Petticoat Junction (TV Series) Bobbie Jo and the Beatnik (1964) User Reviews

How did Dennis Hopper wind up in Hooterville?

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 25 April 2021]

It would be the last place in the world you'd expect a beatnik to end up. But the rest of the 1960s keep encroaching on Hooterville when the other Hootervilles of America at the time were free to live in the 1950s at least until the 1970s.

At any rate, Dennis Hopper is a beatnik, and specifically, on this show, that means he doesn't believe in work, just crashing in other people's places and living off of them. A parasite, to be precise. Hopper doesn't LOOK like a beatnik, he is a conventionally dressed well groomed young man. And he wants to send for Bobbie Jo when he gets to New Orleans. Kate gets this, and also knows that it is likely Hopper's character will forget all about Bobbie Joe once he leaves, so the point is probably moot. She can say something to Bobbie Jo, which would do nothing, or she can show him up to her and knock him off his pedestal.

Watch and find out what happens this. This was the first episode of Petticoat Junction for 1964, a year when everything changed. And strangely enough, Dennis Hopper spent his entire career playing the outsider, when he wasn't playing somebody who was straight up criminally insane.

Pre Easy Rider Rides Through the Junction

[TheFearmakers · 4/10 · 10 January 2019]

Wow this is a weird one. Dennis Hopper is a young beatnik who's as pretentious as all beatniks on old shows, but with his good acting he keeps the character real enough to seem more like a jerk than pretentious. The funny parts have the reactions of the regulars against this character who thinks he knows more about life, and doesn't know anything.

There was an episode of Laverne and Shirley where they go to a Beatnik coffee shop, and their poems are too happy for the Beatniks. On this episode, they're just too real for him, and he thinks he's real. The fact it's Dennis Hopper makes it a very pop culture important episode.

The scene between Hopper and Bea Benaderet is a standout. The weird thing is, the characters on this show, who were dated for young people then, are timeless now, and Beatniks (and hippies) are as dated as you get. Uncle Joe gets hurt by the poet's barbs when he could have bagged on him. Sadly, cute youngest Betty Jo is not in the episode. Anyhow, despite the unique casting, it's a subpar episode, and just doesn't... flow, daddy-o.