Why I Don't Like the Andy Griffith Show

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 examples of television today that portray the truth and biblical values?

To God be all glory.