Family Home Theater

Grade: B-/B
Entire family: Yes
1969-74, 191 min. (4 episodes), Color
Variety show
Not rated (would be G despite occasional innuendo)
Time Life
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Featured audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Bonus features: C-/D
“Rindercella” clip
Amazon link

Hee Haw debuted in 1969 as the rural answer to Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and while Laugh-In lasted two years longer on primetime network television, anyone who’s recently watched episodes from both shows knows that Hee Haw got the last laugh. Laugh-In’s gags were way too topical and tied to the news, or else they were silly catch-phrases that have long since lost their funniness. Either way, the show isn’t nearly as funny today, and you can bet your sweet bippy on it.

Hee Haw is another story. This show, hosted by country music stars Buck Owens and Roy Clark, was unapologetically devoted to cornball humor. Writers plumbed the depths of rural stereotypes for jokes that somehow managed to celebrate rural life while also poking fun of it. Like the Grand Ole Opry, the show had a group of talented regulars but also featured some of country music’s top stars and rising newcomers as weekly guests. It was a popular-enough series to last another 20 years in syndication, and it still plays pretty much the same now as it did then. Meaning, of course, that cornball humor never changes. The sketch comedy and rapid-fire jokes were corny then, and they’re corny now. How corny? You be the judge:

Doctor: I hate to tell you this, but your wife’s mind is gone.
Male patient: Well, that don’t surprise me. She’s been givin’ me a piece of it for the past 20 years.

Roy: Hey, you know I was in the army for three years?
Buck: Did you get a commission?
Roy: No, just a straight salary.

Cousin Clem: Junior, are you goin’ to the drawing at the movie theater in town tonight?
Junior: No, I think I’ll stay home and draw.
Lulu: Junior, you’re no artist. The only thing you could draw’d be flies.
Junior: I can’t draw no flies. They won’t hold still long enough.
Cousin Clem: I think I’ll take up finger painting.
Grandpa: What’s this family a-comin’ to? When I think of one of my kin talkin’ about paintin’ his fingers, I get real upset, I get real mad.
Lulu: I tell you what you could draw for me, Junior. Why don’t you draw the curtain?
Announcer: Be sure to tune in next time [ to”The Culhanes”], when we’ll hear Junior say:
Junior: I just drew a conclusion.

Of course, the delivery and the characters account for much of the humor, and with humor taking center stage it’s easy to forget that for a time Hee Haw was the biggest television venue for country performers.

Hee Haw: Pfft You Was Gone! is a two-disc set featuring four complete shows and two under three-minute interviews with Aaron Tippin and Moe Bandy, who performed as guests on the show, which was all about having fun. “If you made a mistake it was almost good,” said Bandy, who recalled that despite cue cards people would often muff their lines or ad lib.

Episode 2 (Season 1, 6-22-69)
Musically, Buck Owens, the Hagers, Don Rich, and Susan Raye sing “But You Know I Love You,” Merle Haggard sings “Mama Tried” and “Branded Man,” Roy Clark sings “Yesterday When I Was Young, Grandpa Jones sings “Mountain Dew,” Buck Owens and the Buckaroos perform “Happy Times,” and the Hagers chip in “With Lonely.” Among the sketches are several with The Culhanes of Kornfield Kounty, several KORN News Briefs and “Pfft! You Was Gone” mini-songs, a rhyming menu rundown of “Hey Grandpa, What’s for Supper?” and Archie at the barbershop telling the syllable-inversion story of “Rindercella.”

Episode 34 (Season 2, 10-13-70)
Special guest Marty Robbins sings “I’m So Afraid of Losing You” and “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me,” Buck and the gang sing “Sing a Happy Song,” Roy Clark performs “Black Sapphire,” Connie Eaton sings “Ring of Fire,” Grandpa Jones performs “You’ll Make Our Shack a Mansion,” Buck and Susan Raye sing “Tennessee Bird Walk,” and The Hagers perform a song that in the Trump era of rural voters seems almost hard to believe: “Everything Is Beautiful,” sung to a room full of children of all nationalities (“Everyone is beautiful in their own way; under God’s heaven, the world’s gonna find a way”). The usual assortment of recurring comedy sketches include “Pfft! You Was Gone,” KORN News Briefs, The Culhanes, What’s for Supper? and Stringbean reading a letter from home.

Episode 70 (Season 3, 2-12-72)
Porter Wagoner sings “What Ain’t to Be Just Might Happen,” Dolly Parton sings “Coat of Many Colors,” and together they sing “Right Combination.” Buck and the gang sing “Old Dan Tucker,” Buck and the Buckaroos perform “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke” and “”I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me),” Roy and The Sound Generation perform “Peace in the Valley,” The Hagars sing “The Cost of Love Is Getting Higher,” Guinilla Hutton sings “He’s All I Got,” and a bunch of the cast performs “John Henry.” Junior Samples turns up on his used car lot for one sketch segment, and the “Pfft You Was Gone” musical tale of woe is augmented this time by another musical sketch that would become just as popular: “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me” (If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all . . . Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me”

Episode 111 (Season 5, 11-3-73)
Country music royalty Tammy Wynette and George Jones are the musical guests, along with Johnny Bush. Jones sings “Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half as Bad as Losing You),” Wynette sings “Kids Say the Darnedest Things,” together they perform “We’re Gonna Hold On,” Johnny Bush sings “Here Comes the World Again,” Buck and his Buckaroos perform “Too Much Water,” Roy and family perform “Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” The Hagars “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree,” Roy sings “I’ll Paint You a Song,” and Buck and Susan Raye perform “I Think I’m Going to Like Loving You.” Wynette even subs for Gordie on a “Pfft! You Was Gone” segment. Among the sketches, Junior turns up on Samples Sales selling not just cars but watch dogs, and Minnie Pearl joins Grandpa Jones in the kitchen.

Hee Haw was originally intended for rural audiences and fans of country music, and that’s still the main audience for this classic show. If you don’t like country or corny jokes you might not hee-haw much. But it’s hard even for hardcore urbanites not to grin when Archie Campbell and Gordie Tapp assume an American Gothic pose and sing a ditty about a woman who left, with the deadpan, punchline chorus, “Where, oh where, are you tonight? Why did you leave me here all alone? I searched the world over and I thought I’d found true love. You met another and PFFT! you was gone.”