Shark Bytes

To me the show lost a lot of luster when they started using miniatures to do the stunts in season 7. Part of the magic of the show was watching the General fly through the air. It's very distracting watching it now on DVD. Plus they went from jumping over cars & rivers to jumping over BUILDINGS, WATER TOWERS & HELICOPTERS! Ridiculous!

On a personal note, this show jumped for me when I was at a convention that James Best also happened to be at.

Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane had the most ridiculous arm candy with him I'd ever seen. From far away she looked like a cotton candy-haired teenager, but up close you could see she was pushing 50, with a face that looked like it would crack from the thick application of make-up.

I could never look at the show the same way again.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAA!

Hi y'all, my name's Bo and this here's my brother Luke and we used to star in a sucky sitcom 25 years ago! We were redneck hicks who raced around the countryside in our supercharged car making the other redneck hicks look silly! And we had a cute little cuzzin who wore short-shorts that was always making those durn ol establishment-types like Boss Hogg look completely dumb! Cuz they were!

Gotta go now but just remember that the South shall rise again!

I think the show Really jumped the shark when, start of Season 7, they started using plastic models of the General Lee. And also, never showing the camera angle from the windshield. It was always from the sideview! I mean, come on, show the darn windshield already. Only the last episode showed one view of the windshield.

Several things - the show started off great and got progressively worse.

The first two seasons have sporadic moments of brilliance, subversive humor, and even a little radicalism bubbling under the surface. I'm thinking in particular of an episode, I think was called "Return of the Ridge Raiders" where Uncle Jesse reunites his old 1930s Depression-era gang of militants...shades of the labor wars of the Appalachian coalfields. Great stuff.

It was a long downward slide from the beginning though. Going down the list:
- Episode 2. Preachy anti-music piracy plot, set mostly in Atlanta. RIAA propaganda (in 1979? The more things change the more they stay the same.)
- Moving filming from GA to CA during the first season
- Third season - dumbing down the show to make it PC. The subversive spirit of the first two seasons is gone, replaced with obvious pandering to PC (such as making a point of showing Bo and Luke fastening their seat belts - and toning down the moonshine references and redneck humor, and completely eliminating the marijuana references). The show notably changed for the worse after "Carnival of Thrills".
- Roscoe devolving into a cartoon caricature of his former self by the middle of the second season.
- Vance n' Coy. Nuff said.
- By the time the aliens episode aired I had long since given up on the show so I can't comment on that.

The first few eps were film in Georgia for real then it all switched to Hollywood backlot filming. Admit it---there was so much more authencity in those first few eps--and Roscoe wasn't nearly as silly early on as he later was (in later eps he believes Boss Hogg when the Hogg sarcastically says he (Hogg) is the tooth fairy). But actor James Best and most of the rest of the cast were always great and funny and Bach was great even simply to look at (didn't catch the Coy and Vance eps so no thoughts on the performances of those two actors by me).

PS Has anyone else noticed how Best has turned into a clone of Star Trek great William Shatner? Check the reunion picnic on the first season dvd special features and see--you'll agree. And, on other points, while Deputy Enos was a-ok as a character I liked replacement Cletus even better!

Sadly, since Dukes left the air, denim short-shorts have gone the way of the lava lamp, with only Jessica Simpson and Cindy Sheehan wearing them in public. Too bad, since Catherine Bach made shorts fashionable wear--I wear them everyday with nylons, just like she did! Thanks, Catherine Bach, for an innovative but now passe trend in women's clothing. As Madonna proudly says in her song, "Express Yourself!"

Who wears short-shorts?
Iwear short-shorts!
And I'm gonna wear my short-shorts
Forever and ever more!

I was a kid & loved TDOH. However, Coy & Vance showing up was like finding out Santa's not real. It was the first time my adolescent mind experienced injustice. Innocence lost.

p.s. Ted McGinley would have been a better replacement than those two feather-haired gay-baters.

The real reason the Dukes jumped the shark was the model cars. How pathetic is it to see a plastic model jumping a very high two-story house? They made those stupid cars do things a real car could never do--not without blowing the wheels straight off on the landing. And when they landed, they bounced around like the one-pound scale RC cars that they were. Awful.

Coy and Vance aren't even on the front of the Season 5 DVD. (Only a picture of Daisy, looking good as usual, in front of the Gen. Lee). There's a picture of them on the back, and the actors' names where the actors' names go, but no mention of the "other" Duke cousins on the box. As the late Rodney Dangerfield would have said, "They get no respect... no respect at all!"

Okay, for all of you who thought that this show jumped in the first episode, you're nuts. It was fun, sometimes ridiculous, and crazy. That's how the show was supposed to be. It was never meant to take itself seriously. I, however, agree about Coy and Vance. They are not Bo and Luke, but they were a part of the show's history. The alien episode, yes, it was a stupid episode, BUT it was in the last season and again, wasn't meant to be serious. I mean, come on...how many shows have we watched that had worse plots than that? Dukes was a good ol show (pardon the pun) that depicted the Southern lifestyle and how families, friends, and even enemies helped each other, no matter what.

Even though most of you will say its not true, I do believe that this show was inspired by (if at least minimally and never admitted) by Smokey and the Bandit. Between Smokey and Dukes, these franchises have given me two out of three of my favorite sheriffs (Roscoe P. Coltrane and Buford T. Justice. The other is who in my mind was the inspiration for Justice, Sheriff J.W. Pepper from the James Bond films. Justice and Pepper got better lines, though). I wonder if this show inspired my favorite movie of all time, the Blues Brothers. (The Bluesmobile would have been the perfect counterweapon to the General Lee. Just how big was the Hazzard County Police budget, anyway? They wrecked a car almost every episode!)
All that being said, let me get into the actual show. Enos was great, I am indifferent about Cletus (one particular episode stands out- when
Cletus took a swing at one of the Duke boys- can't remember which one- and they actually punched Cletus right back. I can't imagine this happened too often.)
Everyone should have an Uncle Jesse.
Daisy was gorgeous- the episode where she was in the bikini is burned into memory.
No offense to the actual actors, but Coy and Vance just didn't fit in. They were like Drew Carey trying to fill
Bob Barkers' shoes on The Price is Right- there's just too much pressure to be as good.
I died laughing when Huey pulled up to Hazzard in that VW.
Boss was just hilarious with his schemes and when he was eating. ( I remember an early season episode where he was eating a hamburger the size of a medium sized pizza.)
To the people who said they got sick of seeing the Gen. Lee do the same jumps every week: Once I figured out I could take speedbumps at speeds higher than 15 mph (try it at 30 mph, I dare you) in my '84 Caprice, I "jumped" every time I got the chance. It NEVER got old. God, I miss that car. I'm trying to buy an '87 as we speak.
Question: Was that a "Starsky and Hutch" style Gran Torino I saw an an early episode?
Favorite moment: When the "General, Admiral, and Captain Lee" (the latter are names we came up with for the other two) were driving on the road together. That episode was great.
Runner-up moment: When Boss put the recording "bug" on the Gen. Lee. Bo and Luke find it, continue conversation. Boss Hogg leans in closer to listen; the boys put the bug up to the horn. The resulting loud noise knocks Boss right out of his chair.
The best part of every show is the chase at the end, with the BGOTW (Bad Guy Of The Week) running from the Duke boys, Roscoe and Enos/ Cletus following, Cooter right behind, with Uncle Jesse/ Daisy at the end. I lived for these moments.
Bo and Luke should have kept that turbocharger on their car for the remainder of the series. I hated to see it go.
The Knoxville/ Scott/ Simpson Dukes movie (2005) was good. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel. Just get the Gen. back on the big screen.
I actually liked the direct-to-***** Dukes movie (2007) better, unrated. April Scott did a good job as Daisy. I'll have to check out the rated version to see if it is acceptable for my nephew to watch.
This is one of the few shows you can put on today and have young children actually sit and watch (from my experience anyway). They even love the Playstation ***** games. I bought the first season DVD (and eventually four more), and my 10 year old nephew and our 10 year old cousin absolutely love it like I did when it was first run.
I thank you for reading all of this, and I'll see you later.

Definitely jumped when Coy and Vance came onto the scene. I had the biggest crush on John Schneider when I was a kid,well I still think he's hot, but when he left the show, I was heartbroken!!! Even when Bo and Luke came back, the show never recovered.

most people would say coy and vance is when the show jts, but imo, it's right after the 'carnival of thrills' episode, when enos left..the show was moved to an earlier time slot, so anything racy about the show (other than 'moonshine' references), was cut out completely, and the show became almost totally g-rated..that's when it jts to me..i don't even see how the show stayed on the air during the coy and vance episodes..i guess the general lee was the real star of the show

Jumped immediately by promoting redneck values as good wholesome values. There's nothing good or wholesome about being unemployed in a meshback cap, chewing Skoal, and jumping the same bridge in the county every time the cops try to pull you over.

There's also nothing redeeming about being a greasy fat ass in a white suit with corrupt cops on your payroll.

Or being a cop on the take, and still too stupid to get your police cruiser suped up so you can finally make that jump and arrest them sumbitches.