>>>What would TAGS been like with Jerry Miller and no Warren Ferguson?<<<
I believe Jerry Miller would have been a more successful replacement for Barney Fife. For one, his character was distinct from Barney in that he was more low-key and laid-back as opposed to Barney's high-strung, persnickety personality, which Warren shared. Also, he was a more sympathetic character than Warren. I think this had to do more with the actors playing the roles. If you look at just about any character Jerry Van Dyke has played through the years, it was a likeable one. Jerry Van Dyke has an endearing quality that comes through in his acting. Jack Burns could be very funny, but he didn't have the same quality. Instead, he tended to come across as annoying more than sympathetic. This may have also been partly the way his role was written. But Don Knotts was always able to imbue Barney Fife with a vulnerability that made him loveable even when, at times, he could be quite annoying. An example of this is "The Case of the Punch in the Nose." I actually get pretty exasperated with Barney's single-minded persistence in completing the investigation so the case can be closed. Sometimes I just want Andy to throttle him! (Which proves what a great actor Don Knotts was.) But at the end, after Andy resolves the feud between Floyd and Mr. Foley and Barney finds out it wasn't handled officially, he stalks out of the courthouse saying, "It's just as open as it ever was!" Now, if he had said this angrily, we would have had no sympathy for him. But, no, Don Knotts has Barney deliver his line in a little-boy whine that we find endearing and funny, despite knowing he's going to go out and start trouble all over again. This was the genius of Don Knotts that he was able to play a character like Barney Fife and make him totally sy mpathetic and not annoying. Though I don't mean to take anything away from Jack Burns, he just wasn't able to pull this off with Warren. Who knows, however, what he might have been able to do with Warren if he'd had more time to develop the character? He did have his sympathetic moments, such as the episode where he's a sleepwalker. Still, Jerry Van Dyke had already developed the sweet-but-bumbling character that he used for Jerry Miller. It was the same type of character he played as Rob's younger brother Stacy in "The Dick Van Dyke Show." So--bottom line--I personally feel that Jerry Miller could have been a more successful replacement for Barney Fife than Warren Ferguson was. Thelma Lou (Janet) _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list [email protected] http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
