Happy Friday! TGIF and all that! How about a guest post from writer Brian of the Six Feet Under Hollywood Blog?
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In 2015, The Dukes of Hazzard was removed from broadcast
television after 30 years of commercial syndication. The move was not an unexpected one, as the
series, which originally aired on CBS from 1979-1985, was under increasing
scrutiny for its use of Confederate flag imagery and symbolism. Once the most heavily merchandised series in
television history, Dukes merchandise was now being pulled from shelves
across the country, following a racially motivated mass shooting event in South
Carolina.
Since then, the series has only been available via Amazon Prime, but that’s not
to say that the fine folks of Hazzard County have been permanently banned from
American airwaves. One hidden gem still
airs to this day – an often-overlooked episode of Alice.
The year was 1983, and the hit sitcom, which also aired on CBS, was kicking
off its eighth season. The episode,
which was entitled “Mel is Hogg-Tied,” premiered on Sunday, October 2.
It brought two of Hazzard County’s finest citizens more than 1,800 miles to
Phoenix, Arizona, for reasons I’ll speculate on later. For now, we are told that Dukes mainstay Boss
J.D. Hogg is a distant cousin of Alice regular Jolene Honeycutt. It’s a rather flimsy excuse to bring these
two series together. Regardless, it
works beautifully.
Boss Hogg meets his long-lost cousin, Jolene Honeycutt
(left). Enos is instantly smitten with Mel's other waitress, Vera, who
similarly seems charmed by Hazzard County’s oldest living virgin.
Once
in Phoenix, Boss Hogg, joined by honest Hazzard lawman Enos Strate, takes a
liking to Mel’s Diner, the setting for this series about waitresses who dream
of bigger things. Boss offers to lease
the diner from owner Mel Sharples, hoping to turn his Hazzard restaurant, the
Boar’s Nest, into a national franchise.
At first, Mel declines, but Boss offers him a tidy sum to sweeten the
offer. Mel happily signs Boss’s
contract, having neglected to read the fine print.
Fast
forward one week, and the diner has been re-themed as the “Boars Nest
West.” Where it was once famous for
Mel’s chili, it now features traditional Hazzard fare, including hog jowls and
pig’s feet. The new menu seems to be a
hit with the customers, as the diner is busier than we’ve seen in other
episodes. Most noticeably, Mel is now
sporting an all-white suit just like Boss.
Mel discovers that he has accidentally sold the diner to
Boss for $1 (left). The re-theming
includes a stuffed Boar’s head (right).
Enos stops by the diner after a week of site-seeing to spend time with
Vera. He tells her that Boss has been
busy buying up real estate on the block, with plans to build a new shopping
mall. At first the gang is overjoyed at
the business this will mean for the diner, until Boss arrives and admits that
the diner will be demolished long before then.
Unbeknownst to Mel, the contract contains a provision allowing Boss to
buy the diner for just $1 – and he’s here to collect.
Alice, who has always been the brains of this outfit (it is her show after
all), soon devises a plan to get the diner back from Boss. In a move never before seen in this series,
Vera breaks the fourth wall and outlines the plan for us.
Taking a page from
Boss’s own playbook, Alice enlists diner regular Artie, who works as a construction
contractor, to pay a visit to the diner, with his cement mixer in tow. The gang threaten to fill Boss’s prized
Cadillac with wet cement unless he tears up the contract and gives the diner
back. Boss reluctantly agrees, but Enos
accidentally turns the machine on anyway, filling the Caddie with cement and
trapping Boss in the process. The two
decide to head back to Hazzard, bringing this episode of Alice to a
close.
Vera outlines Alice’s plan for the viewers (left). Boss decides to leave Phoenix after giving up
the diner and nearly drowning in cement (right).
Observations
- The Alice series currently airs on Antenna TV weekday afternoons at 3:00.
- This episode came at a time when The Dukes of Hazzard was trying to reclaim some of its former ratings glory, following a walkout by series leads Tom Wopat and John Schneider. By this point, the two had returned to the series, but the Nielsen ratings would never recover. Contrarily, Alice was still a top 10 show at the time, so its possible that this episode was used as a vehicle to re-ignite interest in Hazzard County.
- The fact that Vera provides narration for the plan, something never before done on Alice, suggests to me an homage to Hazzard County’s Balladeer, Waylon Jennings, who provided similar service for The Dukes of Hazzard.
- Not only did both series air on CBS, but they were also both produced at Warner Brothers on the same lot.
- Back in Season 7’s “The Secret of Mel’s Diner,” the gang discovered buried treasure. When asked what she’ll do with her share, Jolene replied that she’ll buy a souped-up stock car like the General Lee, even mentioning Bo Duke by name. Does that line create an anachronism for this episode? It’s possible that she was referring to people she knew from back home or to characters from a beloved TV show.
- It’s a shame that diner regular Charlie, played by Ted Gehring, doesn’t appear in this episode. Not only was he a two-time guest star on Dukes, but he also provided those “tonight on the Dukes” voice-overs at the start of every episode.
- It was only appropriate that Boss ended his visit by falling into wet cement, as he frequently fell into lakes, ponds, and mudbanks back in Hazzard. In fact, he once fell into wet cement back there too!
- Eagle-eyed viewers will spot a few Confederate flags in the diner during this episode.
- While Enos is wearing his standard Hazzard County uniform, he’s also sporting a name tag that was never seen back in Hazzard. In fact, it comes from the uniform Sonny Shroyer wore on his spin-off series Enos. I’d like to think that he kept the name tag and snuck it on for this episode.
Check out Brian's Six Feet Under Hollywood Blog for more musings on classic TV shows and their stars -- and maybe some modern ones, too!
