The Shivaree

A terrific episode made even better by the great Bruce Davison. Olivia's late friend's daughter, also named Olivia, is getting married and the family is hosting the wedding. Her groom Bob Hill (Davison) is a high-strung fussy type, which doesn't bode well as the locals are planning a shivaree, a quaint rural custom that involves kidnapping the groom and dumping him in the woods. All hell breaks loose and Olivia and Bob's young marriage is immediately on the rocks. It would've been easy to make Bob a two-dimensional antagonist, a la Frank Burns, but Davison's outstanding performance lends an empathy that most actors wouldn't have found. A couple of standout scenes: the shivaree itself, with Ike Godsey, Yancy Tucker, Horace Brimley and Zack Roswell in all their hillbilly hootin' and hollerin' glory, and the funny (and RACY) bit of dialogue between John and Olivia concerning their children's honeymoons. Don't miss it.

Susan Hathaway said it better than I could. It was barbaric at best. And one big BIG mistake that the writers made was letting John Baby boss everybody around like he was a parent. At times it seemed like Olivia might have some very backwoods ideas about country living.

Last night, it was time for me to watch the next Waltons episode on my DVD collection. I couldn't remember everything from this episode, but remembered that I'd always enjoyed "The Shivaree."

Happy to say that I enjoyed it just as much after so many years.

Granted, the episode does have its weak moments, but that's just quibbling. I love the plot, wherein a groom-to-be arrives from the big city of Richmond, VA to be wed in the back country known as Walton's Mountain....and the problems that develop as a result of The Shivaree, and from his rather rigid ways of living life.

The ending is especially warm and wonderful.

This episode is another of those that make me love this show so very much.

This was an infuriating episode that glaringly illustrates the folly of revering tradition for its own sake because some traditions are barbaric. The city-slicker bridegroom is expected to embrace "country traditions," such as being kidnapped and dumped in the woods on his wedding night, and to take everything with good humor and "no hard feelin's," while NOBODY in the little community that has suddenly been revealed as populated by a bunch of ignorant hillbillies is required to take any notice of the young man's own feelings and his anger and repulsion at being treated so horribly. Even the bride's family keep laughing at him for not wanting to be brutalized.

Despite the deliberate misconstruction of another reviewer of this episode, my point is that the "city feller" was commanded to understand the point of view of people who refused to try to understand his and bullied when he couldn't.

The review written above me by Ms. Hathaway is supremely ironic, and reads like many of the modern city dwellers of the Northeast who flee en masse from the urban, overtaxed, polluted, overrated, crime ridden, and prohibitively expensive hell of their own making, and demand that the entire culture adapts to them. The condescension toward people she fails to accept as equals, and the slur of "ignorant hillbillies," places her roundaboutly in the position of the groom in the script. Only, without the redeemable qualities and healing of the community over the misunderstanding.

Unlike the community of Walton's Mountain, I would be more inclined to shouting "Yankee, go home!"

I would recommend this episode out of the need to see pure human drama over well-meant cultural misunderstandings. 10/10 stars.