bkoganbing Andy Griffith made an end to his TV show but the citizens of Mayberry still had a couple of years of life left in them with Mayberry, RFD.Sheriff Andy Taylor and school teacher Helen Crump married and moved away from Mayberry. To give the new show a central character Ken Berry fresh from F Troop plays Sam Jones, a farmer just elected to the Mayberry town council is brought in. He's a widower like Andy Taylor was and raising a small son Buddy Foster. He even hires Aunt Bea to be his housekeeper now that Frances Bavier no longer had to keep house for Andy and Opie.All the other Mayberry regulars and semi-regulars were retained and the show did well for two seasons. But at that point CBS pulled all its rural based shows to get a different market. And at that point those Mayberry characters like Paul Hartman, George Lindsey, Jack Dodson etc. all went to television Valhalla.Sad the show ran into CBS's determination to get younger viewers. It's the seniors who watched this and other rural type shows and the seniors least likely to respond to advertising pitches.Other than reunion movies this ended our look into Mayberry, North Carolina.

kwo_bubba Mayberry RFD was a pretty good follow up to The Andy Griffith Show. A lot of newer generation TAGS fans aren't even aware of Mayberry RFD's existence. Hopefully one day it will finally make it to DVD. As with TAGS, I haven't watched an episode that I didn't enjoy. Yes, many of the episodes are rehashes of TAGS episodes. The thing that makes it still work though, is it's still Mayberry. It's still the wholesome fantasy world that we loved in TAGS. The main thing that I wished they would have done of this show was include more of the TAGS guest stars like Otis, The Darlings, and Ernest T Bass. The best episode of the show is by far the first one. Andy and Helen finally get married, and Don Knotts makes his final appearance as Barney Fife until Return to Mayberry. Andy makes several appearances as Sheriff Taylor in the first season until he just disappears and is no longer mentioned until in mid season 2 he returns to Mayberry with Helen and their new baby. I always wondered why in TAGS they never did any farewell episodes to outgoing characters. Usually they just disappear, and occasionally they're mentioned later on such as "Otis started doing his drinking in another town." Sheriff Taylor himself disappears in RFD, never to be heard from again after the "Andy's Baby" episode for the rest of the series. Anyway, if you've never seen it, its worth checking out if you can find it.

Brian Washington As many people know this show is essentially a sequel to the Andy Griffith Show. The producers decided that instead of canceling the show all together, they would continue it with essentially the same cast except for the leads. Ken Berry and Arlene Golonka were okay replacements for Andy Griffith and Aneta Corsaut, but Sam and Millie were no Andy and Helen. Also, even though this show was still popular at the time of the rural purge of 1971, I don't think that its cancellation hit people as hard as the cancellations of The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.

Douglas_Holmes So "Mayberry R.F.D." was to "The Andy Griffith Show." M-R.F.D. was a pale imitation of the original, merely an attempt to keep TAGS rolling without Griffith & Co., who made the show what it was. I disliked M-R.F.D., and felt that there was no reason (save sheer greed) for the TV Execs to prolong the format with this thing. And Buddy Foster was no Ron Howard, blond hair and plaid shirt or no.