The Andy Griffith Show is one of my least favorite classic television series. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that all of the adults and trusted authority figures are habitual liars. They lie to make friends feel good, and they lie to protect themselves, and they lie to patronize children. Sometimes the lie works out, and other times they get caught, but it is always “cute” and “funny.” No one is ever shown considering the moral implications of lying. This despite frequent references to God and church, as the quaint trappings of small town life demand.
My second reason is that there are no marriages in the show. The two main characters are in stagnate relationships with women who seem no more interested in permanent commitment and domesticity than they are. The fashionable, fun loving gals must simply enjoy dating, and it is as casual and undirected a relationship as ever there was. Aunt Bee is a spinster who helps her widowed nephew to raise his orphaned son. No where is there a marriage really demonstrated for the audience or for the children. I can recall only one married couple from the show, and that is the town drunk and his wife. Great example.
For such a long-running, highly-esteemed show, the lack of moral foundation is sad. However, the themes, stereotypes, and worldview portrayed by Andy and his friends is representative of those seeds of corruption that blossomed in the decades to come, leaving us today with a society in which family and marriage are perverted if not meaningless, and in which the truth is grossly undervalued, unsought, and even betrayed. Astounding percentages of students admit to lying. A large minority of births are out of wedlock. Divorce is rampant, as is unmarried cohabitation. Do we want to promote this in our entertainment? Are we so sunk in deception that we look back on the Andy Griffith era as a wholesome, family-values past?
Is there any hope, any shining example of television today that portrays the truth and biblical values?
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
Lisa of Longbourn 
Whoa, lighten up! You seem to get a little carried away over an entertaining tv show. Being a show airing in the 50’S AND 60’S there are a lot of good values in this show. You need to watch and be a little open minded. There actually are several characters with spouses, Emmet the fix it man has a wife, the mayor, Charlene Darlin, Andy’s cousin, Floyd the barber and Andy both had wives but are widowed, in the very first episode Andy’s housekeeper marries. Your mis-informed rant leads me to believe that you should get off your high horse and catch a few more episodes. While you’re watching be a little more open minded, and remember being a Christian doesn’t make you God! Open your eyes, the world is a great place to be!
I’ve watched this show since I was little, so for two decades. My rant is not mis-informed. None of the main characters are presently married, and almost none of the story lines address marriage or parenting together as husband and wife. I’m not criticizing real life people for being widowed or not married; those characters are invented by writers and producers, which people could have controlled the direction the stories went. They chose to leave mothers almost entirely out of the picture.
My very objection is that so many people treat the Andy Griffith Show as being full of good old values when the main character is a habitual liar, and when *family* values are ignored.
Thank you for your list of married people in the show. I didn’t mean to say that no one was ever married, but that they were not main characters, nor were they good examples of marriage.
I do not need to watch this show, nor change my mind. I have given ample time to come to the conclusions written on my blog. If you disagree and love the show, fine. But don’t tell me what to do.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
“But don’t tell me what to do” – “To God be all glory” sound rather funny together.
“To God be all glory” is how I sign things, as a reminder to myself to check – I am not always good at self-analyzing, though. It is also to suggest a tone, how I intend things to be read.
Thanks for reading, and pointing out your perception. It helps me to be a better communicator.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
I thought i was alone in my weariness of the show. Andy cuts corners because of relative value. Because is smarter and has better judgement the everyone is he decides to not play in the margin, but l’ive in the margin of the difference between his good character and qualities and everyone else’s poor judgement and character. Exploiging this perceived margin is behaving like pharpah of egypt while the towspeople are the jews which makes barney moses. I think jed clampter was a better hero than andy. He never lied. He never really made light of anyone. He had patience and was always ready and willing to see jethro grow and step up into more responsibily and leasership. It seems andy encouraged barney to stop trying to develope and mature. He held barney down with arrogant cuts, quips, and jokes whenever barney failed.