Petticoat Junction Season 3 (and beyond) Campaign

I want more Petticoat Junction and more Beverly Hillbilles

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Originally Posted by cajunhillbilly 

I want more Petticoat Junction and more Beverly Hillbilles

Welcome to CBS.  From the best studio for tv releases on dvd to one of the absolute worst.     Abandonment, and half seasons for more than most full season sets go for.

Amazing what a little greed can do to a company.

Out of the three Paul Henning shows, Green Acres is the one I want to see more of. There is only three seasons left. We are already passed the halfway point of the series, episode-wise.

In regards to CBS/Paramount and their abandoned series, I would love to see them finish off Mork and Mindy (just one season is left) and resume with both Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley.

I want more Petticoat Junction and more Beverly Hillbilles as well.

I would like more Green Acres too but that is not owned by CBS

Count me in for more "Petticoat Junction".  While it never contained the zany comedy of "Green Acres" and was seldom laugh-at-loud funny, it more than made up for with that extinct quality known as charm.

I'd also love more "Beverly Hillbillies" as well, although I thought that show ran about three seasons too many.

It doesn't make sense for Paramount to quit both BH and PJ as both are just about to go into their color episodes, DVD-wise, from the 1965-66 season!  Lori Saunders is about to debut as Bobbie Jo, and Gunilla Hutton is about to do her only season as Billie Jo, paving the way for the fabulous (and missed!) Meredith MacRae the following season.  What's the hold-up?

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Originally Posted by Charles Ellis 

It doesn't make sense for Paramount to quit both BH and PJ as both are just about to go into their color episodes, DVD-wise, from the 1965-66 season!  Lori Saunders is about to debut as Bobbie Jo, and Gunilla Hutton is about to do her only season as Billie Jo, paving the way for the fabulous (and missed!) Meredith MacRae the following season.  What's the hold-up?

Either it's due to low sales, or CBS stretching out their classic releases.

 

Good Luck with this Jude! I just ordered season 2 a few days ago hoping to do my bit to encourage the seasons I really want which are all the Lori Saunders seasons.

Yeah, I too heard about the disappointment with the sales for the first two seasons- but I have to echo the sentiment that it doesn't make much sense that they would completely pull the plug before they get to the color seasons. That flies in the face of the release strategy of just about every other studio who bend over backwards not to release B&W content.

I'm hoping, as with Streets Of San Fransisco, that we are just in a temporary holding pattern while they work some other material out.

I also would like season 3 of peticoat junction to get released  out on DVD

Yes! I want more Petticoat Junction.  I think many people (like me) are more familiar with the color years, and are actually waiting to buy those.

I got them recorded from off of TV Land Canada where they ran all of the colors complete and uncut. If they ever do get put out on DVD, be ready for edits galore as there are songs in just about every episode and more and more as they go.

I'd like to see Lori Saunders and June Lockhart introduce some later episodes and speak candidly about the void left by Bea Benederet's passing.  I was an avid fan in the show's entire network run and feel rather wistful about all the turmoil of the color years.

And the color seasons were certainly filled with change.  Season Three was the only season that saw a continuation of the format found in the black and white years, but starting with Season Four, the show evolved from year to year.  Season Four saw the introduction of Steve Elliott as a love interest for Billie Jo and the focus shifted a bit to make room for his character.  Season Five saw the unanticipated switch of Steve's affections from Billie Jo to Betty Jo due to their real-life romance, and their whirlwind marriage.  Betty Jo left the hotel to set up a love nest with Steve in that abandoned cottage in the woods.  (I kept looking for seven dwarves to come home and find them.)   Kate's illness became apparent late in the season.   The newspapers were filled with reports of Bea's battle with lung cancer as the writers sent her off to visit her aunt, hoping fans weren't reading the Hollywood columnists.

Season Six was the traumatic season:  Betty Jo had her baby in Bea's last episode.  It wasn't her last appearance, as she's obviously doubled by her standin with Bea doing a voiceover from her hospital bed.  I remember seeing the episode which aired after her death and feeling so sad on an episode in which the characters are supposedly filled with anticipation and joy.

There were two or three episodes in which Edgar Buchanan was given solo star billing before June Lockhart joined the cast as "our lady M.D., as pretty as can be..." (it was a different era...  Petticoat Junction often felt like the 1930s actually.)

The main thing I remember about Season Seven was that it seemed like things were quieting down again as Lori Saunders was given more to do with her new boyfriend, Orrin.  It seemed like the Shady Rest was ready to be turned over to the next generation as the three girls were now three grown women.

I'd love to see this finished. It's easily in my top 5 list of favorite television programs.

The personalities of the girl's changed a ton as well. Take Bobby Jo for example. She goes from a bookworm that is paying virtually no attention to boys and taking such things as her schoolwork and intellectual pursuits seriously to the detriment of everything else to basically being the opposite of that in later seasons.

At least the B&W run got out. Some of the episodes that were floating around from the first two seasons before the DVD releases were some of the worst quality things I've ever seen. At least there is decent syndicated copies out there of the color episodes (Although missing several minutes each and often with incorrect openings and closings).

I'm sure that's due to the recasting of Lori Saunders in the role.  She had such a flair for comedy that Pat Woodell did not that the writers obviously ran with it.   I recall her saying somewhere that, early on, she put a ditzy spin on whatever she was supposed to do at one point that the writers started to play up that angle and before you know it, the entire character changed.   By Season 7, she's a brilliant farceur who really should have moved over to wacky world of Green Acres.  She should have married Orrin and moved next door to the Douglases for their final season.

Also Meredith MacRae's sexuality wasn't nearly as blatant as Jeannine Riley's and Gunilla Hutton's.  She exuded a poised charm and intelligence that forced her character to mature.  Jeannine had a certain pout that I felt belonged in a Matt Helm movie more than Petticoat Junction.  She was drop-dead gorgeous, but she was well aware of that fact and had studied mannerisms that played up to that.  Meredith was much more natural and unaffected.   I recall Gunilla as being a happy medium between the two extremes, but it's been years since I've seen Season 3.  I hope I get a chance to see Season 3 before too much longer!