Second episode where Kate's bogus confidence building works too well, this time for gawky geek Herbie, in love with Billie Jo and supposedly replacing Uncle Joe. Another entire episode of a misunderstanding owning the plotline and a lot of running around. Basically, what all Three's Company episodes would be. And Pat Woodall's wig looks here to stay. It's awful! Looks like a crow landed on her head, and died there. Why would a young woman have to do this?
2 Reviews
Two Liabilities Trying Not to Make Assets of Themselves
darryl-tahirali29 March 2022
Is there anyone in the Hooterville Valley more incompetent than Uncle Joe? Yes, there is. Lurking in the background of some of the previous episodes was tall, gangly teenager Herby Bates (Don Washbrook), smitten with Billie Jo, a scrub on the Hooterville Hornets football team, and a clumsy clerk at Sam Drucker's General Store who has exasperated Sam for long enough but might find salvation as "Uncle Joe's Replacement" in this amusing trifle that sees the two liabilities trying not to make assets of themselves.
With scripting help from Joel Kane, here is how Dick Wesson and Marty Roth set up their story: On shopping day, Kate Bradley and her three daughters try to sneak away from the Shady Rest Hotel before Uncle Joe notices that they've left. Why? Because the pocket watch Kate ordered for his birthday has come into Sam's store, and they want it to be a surprise. Down at Sam's, Herbie is doing his best impression of a bull in a China shop, irritating his grocer boss to no end. To buck him up, Kate expresses so much confidence in Herbie that he thinks he's been offered an assistant manager's job at the Shady Rest, and Kate, having overextended herself, can't back off from it without negating her pep talk.
But back at the Shady Rest--well, no surprise that Uncle Joe, having experienced a couple of classic sitcom misunderstandings, thinks he's been replaced and leaves in a huff, declaring that he'll find an executive-level position suitable for a man of his estimable talents. Naturally, he winds up swabbing the decks at Luke's Eatery (even if the establishing exterior shot outside "Luke's" sports a sign that reads "Bugle Café"), but Joe returns to the Shady Rest to check into Kate's finest room as part of his pretense (read: self-delusion).
Oh, what to do? This being Hooterville, it's no spoiler to state that the world of "Petticoat Junction" rights itself in the end--you can time that with Uncle Joe's new pocket watch. Given a spotlight, Washbrook doesn't exactly steal it although veteran Edgar Buchanan manages to give Uncle Joe some dimension and sympathy even if his hare-brained ideas do give long-time pal Sam some fits--as if Sam didn't suspect that beforehand. "Uncle Joe's Replacement" does dolly back to give a slightly broader view of the Hooterville Valley than has been seen previously; we learn that, by Sam's reckoning, the entire county has just 3000 souls. We'll see if any of them are liabilities like Uncle Joe and Herby.
With scripting help from Joel Kane, here is how Dick Wesson and Marty Roth set up their story: On shopping day, Kate Bradley and her three daughters try to sneak away from the Shady Rest Hotel before Uncle Joe notices that they've left. Why? Because the pocket watch Kate ordered for his birthday has come into Sam's store, and they want it to be a surprise. Down at Sam's, Herbie is doing his best impression of a bull in a China shop, irritating his grocer boss to no end. To buck him up, Kate expresses so much confidence in Herbie that he thinks he's been offered an assistant manager's job at the Shady Rest, and Kate, having overextended herself, can't back off from it without negating her pep talk.
But back at the Shady Rest--well, no surprise that Uncle Joe, having experienced a couple of classic sitcom misunderstandings, thinks he's been replaced and leaves in a huff, declaring that he'll find an executive-level position suitable for a man of his estimable talents. Naturally, he winds up swabbing the decks at Luke's Eatery (even if the establishing exterior shot outside "Luke's" sports a sign that reads "Bugle Café"), but Joe returns to the Shady Rest to check into Kate's finest room as part of his pretense (read: self-delusion).
Oh, what to do? This being Hooterville, it's no spoiler to state that the world of "Petticoat Junction" rights itself in the end--you can time that with Uncle Joe's new pocket watch. Given a spotlight, Washbrook doesn't exactly steal it although veteran Edgar Buchanan manages to give Uncle Joe some dimension and sympathy even if his hare-brained ideas do give long-time pal Sam some fits--as if Sam didn't suspect that beforehand. "Uncle Joe's Replacement" does dolly back to give a slightly broader view of the Hooterville Valley than has been seen previously; we learn that, by Sam's reckoning, the entire county has just 3000 souls. We'll see if any of them are liabilities like Uncle Joe and Herby.
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