Since this is one of the episodes MPI released, I checked it last night. There only appears to be one fade to black during the episode, right after Jethro puts Granny in Miss Hathaway's car and they all drive off.
Personally, I never had a problem with that. My own grandmother looked a lot like Granny. She was born in 1912 and worked on a farm for most of her life. Her daughters were more attractive than her, and her granddaughters even more so. That's the wonder of genetics.
Even so, Jed's side of...
I can actually answer this!
I just started watching the MPI sets, and in the second episode, Jed mentions that Elly Mae is looking more like her mother every day. He also mentioned that she died when Elly Mae was very young, and he regretted raising her as a boy. Since Elly looks like she's...