrayed as little more than a glorified caregiver herself. Doubling the irony is that Billie Jo, who had flirted with feminism in previous episodes, agrees with Janet. Bobbie Jo is willing to support Betty Jo, but by now she's been reduced to being an enabler of others' aspirations, a stereotypical subordinate female.
Nevertheless, Betty Jo does decide to open her own business as a day-care provider for Hooterville Valley's mothers, with both Bradley sisters helping her, but no surprise that she finds herself in over her head even if that is merely the standard consequence of a 1960s wackiness-ensues sitcom and not the chauvinism of Stewart and Conway.
So falls the curtain on "Petticoat Junction." Tellingly, several of the more sober situations discreetly overlooked in the series, such as a death in the family or the endemic poverty in Hooterville Valley, come to the fore in the socially-conscious programming that replaced it. If that doesn't represent progress for you, at least the flyover-country hijinks of this gentle, sweetly-dated sitcom will remind you of a bygone time that might not have ever existed, anyway.
And the Hooterville spur line never did get reconnected to the C & FW Railroad network, did it?
The final episode of "Petticoat Junction," ending the gentle, Middle American situation comedy's seven-year run on CBS, was no exception. The series had actually been slated for termination following its previous season, although the sentence had been stayed for another year to generate more episodes for subsequent syndication, and much of the final season conveyed the sense of simply going through the motions.
So, this makes the final broadcast episode of "Petticoat Junction," "Betty Jo's Business," rather surprising because it suggests a sense of continuity, a story thread that could have been revisited in a subsequent season, at least initially, anyway. One night, Betty Jo comes downstairs to find Steve sweating the bills. He's got plenty of work crop-dusting; the problem is that his customers aren't paying him for it, creating cash-flow problems. That's when Betty Jo decides to get a job to help with the family finances.
And that's when executive producer Charles Stewart and script consultant Dick Conway, who scripted the bulk of the series' second-half episodes, show their inherent conservatism that epitomized the show's tone--as well as fostering appeal for significant sectors of the viewing audience--while suggesting why "Petticoat Junction" was among the first to experience the "rural purge" of the early 1970s when television programming considered to be behind the times was canceled and replaced by more contemporary fare.
The first to rain on Betty Jo's parade is Janet--ironic in that she was a working woman herself--who keeps asking her if she's gotten Steve's permission to work while reminding her that she's already got a job as a wife and mother, although even as a doctor, Janet is portrayed as little more than a glorified caregiver herself. Doubling the irony is that Billie Jo, who had flirted with feminism in previous episodes, agrees with Janet. Bobbie Jo is willing to support Betty Jo, but by now she's been reduced to being an enabler of others' aspirations, a stereotypical subordinate female.
Nevertheless, Betty Jo does decide to open her own business as a day-care provider for Hooterville Valley's mothers, with both Bradley sisters helping her, but no surprise that she finds herself in over her head even if that is merely the standard consequence of a 1960s wackiness-ensues sitcom and not the chauvinism of Stewart and Conway.
So falls the curtain on "Petticoat Junction." Tellingly, several of the more sober situations discreetly overlooked in the series, such as a death in the family or the endemic poverty in Hooterville Valley, come to the fore in the socially-conscious programming that replaced it. If that doesn't represent progress for you, at least the flyover-country hijinks of this gentle, sweetly-dated sitcom will remind you of a bygone time that might not have ever existed, anyway.
And the Hooterville spur line never did get reconnected to the C & FW Railroad network, did it?