Synopsis:
It’s not often that the General loses a race, but when winning could mean starched undershorts, you can see Bo’s reasoning for giving Daisy the victory. The loss is quickly forgotten when a blonde lady at the bus stop catches the boys’ eye.
They quickly establish that she’s Thelma Claire (T.C.) Rogers, and she’s returned to Hazzard to run for Supervisory Administrator of Hazzard County. Boss cheated her father out of the same job 15 years earlier by stealing the pencils out of the voting booths. Bo and Luke fall over each other to help out and both volunteer as campaign managers. When Boss hears about T.C.’s intentions he quickly hatches a plan to stop her from registering by sending the registrar, Emery Potter, out of town.
Emery has been engaged to Mabel for 12 years, so Boss decides that it’s about time he got married. He even offers to pay for the nuptials if Emery heads straight for Chicamahonny. When T.C. and the boys arrive at the registrar’s office, Enos explains that Emery has to sign the application.
Emery is persuaded to postpone his wedding in order to uphold his sworn duty. To Boss, T.C.’s successful registration is just a minor setback; he has plenty of other tricks up his sleeve, like not giving her air-time on the radio. With a little help from Cooter, the boys help T.C. to cut into Boss’s radio broadcast and interrupt his speech in the square.
Boss fights back by closing the election an hour early and trying to fix the vote by hiring a couple of henchmen to replace the ballot papers.
After the Duke Boys recover the ballot box and deliver it safely to Enos, the result comes out as a tie. Then they realize that Emery Potter forgot to vote, so Bo and Luke set off to interrupt his wedding for a second time. With just seconds to spare, Emery makes it back in time to cast his vote for T.C., who promptly quashes Bo and Luke’s probation violations. Only then is it revealed that Rosco also forgot to vote.
Commentary:
The idea of equal rights seems to be better established here than in certain later episodes. It’s a shame that having an ally of the Dukes in charge of their probation didn’t suit the plots. It was still a nice twist to reveal T.C.’s husband and child at the end of the episode, much to the chagrin of Bo and Luke.
Someone on the crew must’ve been trying to impress a lady called Mabel, because Emery Potter’s fiancée, Mabel Wooster, becomes the third Mabel on the show (after Ms. Mabel and Mabel Tillingham).
Highlights:
There’s nothing like a traditional wedding, and the one in this episode is certainly nothing like a traditional wedding. Mabel’s determined not to be left at the altar twice, so they all pile on the back of Cooter’s truck, and the wedding takes place on the way back to town.
There are some good tongue-in-cheek moments in this episode, like Boss’s campaign slogan: “He’ll give you what you deserve.”
Also, possibly in a premonition of movies to come, Waylon says about Cooter: “That old boy is nearly as laid back as Willie what’s-his-name.”
When Rosco wants to arrest Bo and Luke for violating their probation, T.C. asks “Sheriff, don’t you think under the circumstances these two boys could be released under their own recognizance?” Rosco replies “They recognize each other, ma’am. They been cousins for years.”
Trivia:
This episode introduces Hazzard’s (Boss’s) radio station, WHOGG.
The Chicamahonny chapel where Emery Potter goes to get married is the same building that appeared next to the crematorium in Money to Burn.
Pat Klous (T.C. Rogers) appeared in a series called Flying High before Dukes, and 55 episodes of The Love Boat afterwards.
–synopsis and vidcaps by Hoss (with info from The Dukes of Hazzard Unofficial Companion).
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