Banjo-Playing Deputy

Banjo-Playing Deputy
< Season 5 > • < Episode 32 >
Air Date	May 3, 1965
Cast	Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor Ron Howard as Opie Taylor Frances Bavier as Aunt Bee Taylor Howard McNear as Floyd Lawson Hope Summers as Miss Bedloe Mary Lansing as Miss Roundtree Lee Van Cleef as Skip Sylvia Lewis as Flossie Herbie Faye as a manager Robert Carricart as Frankie
Guest Stars	Jerry Van Dyke as Jerry
Director(s)	Coby Ruskin
Writer(s)	Bob Ross
Previous	Opie and the Carnival
Next	Opie's Job
Summary	Andy hires an unemployed musician.
Sequential Episode	159

Summary

Andy hires an unemployed musician.

Plot

When Andy forces the harem dancer show at the carnival to shut down, the owner decides to move on but leaves his one-man band, Jerry, behind. Andy takes pity on the jobless and penniless young man and invites him home for dinner. With Barney away, Aunt Bee suggests to Andy that he should hire Jerry to do some general work around the courthouse. Andy decides to try him out, but the somewhat inept Jerry has ideas about being a Deputy that don't quite work out. When Aunt Bee has her purse snatched at the carnival however, Jerry knows exactly who did it and shows his mettle to get it back.

Notes/Trivia

• Andy wears a gun (sidearm) in this episode when returning to the carnival to investigate the purse snatching.
• This is the last Andy Griffith Show episode to broadcast in black and white, and the final appearance of the CBS Television Network "Shutter Eye" logo, which had been used since The New Housekeeper.
• Don Knotts does not appear in this episode, despite being credited. This is the last episode that Knotts is absent from before leaving the show at the end of this season. However, in nod to the missing series regular, Jerry does tell Aunt Bee that he is from Morgantown, West Virginia, (where there stands a statue of Barney Fife). That’s because it is a hometown tribute to Don Knotts, who grew up in Morgantown.
• This episode is a rare example of a continuation of a previous episode. "Banjo-Playing Deputy" takes place at the same carnival used in episode 158, Opie and the Carnival.
• Andy told Jerry that he had business to attend in Mount Pilot. How and why did he wind up at the carnival so quickly to break up the fight between the two men that Jerry was trying to stop? Also, later in the episode, how did Jerry get to the carnival ahead of Andy?
• Andy told Jerry to do the school crossing at Haymore and Rockford street. This is an actual intersection in Andy's hometown Mt. Airy, North Carolina. The real streets can be seen here: Haymore and Rockford.
• When this episode aired on WZBJ-24 in Virginia, a production slate was shown at the beginning, showing that the rerun master was prepared on May 7, 1986.

Goofs

• The character played by Hope Summers is listed in the credits as 'Miss Bedloe'. However, when she goes into the Courthouse to complain to Andy about the dancing at the carnival, he greets her as Miss Edwards, referring to her character name in previous and later episodes - Clara Edwards.
• Mary Lansing is listed as Miss Roundtree in the credits, even though Andy refers to her as Miss Lukens.
• There are noticeable underarm stains on Andy’s shirt when he meets with the deputy in the Courthouse, takes his badge, and limits him to crossing duty. When the two then emerge from the Courthouse, the stains are gone and remain gone in the next scene, where Andy talks to Floyd on a bench. The stains then reappear when Aunt Bee meets with Andy in the Courthouse to tell him her purse has been stolen.

Gallery

Jerry prepares to cross the school kids