The episode is titled, "The Church Benefactors." And it's about the church being bequeathed 500 dollars. They ask the congregation ideas for the money. Two camps emerge, the Church Finance Committee led by Howard wants to fix the church's foundation which tilts 5 feet to one side. The other group is Aunt Bea and the choir who want robes for the choir.
Both groups address the church leadership which consists of the Reverend , Bea's friend, and Andy. The Reverend votes for Howard, Bea's friend votes for Bea, and Andy decides to think about it.
Bea tries to influence Andy by making his favorite meal including pumpkin pie. When Andy tells her what she is doing won't influence his vote, she tells him if the choir don't get the robes the choir will disband.
Later Bea is walking down the street and Howard passes her and attempts to greet Bea. She ignores him and tries the silent treatment. Howard continues to say hi, and tells Bea there's nothing personal about their money difference but he feels the foundation is paramount for the church. Bea curtly says the aesthetic of their robe is equally important. This argument bothers Howard.
Cut to Andy's office and he's with the Reverend and is obviously frustrated about his vote. He bemoans his decision could cause a schism. Which is weird since the Reverend and Howard never threatened to quit, or go against the church if they didn't get their way. Howard enters and actually tries to retract his proposal and Andy tells him no that he knew voting for the foundation was always the right choice. He calls for a meeting to announce the decision.
The meeting starts and Andy is about to announce the decision when Howard walks in and asks to talk. Howard starts talking and says he has a solution that will please everyone and he was Biblically inspired, Bea interupts and coldy asks Howard how that is helping anyone. His plan is to buy the robes and flood the opposite side of the church to lower the higher end to the same level as the tilted side.
The choir gets their robes and water is seen running to sink the higher foundation. Later the church leadership is meeting to discuss how the church sank too much the other way and the foundation is now tilted 3 feet the other way. The episode ends with them saying they will have to be patient until they are bequeathed more money.
Sorry for the long post but the episode bugged me. How is the foundation not given priority right off the bat? Secondly, Bea tries first influencing Andy with bribery and when that fails threatens to quit. She is cold and antagonistic to the people who aren't doing anything to her, except disagreeing with her. I hated how Andy is worried about causing a schism, but Howard never did anything to indicate he would do something if voted against.
So the moral is that women are irrational creatures who should never be given a voice in anything because because they'll destroy everything whether they get their way in the end or not. Sounds like a pretty based episode.
I thought so. It seems silly to compare robes to an issue with the foundation. One of the women says, "I don't see the problem with the foundation, I don't even feel the tilt."
They should have followed the bible's command that women should not be in positions of authority or leadership, then none of this would have happened.
The foundation is the obvious choice, and was a bad example to be used for the show. Since it doesn't matter if the choir's robes aren't new or not if the church gets more slanted. No one will be able to go into an unsafe building. It's irrational to think otherwise.
I get that it's just a TV show and all, but the premise doesn't add up.
Perhaps the premise they were going for was unintentional, but if so, it ironically highlights a key point about the way men and women think.
The man is concerned with maintaining the infrastructure of the world around him. He knows that without it, his whole way of life literally comes tumbling down. He is essentially caught between his duty to his community and his desire for female acceptance.
The woman is concerned with the facade of how it is dressed up. She doesn't care about the underlying structure that supports her lifestyle, only that her lifestyle is maintained and that she doesn't have to sacrifice anything.
Ultimately, the men in the show buckled under pressure, and gave in to the women, while putting a temporary fix to a problem that fundamentally still wasn't addressed.
Unfortunately in our current society, men as a whole opted to put their desire for female affection over their duty to their community, and now we have a whole host of problems that we will now have to suffer to fix, and were entirely preventable.
I wish I put it that succinctly and well.
Well stated.
And yes, the premise absolutely does hold up, because we're seeing in real life how putting promiscuity before wifely duties has caused a breakdown in the family unit.
We see how men favouring women's rights has destroyed the workplace environment, increased infidelity, and indirectly caused an antipodes nature in relationships where women are competing with the men they wish to marry, but cannot marry the men they're competing with because those men are equal or beneath them, thus making them seem ineligible to women naturally operating on hypergamy.
It goes back to the fundamental problem that weak men allow women to take control, and it ruins society for everyone.
Yes, it seems so obvious what the right thing to do is.
The Andy Griffith show had a lot of girl power episodes in it. It was only "conservative" because of the time it was in. Keep in mind Andy Griffith himself was an old school Democrat, and when the show was coming to an end they wanted to have a black family moving in episode (or maybe that was the Mayberry spin off?).
Still, it is hard to watch shows like that and see how far we have fallen as a people. The average woman back then was leaps and bounds above the average woman now.
Yes, there are a lot of female empowerment episodes. You can tell people who complain about it being conservative never watched it.
No they watch it, just they judge it from today's standpoint.
Same problem with statues and monuments and history in general. When you judge a race from the finish line you never understand what was overcome to get there.
I would truly love the power to make someone go live a year in the 1850s. I bet a lot of attitudes would flip. 🙄
Women never try to "convince" anyone via honest means
its always bribery, emotional manipulation or straight out coercion
you begin to understand why most religious leaders in the past always said women do not belong in churches
This is probably the weirdest thing about the modern period. All previous religions were aimed at keeping women in check, the creation of families and had scriptures for men. With more and more scriptures for the more devout and studious men. Post industrial revolution the West is a bizarro mirrored version of this.
Bea did all three in the episode, lol.
I was just describing women in general and yet i managed to hit the nail on all 3 spots, lol.
This is literally just proof that Christianity is correct about women teaching and also about explicitly stating that there is no new revelation. While this was probably lost on the audience contemporary to the time, the correct response here would have been to tell both Howard and Bea to shut up and stop acting like emotional children.
Howard wasn't acting like a child. He's part of the Church Finance committee and suggests a prudent suggestion for the money. When he sees how important the robes are to Bea, he looks for a solution to help Bea and the foundation problem. I don't see what Howard did wrong or how he was being childish or emotional.
Flooding a building to fix a foundation issue is retarded and compromising the entire church to make your wife happy is childish.
You’re right about flooding the church to fix the foundation being retarded, but you obviously don’t know anything about the Andy Griffith Show. Aunt Bea isn’t anyone’s wife.
Sure fair enough, I'm just going by the OPs synopsis. The fact she's not even his wife actually makes this worse though unless I'm missing some crucial piece of the puzzle or something
You should watch it sometime. Other than a few Aunt Bea shenanigans, it’s a good show.
Where did I say anything about Bea being married?
You didn't, I just assumed it, but none of this has any relevance to my first post and in fact actually makes it worse as I outlined in my second post.
There was another episode with a similar premise; Howard and Aunt Bea are both running for some minor Mayberry political office, town council or the like. Howard proposes to spend taxpayer money wisely on much-needed town repairs, while Aunt Bea promises everybody the sun and the moon. Unsurprisingly, Howard wins.
I remember that episode. If I remember she was mostly running to have a female option. She didn’t have any plans or ambition, just the council needed someone with a vagina on it. And like you said Howard had ideas and ambition.
Aunt Bea ends up endorsing Howard I believe after she looks foolish in a debate. I've watched too much Andy Griffith, lol.
They pulled a lot of soft Bea feminist shit especially after the show switched to color.
The show never really got over Don Knotts’ departure. None of the replacement characters held a candle.
I would agree.
I thought Bea occasionally being a retard was supposed to be a purposeful knock on her actions
It could also have been because Andy Griffith and Frances Bavier, Bea’s actress, supposedly didn’t get along.
Her naivete fluctuates through the series. But to be fair most of the folks in Mayberry have floating naivete. Andy is supposed to be the character who is on top of things, but hides it beneath his folksy demeanor
Sounds like the writers understood women pretty well. A modern writer would've had Howard stealing the money and buying fentanyl with it, and the whole church would go under because "men are stupid."
Howard would have secretly had kids in the basement making meth and was lying about the foundation to make more room for his child slavery. And Bea would want robes so she could be naked underneath and had a fetish for rubbing against things in her robe
Isn't Aunt Bea supposed to be the villain of this episode and the ending is supposed to be tragicomic?
I feel like this isn't a mystery
Even if you viewed it as Bea as a villain how does that change anything about the portrayal of how men and women think?
It doesn't, but I don't think the episode should bug you
Or… what if it’s a stupid, nonsensical tv show?