As you can see from the photo this is one of the episodes that aired on CMT in the mid 1990s. They aired reruns of most of the later episodes. TNN, prior to that, had aired a lot of the 1970s and early 1980s episodes. RFD has aired Hee Haw ever since 2008 in chronological order from Season One onward and they're currently up to the year, 1980. The series aired new episodes every year from 1969 until 1992. In this 1990 episode I was delighted to see some sketches that I hadn't seen in years...particularly Kornfield Kops featuring Gordie Tapp and Phil Campbell (screen cap below). Also a highlight is Gailard Sartain's oily lawyer character appearing in a sketch called Biggs, Shy, and Stir.
I had forgotten about the cold opening of the series in this era of it's history. The show opens with a brief exchange by Gordie Tapp and Roni Stoneman as Laverne and Ida Lee and after the comic zinger the opening of the show begins.
To save on air-time, perhaps, the cast was introduced in pairs of two instead of one after the other. By this time Mike Snider had become cast in most roles that would have gone to the late Junior Samples while Dub Taylor had taken over the Judge character previously played by Archie Campbell (whose son, Phil, had become a cast-member by this time). The gospel quartet segment is seen midway through the episode rather than at the end. A sketch I'd forgotten about is The Unlikely Brothers, a spoof of The Odd Couple. The sketch features Jeff Smith (the neat one) and Phil Campbell (the messy one)...the difference being these two are portraying siblings while Felix and Oscar of The Odd Couple were mismatched room-mates. There are a couple of other later episodes of Hee Haw on YouTube that I hadn't been able to see yet but rest assured I'll watch them once I publish this blog entry!!
