Twenty Great Episodes of
The Andy Griffith Show

1.2. “The Manhunt.” Written by Charles Stewart and Jack Elinson, broadcast October 10, 1960. This story, which would win a Writers Guild Award for comedy writing, established Don as the comedic center of The Andy Griffith Show. State police arrive in town to hunt an escaped prisoner. Barney cannot bear to be left out and promptly finds himself captured by the criminal. Andy hatches a plan to recapture the crook and vindicate Barney, setting a template for many more Griffith episodes to come.

1.11. “The Christmas Story.” Written by Frank Tarloff, broadcast December 19, 1960. This was the first of eighty episodes directed by the great Bob Sweeney, and his ear for pathos is immediately evident. The script pays artful homage to Dickens and Seuss. Hard-hearted merchant Ben arrests a local moonshiner on Christmas and insists that he go to jail over Andy’s protests. So, Andy transforms the jail into a joyous Christmas party, enlisting Barney as an anemic Santa Claus. Repentant Ben is reduced to standing outside the jailhouse window, clinging to the bars, tears pooling in his eyes as he wordlessly joins Andy and Ellie in a refrain of “Away in a Manger.”

2.11. “The Pickle Story.” Written by Harvey Bullock, broadcast December 18, 1961. No one seemed to like this script when Bullock first presented it. Today it stands as perhaps the quintessential Griffith episode. “The Pickle Story” celebrates the Mayberry virtue of going to comic lengths to protect people’s feelings. Aunt Bee presents Andy and Barney a batch of her ghastly homemade pickles. The boys can’t bear to eat them; to protect Bee’s feelings, they secretly swap her pickles for store-bought surrogates. But their plan implodes when Bee elects to enter her pickles in the county fair. Now, Andy and Barney must choose between hurting Bee’s pride and perpetrating fraud.

2.20. “Barney and the Choir.” Written by Charles Stewart and Jack Elinson, broadcast February 19, 1962. Andy revisited his childhood choral memories in this story, a sweet lesson in human frailty. Andy goes to outrageous lengths to protect Barney from hurt when he joins the town choir and it becomes painfully obvious that he cannot sing. The choir director wants Barney out. But Andy refuses to fire him, searching instead for some means to coax him away. Several ploys fail. As a concert draws near, it becomes increasingly plain that Andy is not merely concerned for Barney’s welfare; he is reluctant to deliver the bad news—a gentle reminder that Andy, too, is only human.

2.29. “Andy on Trial.” Written by Jack Elinson and Charles Stewart, broadcast April 23, 1962. Andy confronts a big-city businessman over a neglected speeding ticket. The executive manipulates Barney to gather dirt on the sheriff and publishes a hit piece in his newspaper. A state prosecutor comes after Andy, and Barney is called to the stand to defend him. He testifies that Andy “is more than just a sheriff. He’s a friend.” Barney delivers his speech with striking pathos, reflecting Don’s powerful real-life friendship with Andy.

3.1. “Mr. McBeevee.” Written by Ray Saffian Allen and Harvey Bullock, broadcast October 1, 1962. Season three of The Andy Griffith Show opened with this meditation on fatherhood and faith. Opie appears at the sheriff’s office with tales of Mr. McBeevee, a man who lives in the trees. It sounds fanciful—until the boy begins to show up bearing gifts from his imaginary friend. Andy fears Opie has stolen the items. Opie insists his friend is real, but he can produce no evidence. This is agony for viewers, who know Mr. McBeevee is a man from the power company, up in the “trees” to work on the lines. In the end, Andy decides to trust in his son.

3.11. “Convicts at Large.” Written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, broadcast December 10, 1962. The Andy Griffith Show never got weirder than in this gender-bending parody of the escaped-convict drama The Desperate Hours. Mayberry milquetoasts Barney and Floyd visit the old O’Malley cabin and stumble upon three escaped convicts, a trio of tough broads led by lantern-jawed Maude Tyler. The women force Barney to dance at gunpoint, and Floyd succumbs to Stockholm syndrome. The story ends with a slapstick scene worthy of Buster Keaton, Andy laboring to slap a cuff on Big Maude as she and Barney tango in and out of the cabin door.

3.13. “The Bank Job.” Written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, broadcast December 24, 1962. This story showcases Barney and his delusions of law-enforcement grandeur; it also marks the onscreen Griffith debut of Jim Nabors. Barney frets that Mayberry is ripe for a crime wave. He decides to teach the town a lesson, sneaking into the bank to stage a theft. Caught by the manager, he panics and closes himself in the vault, whence he must be rescued. Barney’s charade catches the attention of real bank robbers, who stage a real robbery; Andy thwarts it, and Barney is vindicated.

3.16. “Man in a Hurry.” Written by Everett Greenbaum and Jim Fritzell, broadcast January 14, 1963. Surely the finest Griffith episode, “Man in a Hurry” stands as the ultimate expression of the Mayberry maxim that life is to be savored. An out-of-town businessman wanders into Mayberry on a Sunday morning after his car breaks down. Mayberry is closed for business, a scenario Malcolm Tucker cannot accept. He is trapped in the Mayberry Twilight Zone. Andy takes him in, and Tucker paces across the front porch as Andy and Barney hum a spiritual. In time, Tucker lifts his voice and joins them in song.

3.27. “Barney’s First Car.” Written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, broadcast April 1, 1963. This story, which earned the Griffith Show its second Writers Guild Award, tells a father-son story about life’s lessons learned, but with Barney cast as the son. Barney buys his first car, handing his life savings to a little old lady who spots an easy mark. Barney packs the gang into his new car for a ceremonial first ride, bobbing his head with smug pride. Tragedy descends in a hilarious sequence of taps and clanks. This episode includes the classic Andy-Barney septic-tank skit.

3.31. “Mountain Wedding.” Written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, broadcast April 29, 1963. This late-season entry introduces Ernest T. Bass, an unvarnished hillbilly set loose like a Tasmanian devil among the gentle souls of Mayberry. Ernest T. scampers through the brush and hurls rocks through windows, intent on romancing a fellow rustic named Charlene Darling. He charges into Charlene’s wedding ceremony and drags off the bride—who turns out to be Barney in drag, planted as a decoy. Then Barney comes crashing out of the woods in his dress, fleeing unknown horrors and crying out for Andy, one of the odder scenes on prime-time television in 1963.

3.32. “The Big House.” Written by Harvey Bullock, broadcast May 6, 1963. The season-three finale displayed all the talents of three Griffith funnymen and showcased an ascendant partnership between Don and Jim Nabors to complement the interplay between Don and Andy. The sheriff is charged with holding two hardened cons for a few hours. He begs Barney not to intervene, but of course Barney cannot resist. Barney deputizes Gomer and sets about finding new and inventive ways to enable the convicts’ escape. The highlight is Barney delivering his “Here at the Rock” speech to the bewildered cons, while Andy tries his best not to crack up.

4.1. “Opie the Birdman.” Written by Harvey Bullock, broadcast September 30, 1963. The season-four opener was the best among many Griffith episodes to explore the relationship between Andy and Opie. It was a daring broadcast because Harvey Bullock’s script wasn’t really a work of comedy. Opie inadvertently kills a bird with his slingshot. When Andy learns what has happened, he punishes Opie by throwing open his bedroom window, so Opie can hear the plaintive tweets of three baby birds that have lost their mother. By morning, Opie has decided to raise the baby birds himself. This is Andy at his most Lincolnesque.

4.2. “The Haunted House.” Written by Harvey Bullock, broadcast October 7, 1963. This classic episode displays Andy’s impish side. Opie hits a baseball through a window in an abandoned house. Opie fears the house is haunted. When Barney lectures Opie on childish fears, Andy teasingly goads Barney into entering the house himself. Now terrified, Barney enlists Gomer and Andy to join him. Andy quickly traces the ghostly happenings to a mundane source. Barney later parlayed this story into The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

4.10. “Up in Barney’s Room.” Written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, broadcast December 2, 1963. Viewers had never been afforded a glimpse inside Barney’s inner sanctum: a simple room on the upper floor of a boardinghouse, with a hot plate and a jug of sweet cider. When Barney defies the house rules, his landlady, the sweet Mrs. Mendelbright, asks him to leave. With Barney gone, Mrs. Mendelbright swiftly falls prey to a con man, who woos her and plots to take her money. Andy and Barney arrive in the nick of time to apprehend the villain. The story affirms the quiet power of friendship.

4.11. “Citizen’s Arrest.” Written by Everett Greenbaum and Jim Fritzell, broadcast December 16, 1963. This story explores the poignant fragility of Barney’s worldview and the stark emptiness of his life outside the sheriff’s office. Barney catches Gomer making a U-turn and insists on writing him a ticket. When Gomer protests, inflexible Barney warns, “It’s from little misdemeanors that major felonies grow.” Gomer takes this lesson to heart: when Barney executes a U-turn of his own, Gomer cries, “Citizen’s ar-ray-yest!” Now, Barney must write himself a ticket. Seething, he chooses jail over a five-dollar fine. Only the next morning does he realize he might lose his prized job and his best friend.

4.16. “Barney’s Sidecar.” Written by Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, broadcast January 27, 1964. This episode is built from a single sight gag—one purloined from the Marx Brothers, to boot. But Don makes the most of a fine script, a comic expedition into Barney’s puerile soul. The deputy returns from an army-surplus auction with a World War I motorcycle and sidecar, with which he intends to police the state highway. His menacing helmet, black leather jacket, and reptilian goggles induce peals of laughter everywhere Barney goes, even as they impel the deputy toward fascist extremes. Andy confides to Aunt Bee, “I wish we had a psychiatrist in town. I bet Barney’d be a real study.”

4.21. “The Shoplifters.” Written by Bill Idelson and Sam Bobrick, broadcast March 2, 1964. This story won the Griffith Show won its third and final Writers Guild Award. Working from a one-line concept—What if Barney posed as a mannequin to catch a shoplifter?—the writers built a story populated with quirky characters from previous episodes: Ben Weaver, the impatient department-store manager; and Asa Breeney, the doddering night watchman. The episode climaxes with a farcical midnight stakeout inside Weaver’s store.

5.25. “The Case of the Punch in the Nose.” Written by Bill Idelson and Sam Bobrick, broadcast March 15, 1965. Most viewers didn’t know it, but this would be the last great Griffith episode to feature Barney as a regular. Barney stumbles upon a minor scuffle from years ago, utterly trivial—but unsolved. Over Andy’s strenuous objections, Barney reopens the case. His interrogations set off a fresh outbreak of nose punching. By the end, Andy seems genuinely angry at Barney for his meddling, perhaps reflecting real-life strain as Don prepared to exit.

6.17. “The Return of Barney Fife.” Written by Sam Bobrick and Bill Idelson, broadcast January 10, 1966. This is the first, and probably the best, of five reunion episodes filmed in the three years after Don left the Griffith Show. (All are worth watching; they earned Don two of his five Emmys.) Barney has decamped to Raleigh for big-city police work, but he returns to Mayberry for a stirring visit with Andy. They attend the Mayberry High School reunion, where Don has a poignant encounter with Thelma Lou, his old girlfriend, who now has a husband. Barney is devastated, and Thelma’s revelation stands as perhaps the saddest moment in the series.