NY Newsday article about the series. - Pretty good article

Capt_Redneck · August 1, 2005

My local paper had this piece mainly about the original show . I thought it was a pretty good article. It was from the entertainment section as the front cover of section was the pic ofrom the first season DVD...

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/ny-ffmov4360660jul31,0,3040043.story?coll=ny-television-headlines

Southern Comfort

The movie comes out this week, but on TV, reruns of the original 'The Dukes of Hazzard' have already found new fans attracted to the simple, down-home pleasures of the show

BY KEVIN McDONOUGH

Kevin McDonough is a freelance writer.

July 31, 2005

Friday's release of the "Dukes of Hazzard" movie will certainly remind America of the good old boys from Hazzard, the gravity-defying General Lee and the censor-skirting outfits of the curvaceous Daisy Duke.

But what about the original CBS show (1979-85), a goofy hour-long showcase for slapstick comedy, fast cars and easy-to-follow stories and lessons? Critics never shined to it, but "The Dukes" attracted a passionate fan base that still frequents annual reunions. The most recent DukesFest, held in June in Nashville, attracted a reported 30,000 fans, and "Dukes" reruns are popular on cable.

CMT (Country Music Television) airs "The Dukes" twice nightly, at 7 p.m. and midnight, and has attracted a surprisingly strong audience. Back in February, when CMT introduced the "Dukes" to its lineup, the channel spent an unprecedented hour on top of the basic cable ratings heap, tops among adults 18-to-49 and males 18-to-49.

James Hitchcock, CMT's vice president of marketing, doesn't mind admitting that he has been completely amazed by the audience for the show. "The Dukes" reaches a far younger audience than CMT anticipated, and to the delight of advertisers, many of them are male.

A really dedicated fan

Among those male viewers is Chris Nelson, the official vice president of the Dukes of Hazzard Institute, a promotional vehicle created by CMT. The network hired Nelson in June after an extensive "talent search" attracted more than 1,900 applicants. According to Hitchcock, Nelson stood out from the pack with his blog interview of the show's star car, the General Lee, in the style of James Lipton's "Inside the Actor's Studio" on Bravo. Nelson also began a petition to place a pair of Daisy Duke's original short-shorts in the Smithsonian Institution. For his "work" of watching every "Dukes" episode and maintaining a colorful blog, Nelson will be paid $100,000 for a year. Not bad for an unemployed writer who had just come to Manhattan from his native Texas.

Born in 1976, Nelson says he was virtually raised by television and calls "The Dukes" a formative experience. "'The Dukes' had something for everybody," Nelson says, pining for the days when networks created shows for the whole family. "For kids like me, there were fabulous cars that crashed all the time, there were lessons for Mom, and Dad could watch Daisy and the other foxy ladies. You also had these wacky scene transitions and freeze frames and a bit of wisdom from Waylon." (Outlaw country music star Waylon Jennings provided the show's cracked narration and sang the theme song.)

Nelson adds, "There's nothing like it on TV today."

Perhaps that's because "The Dukes" is such a product of a particular time.

When the show premiered Jan. 26, 1979, the passions of the civil rights, antiwar and women's movements were cooling. Still, in its own corny way, "The Dukes" reflected the era's antiauthoritarianism, pitting Bo (John Schneider) and Luke (Tom Wopat), a couple of good old boys and amateur moonshiners, against three main antagonists: Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane (James Best); his deputy, Enos (Sonny Shroyer), and the town's extraordinarily powerful and corrupt politician, Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg (Sorell Booke).

Clearly inspired by the popular 1977 car-chase moonshine comedy "Smokey and the Bandit," "Dukes" - which ran for seven seasons - is a far cry from today's television landscape. Just where would two goofy outlaws without legitimate sources of income fit in a prime-time environment dotted with product placements, money-grubbing reality stars, yuppie comedies and police dramas in which forensics technology can capture crooks decades after the fact? If somebody tried to act like "modern-day Robin Hoods" (as the theme song described Bo and Luke) in today's landscape, they might end up on a slab on "CSI."

The show's popularity (it was often in Nielsen's top 10 and finished No. 2 in 1980-81) also reflected the ascendancy of the South in American politics and pop culture. When "Dukes" debuted, Jimmy Carter was president, Dixie rock bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers were still popular nationwide, and a Georgian named Ted Turner was revolutionizing cable television.

Speaks to the American spirit

Ironically, the show celebrated the joys of stock-car racing and muscle-car culture at a time of gasoline rationing and when Detroit's position as the world's motor city was under siege. The General Lee (a 1969 Dodge Charger) may have been flying high in 1979, but that very year Chrysler Corp. was facing bankruptcy and asking for a federal bailout.

To some, the appeal of "The Dukes" transcends any one period and speaks to something vital in the American spirit. "From 'L'il Abner' to 'The Beverly Hillbillies' and 'The Andy Griffith Show,' America has long had a love affair with the country bumpkin," says Paul Levinson, chairman of the department of communications and media studies at Fordham University. "It's part of our heritage, part of our culture. The more we move into cities, the more cool we try to be, the more we miss the part of ourselves that's simple and country."

Bill Engvall, one of the stars of the "Blue Collar Comedy" shows on both the WB network and Comedy Central, finds "The Dukes" both confounding and irresistible. "What you have is basically a dysfunctional family," Engvall says. "No parents. You have Uncle Jesse, forever in overalls. Then there's Bo and Duke. What do they do? I never saw them working for food or gas money. You can only kill so many possum."

And while Engvall admits to spending hours in front of the cornball comedy, "I don't remember laughing out loud." Nor does he recall any memorable stories or plot. "Unlike 'Andy Griffith,' where you can argue about your favorite episode, I couldn't tell you what any single 'Dukes of Hazzard' episode was about. But I watched it."

Perhaps the very appeal of "The Dukes" is a surreal nature that transcends linear narrative. "Apparently, there was just one road around Hazzard County," Engvall observes. "Because if they were chasing Boss Hogg, or whoever, they had to spin out around that one oak tree."

CMT's Hitchcock revels in the show's absurdity. "You had 48,000 car crashes, and nobody got hurt. You know the cousins are going to come out OK and never get caught." But some things confuse even a happy TV executive. "Why do they have all these chase scenes? They know where Bo and Duke live. Just go to their house!"

"Dukes" maven Nelson considers Bo and Luke "basic cartoon heroes" with strong appeal to young men. But not everybody thinks it's quite so simple.

Mike Lazzo, a senior vice president of programming for the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network and architect of the hip and wildly successful "Adult Swim" animation block, admits that "The Dukes" has some cartoon elements. He cites the "Flintstones"- like way Bo and Luke climb in and out of the window of the General Lee without ever opening the doors. But as a native of South Carolina, Lazzo sees something more.

"I went to school with guys like Bo and Luke," he says. I think it was a very real portrayal of the South at that time."

A hint of the wild West

Like Lazzo, Perry Turner, vice president of original programming for Turner South, a regional cable network, sees the enduring resonance of "The Dukes" as part of an ongoing myth about the South as a place apart, a bit beyond the law, "a kind of newer wild West."

While Lazzo admits to not liking the show when he was growing up in the South, he has grown fond of it, particularly its celebration of high-octane high jinks. "The whole car culture was very important down here," he recalls. "I watched my cousin spend a whole summer rebuilding a 1971 Barracuda. It was one of the greatest summers of my life."

Expectations for the "Dukes" movie range from wait-and-see to ambivalent. "It's 'Dukes of Hazzard' movie. How can you mess it up?" Engvall quips. And the recent efforts by Ben Jones (who played Cooter the mechanic) to protest the film's supposed profanity and immorality received tepid, diplomatic responses. "As an original cast member, that's his right," Hitchcock says. But Engvall smells sour grapes. "Give it up man. They didn't cast you. It's time to let it go."

Capt_Redneck · August 1, 2005