Griffith's reunion was taped on a replica of the original jail set from the series. But on tonight's special, Griffith is still able to welcome Ron Howard, who unforgettably played Opie, the adorable little boy Don Knotts, who won Emmy after Emmy for playing Deputy Barney Fife, even though Griffith didn't win for playing Sheriff Andy Taylor and Jim Nabors, who joined the show in later seasons as slack-jawed simpleton Gomer Pyle. Unfortunately, with each decade and each new celebratory special, the number of survivors gets smaller. Regardless, the sitcom has a gentleness and humanity that make it tower above all that is junky or jejune in its own genre, and it employed a cast of regulars whose work seems to exist on a plateau beyond mere professionalism. Is this why a certain portion of the audience loves the show? Or just a pesky detail reflecting the decade (the 1960s) in which it was produced? Not one African American or member of any other racial minority in sight. It is indeed so adored an American institution that hardly anyone ever brings up what really is a vexing anomaly: "The Andy Griffith Show" is set in a small town in North Carolina whose entire population is Caucasian. Still, you'd have to be quite the old sourpuss not to put it among the top 10 or 20. He thus presumably approved, among many other details, the fact that an announcer claims "The Andy Griffith Show" has been "often described as the best television show of all time." Hmm. Griffith, hardly the hokey hayseed he played on the show, controls the way in which he will be praised and exalted on the special by not only hosting but co-executive-producing it himself. Then in 1993, CBS offered "The Andy Griffith Show Reunion," a special more like tonight's - a talk show in which former cast members reminisce with heartwarming clips as illustration. Mayberry, like Brigadoon, was pretty much the same. In 1986, NBC aired "Return to Mayberry," a TV-movie sequel to the grand old sitcom, with many of the cast members reunited to play their characters as they had aged through the years. Not just something like it, but it itself.
That's right, trot out Andy Griffith and his surviving co-stars for something like: "The Andy Griffith Reunion: Back to Mayberry," which in fact airs tonight on CBS, at 8 on Channel 9. When in doubt - and the networks are, even more than usual - return to Mayberry. Even if CBS hadn't shunted its awful-sounding miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan off to Showtime (date "to be announced" in a blue moon or two), the November Sweeps would have been electronic Ambien. What a sleepy Sweeps this has turned out to be.
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