The Controversies of The Dukes of Hazzard: Never Meanin' No Harm
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- Опубліковано 31 січ 2025
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The Dukes of Hazzard is a tv series that ran from 1979 to 1985 and was, at one time, on of the biggest licenses out there with toys, apparel, snacks, games and more.
It was also not without controversies, both back when the show first aired and much much later.
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All I know is that between Dukes of Hazard, A-Team, Knight Rider, and ChiPs, it's amazing that my entire generation hasn't been wiped out in botched high-speed chases.
Even as children, we knew it was fantasy. The critics never understood that, they thought the shows were documentaries.
You forgot Magnum P.I. and Simon and Simon
@@Conner3030those two shows were too adult. ✌️
@@Conner3030 as a millennial and 90's baby I have no idea what you're talking about 😂😂😂
@@kdusel1991 Well if you like escapist TV shows and know and like the ones Forced Feedback was talking I highly recommend both.
A footnote that means zero to anyone: when I watched this series as a kid, I knew I wanted a Bassett hound and to call him Flash. Around 25 years later, that childhood dream came true. He lived a long 15yrs. He was a great dog.
Truly does! Still sweet, tho!
I had a basset hound named Flash when I was a kid. He was such a sweet dog. He thought he could talk. Like he'd bark at you like he was carrying on a conversation. He lived about 8-10 years. I think my neighbor poisoned him because he barked so much. Man, I miss that dog.
❤ Flash really humanized Sheriff Roscoe. Whatever mess that guy got himself into, even when he had it coming to him, nobody ever wanted his hound to be collateral damage.
🙏RIP Flash🙏
RIP ⚡
My sister and I used to sit with our dad in his recliner. Whenever the General Lee would go in the air he would recline all the way back and yell like the Dukes making us go into hysterical fits of laughter.
What a cool memory.
That's a very awesome memory to have.
I'm a person of color from New York and my family and I have been fans of this show since it first debuted. My father, mother, two sisters and I would watch The Dukes religiously and never missed an episode. Even when we traveled down to South Jersey to visit the grandparents, we'd even watch it at their house because my grandparents loved the show as well. Boss Hogg was my grandmother's favorite. To anyone that claims this show was racist in any way shape or form, clearly never actually watched it.
I'm all grown up now and I STILL watch this show on a regular basis since I own all 7 seasons on DVD sets. I recently started watching again from the beginning a few months ago and I'm currently on season 7 - episode 4.
I must admit... season 5 with the episodes with Coy & Vance, I don't even bother to watch those. Season 7 is my 2nd least favorite season. This is when things got really silly and unrealistic, imo, but I still watch it, although with less enthusiasm.
At any rate, The Dukes of Hazzard will always be in MY top 10 favorite TV shows of all-time!
It was not racist at all; I sensed none of it, and my parents bought me the toys. If is were racists, my parents would not have done that or have me watch it.
I wish there was a bigger like button coz I really dug this A LOT! Classic series from my childhood as a black hispanic kid. Still love it to this day.
Actor Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg) was quite an amazing person - classically trained actor, long career on broadway and movies, BUT also was fluent in English, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Italian, proficient in at least five languages more, AND was CounterIntelligence in the Korean War. Yet was best known for playing a corrupt goofball in a white suit and driving a huge white deVille with Bull Horns.
He was such a good man. Just really kind to everyone.
James Best was also a great man.
When he made an appearance he would be in character. There's a Christmas Parade on UA-cam from 1985 or so that has him in it. He is addressed as Sorrell Brooke but he was in Character as Boss Hogg.
It's like how Christopher Lee was a nazi hunter in WWII, a classically trained actor, and yet starred in everything from cinematic classics to Hammer horror movies absolute unbelievably bad dreck and also heavy metal music videos.
Some people do a lot with their early lives and then keep RIGHT ON doing a lot until they shuffle off.
Actually very true
One of my favorite lines said to Daisy Duke by one of the Duke boys: If we weren't cousins I'd marry you.
Daisy: That never stopped our family before.
😛
The real southern pride...
Betcha the line got a BIG OL' laugh from the audience at the time! And yet strangely people still claim not to understand why "certain words" are off-limits to them, even though if a "stuck-up city boy" told the same joke, they'd beat his Yankee ass.
🤣😅😆
@@Alucard-A-La-Carte"stuck up Yankees" say that kind of stuff all the time, and have for many decades.
Your using a strawman to justify the suppression of Constitutionally acknowledged liberty.
The thing some folks forget is that those of us who watched this show had no internet. We were regional beings in a way that is hard for some to comprehend.
Not just regional. We only had a few channels.
Yep, Dukes of Hazzard and Andy Grifffith reruns were the only analog for small town life on tv we had.
I grew up in the 90s but low income & my family ysed to watch all this stuff, kids had to wait for adults to be busy to watch our stuff.
I remember this matlock andy Griffith, walker when that was on lol
Problem ain't that ya believed dem boys meant no harm, problem is so many o' ya kin dun got triggered by simply bein' corrected or told to think a lil' deeper, fella!
And we watched them either once a week, or once a day for 4 or 5 days in syndication (but not always every day due to other things going on).
Which is a way different experience than sitting down to binge watch a bunch of them in one sitting.
That is where I think you start to notice things like "oh hey, they really only have like 4 or 5 different plots they just keep reusing" or "oh hey continuity isn't really a thing" and so forth.
Dan Larson: "It's to look at the the History of the Dukes of Hazzard."
::guitar twang and harmonica tune:::
Narrator: "Hold on, this is gonna be a big one."
😂😂
Perfection 😂
I totally read that in the narrator's voice. Lol
Now them Duke boys never meant no harm, but like a certain carpenter from a certain time: their followers mighta gotten the message a bit muddled.
RIP Waylon... He's up in heaven giving Waylonisms on all of us...
Nobody moved until the credits were over and Roscoe’s last “Goog-gyug-gyug-yeew !” I liked how even though Boss, Roscoe and Cleetus fought the Dukes, they all went over to Jessie’s for Christmas. Enos would live there if it was up to him.
I believe that he was saying, Kew Kew Kew Kew.
Boss Hogg was also in the closing credits in season 2 saying, "THEM DUKES, THEM DUKES!"
@wwetnabamafan194 correct.
My wife just gave me the complete box set for Christmas and now you post this! I'm as happy as a Hog in the Boar's Nest!
There were two TV shows my brother (7 years my senior) and I would watch together: Dukes of Hazzard and CHiPs. We’d reenact Dukes of Hazzard with matchbox cars in the backyard, and we’d ride side by side on our bikes and play “CHiPs”. He was Bo or Ponch, I was Luke or Jon. Many, many good memories around both those shows.
Dan should try to do Chips. I remember the full size action figures. How funny it would be to know someone playing with the Chips pulling over Barbies corvette.
@OldManTheseDays I still have my Mego 8" Dukes and Chips figures. I also still own all of the Mego 3 3/4 " Dukes figures and General Lee. I was (and still am) a big fan of both shows when I was a kid.
I've always thought that the box office success of Smokey and the Bandit in 1977 was another factor that made CBS want to create the Dukes. Even though Moonrunners came before, Smokey was a huge hit that incorporated the elements of southern good ol' boy outlaw heroes, corrupt and incompetent law enforcement, muscle cars, chases, car stunts, CB radio chatter. The Dukes brought all of those elements to a weekly TV series.
I think it's fair to say that Dukes was very much in line with the zeitgeist of North America at the time
Agreed. “Best movie ever made!” 🏆
I remember one reviewer referred to it at a "13-week Burt Reynolds movie."
James Best was responsible for the change in Roscoe's character from menacing to comically bumbling. He didn't want any of his young fans to be afraid of law enforcement personnel.
Roscoe was no joke in the earlier episodes, but I was more scared of Best's performance in the film Sounder. He was a jerk in that film.
@@Supremmohe played a pretty evil character in the movie “Rolling Thunder”.
William Devane and a few others also starred in it.
Made in the mid 70’s.
@ Right around the same time as Sounder. He knows how to play evil and sinister well.
Isn't sad hiow Now a Days they do everything in their Power to make Kids afraid of Police?
@ Not really but ok
James Avery, Uncle Phil in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, was in an episode where he was unjustly sent to a prison work farm and the Duke boys helped him get justice after they were also sent there with Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe.
Yep!!
bro they were the original antifa, technically with all the molotov cocktails and dynamite arrows they hurled at The Man
Cool hand Bo and Luke
James Avery was such a badass in his career.
As far as I was concerned, it was The Catherine Bach Show, too often interrupted by a bunch of idiots running around chasing each other
Pretty much how I read superhero comics in the '90s...
I concur, much in the same way that
The Fall Guy was The Heather Thomas Show
Married With Children was The Christina Applegate Show
Who's The Boss was the Alyssa Milano Show
Maude was The Adrienne Barbeau Show
and so on...
Mom grew up as a black girl in Jim Crow Mississippi.
She loved the Dukes of Hazzard, as I did. Would get up at 6AM to watch it in syndication on Saturday mornings. Had Panini stickers on my bed from the show, and had a Gen. Lee (flag and all, Zoomers) that I brought to school for show-n-tell.
Like seriously! Them Duke boys were the freaking GOOD GUYS! Boss Hogg and Roscoe were cool too!
I liked the show too, even had some of the toys, but why you gotta flex at the Zoomers like that when you bring up the car? (speaking as someone on the edge of Gen X/Millennial) It’s not like the only people who ever had a problem with the “General Lee” were born after 1997 or something. Even the movie from 2005 acknowledged that.
@@austintrousdale2397 Yeah, it's more like 95% of the people that whine about it.
@@austintrousdale2397 Because today they are the ones who like to virtue signal about it.
@@tomigun5180 Everything is "virtue signaling" now. You can't just genuinely be against something.
Also, did they really ask anybody back then?
This show was my absolute favorite show as a kid. Growing up over time and learning the meaning behind the flag and General Lee changed nothing. To this day I watch this show repeatedly. The changing of Bo and Luke did indeed make me tune out. Great videos guys
I'm black and I will forever love this show and the toys. Even as a young child back then I never got racist vibes.
I'm Native American and grew up on that show and always remember the Dukes helping people of all colors, They were never racist.
It certainly did it’s job of normalizing and obfuscating the history of the Confederate Battle Flag and the name General Lee.
I do find it interesting that from the end of the Civil War till the 1950’s as a response to the Civil Rights Movement, the Confederate Battle Flag was not flown. The revival of the use of the Confederate Flag is tied directly to white supremacist reaction to the Civil Rights Movement.
The Duke’s of Hazard’s use of it falls more to the other prong of the Daughters of the Confederacy “rebranding” of the Civil War not about Slavery, but about State’s Rights. Just the Southern States’ Rights though, as they didn’t like the fact the Federal Government wouldn’t enforce Southern Laws requiring Northern Free States from return their escaped property.
Hate can adopt any symbol they want, abandoning something as simple as a flag or as spectacular as a 69 dodge charger is just encouraging people to continue their hate. I'm just a dumb old Trailer Billy but my experience with hate and racism has always told me that ignoring them works better than giving them a platform for their hate.
@@imbadwrenchhaven’t watched the show but by all accounts it seems like they never made it a point to glorify it or encourage its message, which is admirable in a way at least, for the older time period especially I’m surprised it was more tame
@ I get that, look at poor Pepe Frog.
However let’s be honest, the Confederate Battle Flag was created for the express purpose of Killing Citizens & Military members of the Untied States of America and those sympathetic to their cause. Any other use is purely whitewashing it’s creation and it’s modern uses
It was HUGE over here in England in the 70's, I remember being dead jealous a kid at school had a General Lee Wrist Racer [Clockwork car]
"Straightenin' the curves
Flattenin' the hills
Someday the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will,,,"
"Makin' their way the only way they know how
That's just a little bit more than the law will allow"
Not a bad critique. I am impressed that you did not shy away from the confederate flag controversy. No only did you lean into it, but you kept the commentary balanced. As a kid, I watched Dukes, but when the Clones of Hazzard arrived, it was a wrap for me. Knight Rider on 9:00 (82-83) season was some amazing counter programming by NBC that season. Knight Rider was supposed to fail against Dallas but instead, it took DOH’s audience. Great critique.
I met Ben "Cooter" Jones at the Buffalo Auto Show when I was a kid and he signed an autographed picture of him and the General Lee for me. My parents hated the fact that I loved watching that show so much but between that and Knight Rider it was all we had for entertainment. LOL
They addressed this in the show!! They said "Duke boys died on BOTH sides of that war."
I thought that was a perfect way to illustrate a civil war: EVERYBODY was fighting.
Guess not all the writing was bad, then
Every boy I knew had a General Lee of some sort, usually the Hot Wheels version. And our gravel driveways were whole courses for the General Lee to do imaginary stunts - that always ended up with us dragging out the plywood and cinder blocks for us to start doing jumps on our bikes.
Hearing a bunch of cars racing outside in the distance really adds to the ambience of this video. Loved the research you put into this- one of my favorite shows as a kid. up there with the A-Team, Night Court, and Taxi!
I used to think you could make any car jump a ravine as long as you yelled "yeee haaa!"
I got to say, I never would have thought a UA-cam channel focused on fun, pop culture would give some of the most insightful viewpoints of racism, the South, etc in a way that was cognizant of everyone, but did not come across as pandering. In all sincerity, Dan, you and your team knocked it out of the park....on a lot of levels with this one! Thank you for being honest, insightful, and as always, fun!
This show was only made for the sake of the car stunts, and in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with that.
And Daisy's shorts.
Except it's hard to find an intact model of that car now on account of how many they totalled. Lol
There surely is not
TV critics back then had such weird complaints.
Yet it had a great cast and soundtrack. Appreciated how many of the actors were authentically Southern ✌️
This was a favorite growing up. Thank you.
Random bits:
Recent late-night channel surfing found me watching an episode of Alice where Boss Hogg and Enos showed up.
Hallmark's 2014 ornament "Jumpin' General Lee" solved the flag controversy by covering the roof with debris.
Growing up in Texas in the 80's, I was a big fan of Dukes of Hazzard. As I got older Daisy Duke became my main reason to watch it. I still enjoy it today.
Daisy was the delicious looking(and well dressed) cherry on top!
The show was as benign as F. Slavery was never mentioned, politics or anything racist.
Dan, can't believe you missed this. Before the film came out I did some research. Gy Waldron based Moonrunners and Dukes on real life experience; the voters decided to end the sheriff's pension, which is why Coltraine in the first season and in the film became corrupt. James Best played it far less goofy in the first season. Also, a mechanic friend told me the General's paint is officially Corvette Red, but with white primer instead of black.
The useless info acquired over a half century...
I loved this show as a kid, and I had no idea the writing was bad.
Well, until the end. Even at 8 years old, I knew that putting an alien in an episode because E.T. was a big hit was bad.
I don't remember that commercial, but I 100% remember playing with the Happy Meal General Lee on the curb in front of my grandmother's house! And I remember getting up at 6am to watch the Duke Boys on Saturday morning, before the cartoons started.
When I was little I thought his name was _"Roscoe Peekoltrane"_ because of the way he said it.
Haha me too!
His middle name was Purvis which is an awesome name!
I wolud love to see a marathon video of all of the action tv shows you've covered. Knight Rider, Automan, MacGyver, Dukes of Hazard, and more!
most of those are still shown on tv
Of all of that, what sticks out to me the most is not really related to the show: MCDONALD'S HAD COLLECTABLE HAPPY MEAL BOXES??
They did several runs including a batch with UFOs. I think Dukes was the only licensed ones they had though.
Yeah, I was pretty shocked to learn this as well. Perhaps it was a regional thing? I was just a kid at that time, but surely I would have remembered Dukes of Hazzard Happy Meal boxes.
Yes, and they were awesome. I kept my General Lee one for most of my childhood.
REAALLY well done video on what I’m sure was a difficult topic to tackle at all. Kudos and thank you, sir. As a long time Dukes fan (who now feels very complicated about the entire damn thing).
If you feel complicated about something this silly, you have been brainwashed by the woke cult and you desperately need deprogramming.
“Ooo, what a horrendous crash. Are you alright Flash?” 🚗🚓💥🐶
😌 Flash was Roscoe’s plot armor
It was basically a live action cartoon. I loved the show as any 80 kid did. The car was the coolest thing ever, next to Ecto-1, KITT, and the Keaton batmobile
One of the best shows ever, for young kids yearning for fantasy action, adventures, great country music, amazing stunts, and comedic moments, that ended with a little morality lesson. It wasn't meant to be anything else than that, so if you're going to try and compare it to The Grapes of Wrath, or Citizen Cane, you're missing the entire point.
Virginia boy and I have a story. Around the time of the Dukes of Hazzard reboot movie my partner and I relocated to Edmondton, Alberta, Canada so she could go to grad school. The first week was rough. We had to acclimate physically to the thin air, our apartment wasn't going to be available for a week, our arrangement for a place to crash fell through, and we were going to have to blow our emergency money on a hostel for the rest of the time. I was screamed at in the street by a mime. Reread that. That happened. And when we landed in our filthy room at the hostel for the first time I turned to my partner and said, "At least we'll never hear a car horn play Dixie ever again." And in THAT MOMENT a car horn played Dixie. It was the most surreal moment of my entire life. I can only attribute this to the movie having recently been in theaters.
Great timing as I just found out from different interviews I watched yesterday that it could have been Gerald McRaney and Dennis Quaid as the Dukes. What a different world that would have been!
Yay Thanks for the upload Dan and Co 🎉😊
I highly recommend the great membership available to this channel -- the member episodes are really great, and it's such a small amount to support a wonderful show.
I was born in ‘75, so you can say I grew up with this show, watching it from my little hovel in Southeastern KY. At that time, a lot of my classmates wanted to believe it was situated in nearby Hazard, KY even though we knew it was GA. Toy wise, I had the MEGO dolls of Bo and Luke, a die cast car set, slot car set and a General Lee and barn play set. Various male classmates would pretend their car doors couldn’t open and just casually slide in and out of the passenger side. Silly show? Yes. Great fun for pre-pubescent boys in the conservative Reagan era? Definitely. I did get to meet Sonny Shroyer at a Cub Scout jamboree in ‘84 and he was all decked out in his Enos outfit and very nice to us all. Excellent video!
I had that slot car set. Neither car EVER landed that jump correctly. Lol
I had it too. Never made those dang ol jumps either
I really liked their crossover episode with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos: "The Dukes of Al-Hazred"
Loved it as a child. Still love it to this day.
Great video! My mom loved the show when she was growing up, so I grew up watching reruns and on DVD.
The Mild Success, Failure and Disappearance Of Unhappily Ever After
Replacing Beau and Luke with two other guys was a massive disaster.
Even the cover of the Season 5 DVD only has Daisy on the picture.
Nothing wrong with her being on the cover alone
Coy Duke and Vance Duke.
For bonus fun, look up the early 80s Saturday Morning cartoon preview where Boss Hogg is trying to take down Scott Baio for some reason. This happened.
8:52 *guitar strum* 'Well right about then that Dan feller pondered just how exactly he'd be dancin' round this here topic. He figured, 'shoot, I blow this and it's back to straight toy collectin' for me. No more UA-cam.... Dang.'*fade out*
Very entertaining, thorough, and informative coverage of a show i couldn't give a crap about. Well done once again 👏
I remember in the pilot episode they managed to slip in a "kissing cousins" joke with Luke and Daisy. I was like, "They really went there"?
Fun Fact: Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg) went to Yale and spoke multiple languages.
As a kid, I remember wanting the toy version of their car. My grandmother was like nope. Lol I didn't realize it was a rolling Confederate flag.
I bet your grandmother would have been shocked by Pastor Troy back in the day
@@AnthonyFord-zc9fl cool non sequitur
@@AnthonyFord-zc9fl Says some one who gets shocked by "woke" and other invented enemies.
I literally picked up the DVD set Last week or 2 !! Secret Galaxy greatness
great purchase. I have the set as well. It will never be on streaming, so I wanted to have a physical set.
1:58 “it’s 2025” I die a little more whenever someone says that 😂
Once again y'all tap heavily into my nostalgia fix ! Thanks for the guide down memory lane.
Tom Wopat made an appearance on Smallville also. Not a great episode of that show but it was fun seeing him alongside John Schneider. They probably had a blast filming together.
Great episode covering a lot of concepts and concerns. Thank you Dan.
18:52 The data SHOW! Yes, thank you for the subject-verb agreement.
Every child of 80s remembers Dukes of Hazzard.... Yeah it wasn't the most intellectual of shows, but it did have a freaking cool car.
This took me back to playing with my set of Dukes of Hazard cars on the rug while the show ran on the TV. I always knew it was time for bed when the opening to Dallas started. I must have seen that intro 100 times. To this day I've never actually watched an entire episode of Dallas. Thanks for dealing with the iconography of the General Lee with a nuanced explanation of where we were compared to where we are. On another note is Knight Rider to Dukes of Hazzard what GI Joe: A Real American Hero is to He-Man Masters of the Universe?
Oh my God... I actually had that McDonald's General Lee Happy Meal box as a kid. I also had those Dukes of Hazzard Wrist Racers (Stunt cars that you twist!🎵) seen at 14:26 . I thought they were the coolest thing ever at the time. I completely forgot that they were things that ever existed and I never would have thought about them ever again had I not watched this video.
A funny thing was I wanted the Coleco Knight Rider Power Cycle because it had the cool "spin-out" lever that looked awesome on TV, so what did I end up getting instead? The Dukes of Hazzard Power Cycle, ALSO with a spin out lever, which never ended up working as good as it did in the ads.
Great episode very well done as usual thanks for all your videos 😎😸🤘
I have fond memories of the Dukes of Hazzard. I remember watching it with my older brother and then going outside to help him build his '69 charger.
I’m old so I also watched this show, too young _to not_ believe that anything _live action_ and as dry as this program was could be anything other than _the most_ sophisticated television.
My Aunt would buy me several tiny, plastic, wind-up General Lee’s, with a smile, despite growing up through the Civil Rights movement in a family large enough to remember it unfolding. For my folks most of the worlds problems could be blended into being caused by _the usual suspects…_ as they might put it… but it didn’t end or stop their enjoyment of working with people, diversity and programming.
Great Stuff, as always.
One of the greatest and continued successes of "The Dukes of Hazzard" is undoubtedly the fashion of the "Daisy Dukes" high-cut shorts. The iconic shorts even inspired a song called "Dazzey Duks" (spelling altered because of copyright concerns) performed by the group "Duice." The song, released in 1993, would reach #12 on Billboard's Hot 100 that year as well as obtaining the #16 spot on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles for 1993.
To date, shorts cut in the same fashion as Catherine Bach had created them for the show are still called "Daisy Dukes."
The theme song is one of the best ever for a TV show.
The whole family would sit down and watch this when it was in its prime.
Mindless fun defines the 80s.
A decade full of innocence, like running a bootleg distillery.
I still remember seeing the first episode as kid at my mawmaw’s. I loved The Dukes.
Being in the south… Those were like the people in my hometown. And jumping cars!
It hit the 8yr olds the right way!
Thast was the most fair description of the history of that symbol/flag I've heard. Well done
Every Friday night at 8pm, my Grandmother and I were locked into an hour of Hazzard County hijinks on channel 10 CBS here in Philadelphia. Great Times!
I had a professor in college who was from the UK. He told us how "The Dukes of Hazzard" aired in the late afternoon in the UK, with the other childrens' programming. When he came the U.S., he was absolutely mortified that it aired during prime time and adults watched it.
I live in Glasgow, Scotland. Born in '75 i grew up watching American telly and i loved the Duke boys (loved Daisy more lol) and when those wind up cars came out i wanted them soooooo bad lol
Great memories, thanks Toy Galaxy
Another great episode. I was sick with chicken pox when Dukes premiered, I was 5 and loved it. Had the wrist racers and the slot car set. Then it was all about Knight Rider for me.
Love this show growing up and I still love it now that I had a friend of mine back in the mid 2000s who bought the series on when it came out on DVD for him and his son to watch
Just wanted to say good job handling a delicate subject in the closing minutes.
The Dukes of Hazzard was a little bit before my time, but I did watched repeats of it and I find it entertaining to watch.
Loved the show as a kid. Listened to the song fairly recently.
Catherine Bach is one of my all time 70's Crushes. I've loved her for over 40 years. ♥️
Because of James Best's line delivery, I always thought his character's name was "Roscoe Peecole Train".
Love The Dukes of Hazzard! One of my favorite shows when I was a kid and still is to this day. I've got the entire series on DVD.
Good job Mr. Larson, you’ve somehow gotten me to invest more time into the dukes of hazard than I ever thought possible!
Seeing that toy listing reminded me that I had the General Lee big wheel tricycle, the wrist racer (which I had completely forgotten about), and even the Matchbox car.
Of course, I was a little kid and had no idea what the flag meant, or even that there was an actual General named Lee.
I loved this show as a kid and had the stickers on my Trapper Keeper in 5th grade as well as some of the toys. I watched it again when I was in high school and realized that it was not really good TV. As for the 2005 movie, I remember reading that Jay Chandrasekhar took the job directing it to get a chance to do a studio movie and used the opportunity to get his Broken Lizard buddies as much screen time as possible.
How could anyone hate a show where the two heroes go far out of their way to help complete strangers just because it's the right thing to do? The world could learn a thing or two from this show.👍
I was born in 1979. The Dukes, and the Hulk defined my earliest memories of television
Being born in 1982, I was a little young for this show. As I got older and this show rattled around in syndication, I found I had space in my heart for only one southern based "good ole boy" driving based story and nothing could dethrone Smokey and the Bandit.
Yee haw! Great episode! I waited all week to watch Duke of Hazzard and I specifically remember getting those lunch boxes from McDonald's. Kudos for the balanced commentary about the controversial aspects of the show.
...pretty good work, Dan. I really thought you would skip some things.
Howdy from Nashville Tennessee where there is an actual hazard county. I grew up thinking that's where they shot it
And I had the most bizarre Dukes of Hazzard dream last night, the premise of which was that the show was completely retconned in Season 5 with not just the replacements for Bo and Luke, but a sub-plot where Boss Hogg and Rosco Coltrane left Hazzard County for Detroit with a wagon train full of bagged rice, and for some bizarre reason, Boss Hogg had facial hair....and there was more cheese in it than your artisan grocery venue.
This is a great vid, to the point where although I've watched a couple of yours before, you got me to subscribe this time. I particularly liked that you brought up the simple fact that a lot of people on both sides of the "flag" argument miss - that symbols can and do change in meaning and the public perception over time. Were my brother and I closeted racists (in northern IL at that) for being at the exact middle-school age to get hooked on this show - and building the plastic models a couple of times? Nah. Back then the flag was widely accepted as just a symbol of Southern pride, and one that more than a few adults in the North rolled their eyes at, at that. (The quality of the show didn't help in that respect.) And it's equally undeniable that its more recent co option by well-covered groups that are openly and even proudly racist has changed that symbolism over time. It means something completely different today than it did back then. It's not the first symbol the meaning of which has shifted over time, and it certainly won't be the last.
But...as a history buff, that shouldn't erase the show. It's an artifact of its time, and should be enjoyed (or for that matter mocked) through that lens. For instance, it's fascinating that the first 8-10 episodes were solidly aimed at what we'd call an older-teen/young-adult PG-13 audience today. But as you touched on, when the Nielsens started coming in, they saw that the audience was instead literally everybody ELSE - kids and older adults. So they did a hard pivot into that audience, to the point that it was very much family-friendly entertainment, with almost the same demographic appeal as The Freaking Waltons or Little House on the Prairie. Sure, that paint job and the car name haven't aged well, but that's not the entirety of the show.
As I mentioned the model kits of the General Lee, here's a fun fact - in the show's heyday, the MPC 1/25 General Lee model kit briefly took the lead over the AMT USS Enterprise (TV versiion, obviously) as the best-selling plastic model kit in history. The car model disappeared quickly after the show, and the Enterprise kept rolling on in production, eventually reclaiming the title. (They wore out several sets of dies and re-engineered it several times, which has to be its own kind of record.) It eventually went out of production as well after a run that - I think - was pushing 40 years, which is just ridiculous. But it's recently been re-released by the company that bought out AMT. And after all of that - and let's face it, it's not like Star Trek was an invisible property - it's STILL not significantly higher than what that General Lee car kit did in just a handful of years. Crazy.
I rember me and my friends liking the show as kids (talking about the 80s). We could miss some episodes (regularly run in the mornings together with A-Team, Chips, Knight Rider, McGyver) or part of them, but the important thing were of course the car chases.
The show had enough impact that the now retired head of the town's municipal police was nicknamed Rosco, as he wasn't exactly a stella law enforcer.
16:06 - Okay that’s pretty funny. Sean Williams Scott sounds so taken aback! 😭 I’m definitely gonna acquire that in a completely legal way.
Oh how I loved this show when I was a little guy. I never did decide whether I wanted the GL or KITT when I grew up as I loved Knight Rider just as equally. My dad did have the same Charger back then, albeit in green. Fond memories all around.