Andy and the New Mayor

Okay, at least where I live the Mayor is an elected official of the CITY and the Sheriff is an elected official of the COUNTY. The Mayor has absolutely zero authority over the Sheriff. This episode annoys me on other levels besides this. The cute small town feel is very much lacking in this episode. The main reason I like to watch The Andy Griffith Show is to forget about political things that is shoved on us from almost every television channel. I want the peaceful, innocent feel of Mayberry. It is very lacking in this lackluster offering from Season Three. And while on I am on the topic of Season Three, I cannot stand Andy's girlfriend Peggy. She is very annoying in my opinion.

The new mayor walks in and decides everything being done at the Sheriff's office is wrong. To rule followers, he has a point. But there is more to it than that. We have seen Andy run his office by the seat of his pants and upstaged several who were on his case (including his own deputy). This episode lacks much fun, but it has a message.

This is the first episode to feature Parley Baer as Mayor Roy Stoner, an antagonistic character in the mold of local businessman Ben Weaver. This mayor is pushy, bossy, condescending and he makes you want to see how Andy will eventually put him in his place. This episode starts with Andy getting ready to release a prisoner early so he can get his crops in. Andy's common sense approach clashes with the Mayor's "by the book" approach when Stoner forbids Andy to release the man before his sentence is up. Of course Andy lets the man go with the understanding that he return in a few days once he finishes with his crops. In the meantime the Mayor discovers Andy has gone against his instructions and decides to wait in the Sheriff's office with Andy and Barney for the mans return. When he doesn't return at 3pm as promised, the three of them take a ride out to the prisoner's farm to see what happened. In between all this there are funny scenes with Barney who is so intimidated by the new mayor, he reacts nervously every times he comes in contact with him. It has been said that Andy Griffith never liked the character of the Mayor which is probably why he only appears in a half dozen or so episodes. Regardless, this a funny episode that marks the debut of a colorful new recurring character.

Would it have been too much to see Andy Punch the blowhard in the mouth and knock him on his keester?

I wanted to punch him in the mouth and I'm not usually a violent person.

I didn't like this episode because it just ticked me off knowing that there are people like this that get away with this kind of behavior all the time.

...go down to the corner where you see the three dogs laying in the road, turn right... then, go a little ways where you see a big rock that looks like a bear and turn left. Go down the crooked road, crookidy, crookidy, crookidy and look for the big oak tree that fell over. If you get to the creek, you went too far.

... because one elected official - Mayor Stoner- has no authority over a different elected official - Sheriff Andy Taylor - especially when one was elected by the town of Mayberry (the mayor) and the other (the sheriff) was elected by the county. But if the show's purpose is just to make the new mayor into an arrogant jerk so that the cast had at least one chronic antagonist then I'd say that they succeeded brilliantly.

As for the plot, Mayor Stoner doesn't like the informal way that Andy runs his office. He doesn't like his record keeping, nor the fact that he is unarmed, nor that he lets a moonshiner out on parole for three days to harvest his crops. The Mayor demands that the moonshiner stay in jail and finish his sentence. Andy lets him out anyways, reasoning that the prisoner is so poor all he really has going for him is his word, and if he acts like that is no good then he's really taken everything from the man.

To be fair, the Mayor doesn't directly threaten Andy's job - over which he has no control. Instead he talks about reports he's having sent to the capitol, and talks about sending an unfavorable report to Raleigh concerning the sheriff's office if Andy doesn't start doing things differently.

The catalyst for this change was the death of actor Dick Elliott, in 1961, who had played Mayor Pike as a somewhat irascible fellow, but not as nearly as negative a character as Mayor Stoner would be.