The Andy Griffith Show (TV Series) The Pickle Story (1961) User Reviews

I loved this episode...

[planktonrules · 10/10 · 13 October 2010]

This episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" is much more comedic than usual and never fails to make me smile. It seems to teach the moral lesson that it's best to say what's bothering you instead of trying to be nice and keep it all bottled up inside.

The show begins with Aunt Bee making a batch of her nauseatingly bad pickles. According to the lucky recipients of her first batch (Barney and Andy) they smell and taste like kerosene! But, they want to be nice and say nothing and plan on eating these dreadful pickles. Later, though, they have an idea--to buy pickles and substitute them for Bee's evil pickles! As a result, everyone likes her pickles and Bea decides to enter them in the county fair! The boys can't let her possibly win this way and their plan starts to unravel--with very funny results.

The best things about this episode are the reactions of the guys to the dreadful pickles as well as the writing. Plus, in a rare case, Clara was shown sympathetically and not as an annoying neighbor--which she often was later in the series. Clever, funny and memorable.

One of my favorites

[revchuckpoore · 10/10 · 9 January 2009]

This may contain spoilers. Although someone posted that this episode contains deception and trickery, it is still very funny. It is the first episode I think of when I think of this show. Yes, you have to suspend belief: normally Andy would never deceive or involve Opie in anything underhanded. He only does in this episode so Opie won't "get sick again" and they won't hurt Aunt Bee's feelings. Even Opie understands this. BUT later in the episode, when Andy learns the pickle contest is important, he rectifies the deception. The thing I find hard to believe is that the same Aunt Bee who cooks the delicious pies, cakes, fried chicken and other southern foods that everyone raves about makes horrible pickles (and awful marmalade) It seems like she can cook extremely well, but can't "put up" or preserve food. It doesn't matter. What matters is that this episode shows off the excellent writing of the show and the incredible talent of Don Knotts. The scene where he and Andy are replacing the terrible homemade pickles with good ole storebought pickles is hysterical. And the looks on their faces as they force themselves to eat all 8 quarts of pickles is priceless. All I know is that watching this episode makes me want to go to my fridge and pull out a good ole storebought pickle.

Aunt Bee Shines

[jpop59 · 10/10 · 27 April 2016]

Aunt Bee is usually known for her prowess in the kitchen including her succulent fried chicken and other fine southern recipes, however in this episode we learn she doesn't know how to make an edible pickle. What's amusing is she's the only one that doesn't realize her pickles taste like "kerosene". As usual, Andy forgoes honesty to prevent her feelings from getting hurt so there's a lot of plotting going on behind her back to avoid her finding out what people really think. This all goes into high gear when Aunt Bee decides to enter her pickles in the Annual Pickle Contest at the local fair. This episode is a good showcase for Francis Bavier who always shines as Aunt Bee. A very funny episode.

Who'd a-thunk TV could get such talented actors?

[morrisonhimself · 9/10 · 4 April 2020]

When "The Andy Griffith Show" was new, I never watched. I thought it was vapid, silly, even hokey. I continued with no interest even though I met George Lindsey while he was out promoting the show.

When it came around again, it made Ted Turner's Atlanta Channel 17 "America's station." The show was that popular.

I still had no interest, even though I was fortunate to meet the lovely, gracious, and talented Elinor Donohue.

However, lured tonight (4 April 2020) into watching "The Pickle Story" because of a friend's inside joke, I now realize I've been missing something.

This story is charming. It's actually plausible, but could happen only in a small country, and probably Southern, town, the kind of place where home canning is not only a necessity but a competitive sport.

The cast is compelling. Andy Griffith's screen persona is irresistible, totally likable and charming. (By the way, if you ever wonder whether Andy Griffith was a good actor, just see his first role, "A Face in the Crowd." Astonishing. Powerful. And totally, 180 degrees, different from Sheriff Andy.)

Don Knotts is a household word and his "one-bullet" deputy is a folk icon.

"Aint Bea," though, surprised me. She's been around a long time and she wouldn't have if she hadn't been a good actress. Watch this show and pay particular attention to her expressions and gestures. Wonderful.

However, in this episode, the show stealer is Hope Summers as "Clara Johnson." She just sparkles and shines and, again, a viewer needs to watch her face, her gestures, her expressions. Priceless.

OK, now I'm hooked. Internet Archive, archive.org, has lots of movies and TV shows, and I will be making the effort to watch more of "The Andy Griffith Show," and kicking myself for not realizing sooner just how good these shows are.

My heart ain't in this

[kellielulu · 10/10 · 14 August 2022]

Barney tells Andy as they must eat eight quarts of the store bought pickles to replace Aunt Bee's kerosene cucumbers. But in Andy's words it's not so much your heart we need it's your stomach.

They switch out the pickles because unlike what most of what Aunt Bee's makes they are awful. Problem is because the store bought pickles taste so good Aunt Bee decides to enter them into the pickle contest. Could she win with these ? Is it unfair especially to Clara ( Bee's friend and sometimes irritant and rival? Clara it seems lives for this contest and has won eleven years in a row.

They eat all the pickles and Aunt Bee makes her own and Clara wins blue ribbon number twelve.

Aunt Bee has doubled the batch so it's time to accept it and learn to love them!

I always wondered how bad they could have been?! I always imagined they tasted like the generic brand my dad would buy . Yuck ! A good pickle though is hard to beat!

As for Andy not being honest it's not the first or last time he did such things. Without going into it as it would ruin a number of plots in various episodes it wasn't an unusual thing for Andy to do.

Favorite episode!!

[kimcoxmonm · 10/10 · 29 October 2021]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who loves this episode. It makes me laugh so much everytime. The one low rater is a poop!!!😀 A sour pickle!! Come on people, the drawn out morality breakdown was unnecessary. No, it's not honest to lie to someone, even to spare their feelings but I think they can be forgiven in this case. Would you feel bad if someone disputed your opinion of yourself and told you that you were a terrible cook, looked fat in your clothes or your singing was aural assault ?? Of course you would. It's sparing hurtful feelings and self asteem issues for something trivial.

It's just light hearted, silly fun. They pay in the end anyway. I always cringe when they bite into them as I imagine how gross they would be.

It's not unheard of that someone who is known to be a good cook can lack in areas. Some are not good at grilling, smoking meat, baking, pickling/canning, candy making, etc. They take far different techniques. Baking requires precise measurements, and preparing ingredients in a certain manner and order. Even great cooks struggle with some dishes.

It would have been funny if Otis ate them. If he can chug the moonshine, the pickles would probably be a delight!!

A Great Sacrifice

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 29 November 2019]

Bee is a great cook. She is an utterly terrible pickle maker. This is about her effort to enter a contest with a grossly inferior product. Andy and Barney pull a switcheroo with store bought pickles replacing hers. This is an episode which shows how kindness supersedes everything else.

I couldn't stop laughing!

[walshd-781-140967 · 10/10 · 13 March 2021]

I was fortunate enough to revisit this episode a few years ago as an adult. It is absolutely hilarious. My favorite part is when Barney heads out to the interstate and flags down traveling motorists after asking them where they are going he loads em up with pickles, the further out of town they are headed the more pickles he loads them up with.

Bee's pickles, Clara's pickles and store-bought pickles

[jarrodmcdonald-1 · 20 April 2020]

I guess I feel the need to write a few comments here. As for the claim that this episode goes against the theme of honesty in the series, I think that is true...but...there's a catch: the real lesson here is that Andy, Barney and Opie have to pay for that dishonesty, because at the end, they learn Aunt Bee will go on making these pickles since she thinks they love them so much. This means the stunt they pulled has backfired and now they will be forced to keep eating these kerosene pickles unless they finally become more honest and tell her the truth.

Of course they may not tell her the truth (and learn to love the pickles) because it seems more important to Andy to spare Bee's feelings. Also, they are trying to keep Clara on an even keel, since they want Clara to win the contest and not lose to store-bought pickles they've substituted for Bee's. It really becomes an elaborate set of reversals, showing what happens when honesty is not maintained as the best policy, and there are extenuating circumstances.

Probably the one thing I would change is that when Barney was passing out pickles to motorists on the road, wouldn't they be the ones Bee made, put inside store-bought jars that have store brand labels on them? But the jars Barney handed out along the roadside had no labels on them and looked just like the homemade ones.

Although Bee does not taste her pickles on screen, it is still possible she had sampled some after the batches were made, when she was working by herself in the kitchen. She might have actually thought her pickles were fine, though of course everyone else disagreed.

Nice Premise...

[tost81593 · 10/10 · 28 November 2019]

...however it does, for the reasons previously mentioned, require a bit of suspension of belief.

In a small town like Mayberry, Andy purchasing 8 jars of pickles at one time from the local small grocer would likely raise eyes.

"I Don't Know How I Can Face The Future Knowing..." LOL!

[AudioFileZ · 10/10 · 13 October 2023]

This is, for me, about the most clever and funniest Andy Griffith episode. It's centered around Andy, Barney, and Opie's revulsion of Aunt Bee's "kerosene pickles". I as a child remember only having dill pickles and someone gave my mother their homemade sweet pickles. I think I ran to the sink because I thought they'd be about the same as the dill pickles I was accustom to in miniature form. I couldn't eat another pickle for my entire youth it seemed. So, perhaps, this lepisode resonates with me in particular.

The above said, this episode has some real "gut-busting" funny lines. Lines such as Barney exclaiming he didn't want to waste Bee's pickles due to eating a huge breakfast...and, that he'd smoke, I mean eat, it later. Smart quips abound, like "shoo fly, oh he's dead", "Mayberry's safe driving award (a quart of Bee's Pickle)-and "don't stop for anything until you get to Oregon", and Barney's trip to his cousins (dispose of pickles) who doesn't have a phone so there's no way to check on him. In the end the boys save Bee's feelings and have to "learn to love 'em".

As usual there's a bit of a morality play along with, in this case, some absolutely wicked humor. This show will never be matched for the smart weaving of living right while maneuvering land mines. In my mind, the whole series hardly gets better than this little vignette of how not telling the truth leads to consequences yet saving a person's feelings and dignity is sometimes worth self-sacrifice.

OPIE DOPIE!

[skarylarry-93400 · 6/10 · 15 December 2021]

First of all, Andy and Barney could have thrown away a lot of the pickles they were killing themselves to eat. 7Opie definitely would have spilled the beans to Aunt Bee about the store bought pickles. For a youngster he has a big mouth and has no common sense....none!

This doesn't fit in with rest of excellent series

[deedrala · 4/10 · 25 March 2020]

I rated this episode low - 4/10 - because so much of it goes against the established theme and facts of the entire series and therefore didn't sit right with me at all.

The most obvious one of all is the glaring anomaly that Aunt Bea is an excellent cook with all foods in all the other episodes of the series, except when she makes pickles (and marmalade, according to the brief epilogue). It doesn't fit with her natural ability as a great cook (which is a fact known by many people), that she fails miserably when it comes to making homemade pickles (and marmalade), so the entire episode breaks an important benchmark of the general continuity of the entire series.

Secondly, the inherent theme of the series is that honesty is the best policy - that cheating, lying, and fraud is wrong and bad and unacceptable no matter the reason behind it. Yet Andy not only shrugs off the deception of the elaborate scheme of switching Aunt Bea's pickles with store-bought ones, but he is the one who comes up with the idea in the first place, AND he involves his young son in the deception, which he didn't have to do and could possibly undo all of his previous teachings of honesty being the best policy in all situations.

Thirdly, the switcheroo with the store-bought pickles was too elaborate and far-fetched, especially considering that if and when Aunt Bea opened one of the canning jars with the store-bought pickles, she would notice that the lid wasn't tightly attached, which leads to another unlikely aspect of this lame episode: she apparently never tasted even one of her own pickles after she made them, which anyone making anything would normally do first thing after the cooking was completed.

Lastly, it gets too ridiculous and contrived - even as a sitcom - when Barney hands out the bad pickles as 'Safe Driver' awards to strangers driving by when he could've simply taken them to the dump, or thrown them out in a dumpster, or his own trash can at his home, or the one at the courthouse. It was a contrivance that totally fell flat and came off as silly and unnecessary.

So as much as I love the series and the general theme of it, the acting talent of the main characters, and most of the 200+ shows/episodes, I was dissatisfied and disappointed with this one.

Not a huge fan of this episode

[vitoscotti · 4/10 · 16 March 2022]

Aunt Bee is portrayed so ridiculously. She's lost her sense of taste, observation, and cooking skills. She couldn't see the pained look on eaters of her pickles? Clara lugs around her heavy pickle award scrapbook all over town? First the guys eat up 128 store bought pickles? Now they have to eat 256 dreadful AB's homemade pickles? Even kid Opie has to stuff himself? Sure, there's some funny moments. But, the pickle theme is unbearable after awhile.

Andy's deception puts him in a "pickle"

[PudgyPandaMan · 26 August 2008]

This episode is from Season 2 of "The Andy Griffith Show" and originally aired December 1961. Aunt Bee makes a batch of her "famous" pickles and takes them to Andy and Barney at the sheriff's office for lunch. Problem is, they aren't famous for being delicious, but for tasting like kerosene. They are polite and tell her they are delicious. She then tells them "Good because I have 8 more quarts I made!" After she leaves Andy tries to figure out how they can get out of eating them without hurting her feelings. They devise a plan to buy "store-bought pickles" and replace them into all Aunt Bee's jars. Even Opie is on the switch-a-roo. Bee is amazed at how everyone is just devouring "her" pickles (they're really the store bought ones). So, she decides to enter hers in the County Fair against Clara who has won 11 years in a row for her pickles. Well, Andy is in a "pickle" now. He doesn't want his Aunt to unknowingly enter fraudulent pickles in the fair. He also finds out later from Clara that since her husband past away, that her pickles and winning the fair are all she has to look forward to.

In order to keep Bee from entering the fake pickles, they decide they have to eat all of them, which the do over the next few days. This forces Bee to make a new batch to enter in the contest. They are just as bad as the first batch and Clara wins the blue ribbon. Much to Andy's dismay, they learn she made a double batch this time because they liked them so much. After Bee leaves, Andy tells Barney there is only one thing left to do - learn to eat Bee's pickles - and they start taking slow, painful bites.

This isn't a favorite episode of mine. I feel it went against the usual good moral lessons that the show usually had - and this time uses deception. Even though their plan doesn't work and they learn their lesson, I didn't like that they involved Andy's young son in the plan.