dougdoepke Despite some opinion, the series was and is more than just a cool Corvette, the envy of thousands of teenage boys of the time.The series is a one-of-a-kind that helped define a new era of TV programming. Unlike studio-bound 1950's TV, Route 66 went on the real road for story backgrounds. Thus the episodes provide glimpses of an unvarnished America, unfashionable and undesigned. Locales might vary week-to-week, from the seedy to the suburban to the penthouse, or somewhere in-between. But in the background was always America's great symbol of freedom, the open road. A temptation that even the country's sprouting suburbs couldn't contain. Of course, Buzz and Todd's backgrounds made plot versatility possible— Todd the educated upper-class young man, Buzz the tough slum kid. Together, they sort of coexisted in interesting fashion on-screen, perhaps because of the actors' testy off-screen relationship. Unfortunately, Glenn Corbett, Maharis's successor, lacked his predecessor's brooding intensity and the show was soon cancelled. However that may be, the series often featured name actors from Hollywood or talented newcomers. These too added genuine audience appeal.Just as important was the writing. Head writer Silliphant managed to maintain a generally extraordinary level of narrative interest-- with compelling characters, rarely heard poetic dialog, and often ironical or poignant outcomes that were unlike the usual happy endings of the day. Scripts specialized in revealing lost or forgotten souls at a time when TV generally ignored them amid rising suburban prosperity. Then again, audiences never knew where the guys would be the following week since the only constant was the open road. So if you didn't like this week's episode, next week would be a different cast of characters in a new story with unpredictable locales. All in all, I don't think the complex format has been replicated since. Despite the show's popularity, it didn't spawn imitators, probably because of that difficulty.Anyway, I never missed the show then, and am happy it's made available to fresh generations-- after all, whatever else changes, that open road still beckons.

lstraw I was about 12 years old when I discovered route 66 on Friday nights. A buddy of mine at school told me about a "cool show". I tuned in on a black and white Sylvania TV with rabbit ears on a Friday night and was hooked. I couldn't decide which cool guy I wanted to be: Todd or Buzz? Probably it was Buzz who became my alter ego; but I looked more like Todd with my light hair and complexion. I lusted after those Corvettes more than the popular female hotties at school. I didn't even have a driver's license, but figured if I had a 'vette, getting a girl would be easy. For the next 47 years whenever I became terminally stressed out with the overwhelming catastrophes of life...I would tune in a route 66 episode. I believe Route 66 and that black-and-white-one-eyed-TV-monster had the power to heal! In high school, I seriously thought about quitting sports so I could be home on Friday nights to watch my buds, Todd and Buzz and the 'vette. During the '80s the episodes were regularly re-run on Nick-At-Nite, I think. In the 90's I watched some of the episodes I had video taped in the 80's...then discovered tapes and DVDs for sale on the internet. George Maharis and Marty Milner were like my favorite uncles. God, I wish some enterprising documentarian nut would interview them both about the show on DVD before they are gone! Just have them dissect every episode...like a director's cut. Imagine! It would be pure narcotic for all of us route 66 Todd-Buzz-old-Corvette addicts! Did anyone notice the music on the weekly series was always jazz! The rock and roll era was launched, dude. But you would never know it by watching any rt66 episode. You'd think the producers would have worked some Chuck Berry "motorvating" music into the show, or Dwayne Eddie, Eddie Cochran...or SOME rock and roll! I guess the the guys who wrote the show were anti-rock and roll young old farts then. Nobody has been able to explain WHY there was no rock and roll on route 66??!! Well now... The highway is gone; the USA that you used to be able to see in your Chevrolet is gone. Everything is mostly the boring same everywhere...the same fast food joints...everything has become a friggin' franchise. The interstate highway system did it. Now I am 59 years young and I ride a motorcycle. I have two: an old BMW airhead and a 2003 MotoGuzzi. (Actually, I have a third one, a 1981 Honda CB900c completely stock with a Hondaline full fairing that I would like to sell). .....Riding with my buds....I stay off interstates. My buddies and I seek out and ride the twisty two lane roads, chasing youth and that spirit of old route 66 that lives inside us all. Hey Todd and Buzz, live forever, man! The old highway is gone but yet remembered in my soul.... when I am out there alone on some two-lane road with a full tank of gas and nothing but the sound of my motor running strong and the wind in my face, watching the white lines streak by next to my front wheel....I think about you guys now and then. And I secretly wish for a miracle in time when I would pull into a gas station and catch site of you two guys gassing up the Corvette, and looking at a road map. Maybe in the next life. My vision of heaven has only two lane highways, mom and pop diners, lots of chrome, and a 1962 Corvette that turns out to be,in some kind of Twilight Zone,weird Stephen-King-ish plot, to be God. I am specifying in my will that they play Nelson Riddle's Route 66 theme at my funeral! And...you can bury my body by an old abandoned stretch of Route 66 so my soul can stand by the highway with the other ghosts, hitch-hiking a ride..to anywhere.

L.J. McFarland-Groves It's said "they don't make 'em like they used to" and Route 66 certainly brings credibility to that statement. I was only about eleven years old when the show went off the air, but what an impact it had. I can't see one of those old two seater Chevys without the sweet theme song going lightly through my head. Here's a masculine buddy show, two good looking guys, side by side, all the way across the country. Pure and simple, clean and fascinating, both the relationship and the adventures they achieved. I have no doubt that my own cross country odyssey in a little open air two seater from New England to Southern California in the mid 1970s was subconsciously a way to live briefly as Buz or Tod. Can't wait for the DVD which I understand is coming out in a couple of months because the world is a place more lacking for want of reruns of this All American classic.

HERBERT ("BO") NEWSOME In 1960, as a seven year old boy growing up in historic Salisbury, North Carolina, the weekly TV show, Route 66, whisked me away to the open road and high adventure in an open-topped red Corvette convertible. Howmuch better could life be for a seven year old boy in Small Town USA?! This was high-living for the next four years of my life. "Buzz" and "Todd" (the main characters) had quickly become my best friends as I rode with them every Friday night (8PM) to high adventure. I wish "TV Land" would bring this show back into our lives and show kids of today that you don't need to have sex and violence in order to enjoy some great TV! Herbert W. (Bo) Newsome, Salisbury, NCIn summary, This was a wonderful show!