Mandy Kaplan:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Make Me a Nerd. I’m Mandy Kaplan, a mainstream mom whose mission it is to explore the world of nerd culture that I’ve been missing out on and afraid of my whole life, on a very special episode of Make Me a Nerd. We are going all the way back. It’s nostalgic, it’s warm, it’s fuzzy. It’s Marty Schneider and Dan Ludwig, who are a comedy team, and they are writers and podcasters from Philadelphia. They host Breaking Mayberry, a classic TV podcast without the nostalgia bait that I just offered up. They take a hard look at the history of television, breaking down vintage favorites and cultural oddities from the 1950s to the early aughts, starting from The Andy Griffith Show.

It is so hard not to do a Southern accent. Welcome, gentlemen.

Marty Schneider:
You could try to do the Southern accent. You could try for it this entire time.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I could do the whole thing in a Southern accent.

Dan Ludwig:
Go, do it.

Mandy Kaplan:
It would slow us down.

Marty Schneider:
It does slow. Every time we have a Southern guest on our show, we do have to account for another ten to fifteen minutes of speech.

Dan Ludwig:
Absolutely. That drawl really drags things out.

Mandy Kaplan:
It does, don’t it? But I’m an East Coaster like you guys, so we’re fast.

Marty Schneider:
Right. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
So how did you guys come up with the concept for your podcast? Tell me all about it.

Marty Schneider:
It starts with Bill O’Reilly, of all people.

Mandy Kaplan:
I almost did a spit take.

Marty Schneider:
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
You two are not who I thought you were.

Marty Schneider:
No.

Dan Ludwig:
No, no, no, no, no.

Marty Schneider:
No, wait, wait, wait. Let us tell it. Sorry.

Dan Ludwig:
Wait, wait, wait. Marty, get through that part of the story quick.

Marty Schneider:
Dan and I had been looking for something to work on. We’d been trying to pick a project. We had a whole list of things we were working on. And it was the Oscars in like 2018.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And this happens a lot. I noticed Bill O’Reilly fired off some tweets about how he didn’t want to watch the celebration of, I don’t think we’re using woke as a pejorative, but he didn’t want to watch…

Mandy Kaplan:
I think it’s a bit more bad.

Marty Schneider:
Liberal woke Hollywood. He’d be watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show instead. And I noticed that that tended to be a touchpoint that people referred to. There’s been country music songs that I’ve heard about, like “Missing Mayberry.” I’ve seen Congressmen use The Andy Griffith Show in gun control arguments.

And I just started noticing it a lot, and I thought, what is this thing? Because like you, I at that point had no comparison point to it. And I’m a pretty big pop culture person, but that one had just sort of missed me. So I said, Dan, let’s try to explore this and see if we can find where these people are coming from. There was also a famous clip that kind of went around about how Andy Griffith, or how Sheriff Andy Taylor, never wore a gun. So at first we were like, all right, we’re going to be busting down. We’re going to watch this show and see how it’s breaking down all these right-wing talking points that they love so much.

And then we watched it and we were like, this is weirder than we thought it was. This is a rich tapestry of weirdness that has almost every political point to make, but also sometimes no points to make whatsoever. And when we discovered the fandom around it, and the people who are really into it and what they do with it, we thought we had to dive deeper.

Mandy Kaplan:
You had to dive deeper.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
We thought, oh, okay, this is the Magna Carta of problems in America.

Mandy Kaplan:
So Dan, you guys were saying earlier you are not super fans of this show. Can you explain your approach to The Andy Griffith Show?

Dan Ludwig:
We sort of try to approach it almost clinically after a certain point. Marty has referred to us as Gorillas in the Mist a couple of times, where this is sort of primordial TV. They’re figuring a lot of stuff out for the first time. A lot of stuff is just being developed. And so one of the fun things is getting to watch them discover the concept of an A and a B plot for the first time.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Dan Ludwig:
Or work out the rule of threes, almost, as something that they are struggling to put together. And you’re also kind of learning a lot of the lessons that were taught to America during the early days of television.

Mandy Kaplan:
One observation I had: you picked three episodes for me to watch, and they all felt like a very special episode. They all feel like The More You Know, and I’m torn about that.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s a little cloying, but it’s charming, and I get it was from a different time.

Dan Ludwig:
And they have that tone whether or not it’s a very clear moral lesson or it’s something that doesn’t make any sense. They’re both presented with the same level of gravitas.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Now you’ve learned something that in no way is applicable to real life. And then the star goes overhead.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And we never wanted to be millennials with our arms folded going, huh, these messages don’t hold up. We never wanted to do that, but you do run into stuff like The Andy Griffith Show says that homeless people deserve to be homeless. And what we found ourselves doing, for a lot of our early episodes, we had what we called an Andy-meter and a Barney-meter. The Andy-meter is how good is this as a piece of television? How much did I enjoy watching this half hour? And the Barney-meter is how much psychic damage do I think this did on America?

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
I spared you.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. I didn’t get enough of a sense of that, but yeah.

Marty Schneider:
The episode that I point at, there’s an episode called “Aunt Bee the Warden.” And the message of “Aunt Bee the Warden” is unequivocally: prison labor is good. Prison labor rules.

Mandy Kaplan:
Ow.

Marty Schneider:
We just got to get those boys working hard and they’ll straighten them all out.

Mandy Kaplan:
What a hot take.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, it is unequivocally that. So I’m like, this is a deeply evil piece of media. It is also one of the funniest 25 minutes of television I’ve ever seen.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
So through this we kind of have to deal with our own leanings and our own approaches to art. And then we get bored with that and we’re like, you know what, let’s just mess around with TGIF for a while. Or we did an entire season of Glee just because we were like, we need to turn this on ourselves for a bit.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh great. Take a break.

Marty Schneider:
You know, so.

Mandy Kaplan:
So the episode you first assigned, I liked that you qualified these as recommendations. This was an episode we love. And you said you might just as well go with the Andy Griffith episode. It’s the one on top of all the TV episode lists.

Marty Schneider:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Season four, episode one, “Opie the Birdman.”

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right away I got Ricky Stratton when he shot a deer. And I don’t like to talk about Ricky Schroder because he broke my heart, but it was very clear right from jump. He finds a bird, or he’s playing with a slingshot. You know he’s going to kill a bird. It’s so just on a platter.

Dan Ludwig:
Oh yeah.

Marty Schneider:
It’s the origin of the trope. It’s where all those come from. We compared it to a Simpsons episode and an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh when we did it, that both followed similar storylines.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm. Okay. But one thing I need to say about this, having never seen this: I saw Ronnie Howard in The Music Man.

Marty Schneider:
Sure.

Mandy Kaplan:
But he’s a brilliant little actor. Am I crazy?

Dan Ludwig:
Yes.

Marty Schneider:
He’s so good in that episode in particular. That’s where it clicks.

Mandy Kaplan:
He’s so good.

Dan Ludwig:
Early on, he’s very young. He just enters a scene and screams his lines and then just walks off camera.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh.

Dan Ludwig:
And then you kind of get to slowly watch him become an actor over the course of several seasons. And by this point, the kid can act. He is really selling, oh no, I accidentally just killed a bird.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Dan Ludwig:
Not a very easy thing for a kid that age to sell. And he earns his stripes.

Mandy Kaplan:
I was very moved by his performance. I really was.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
There’s some complex emotions for a child that he has to portray. Not just instant, oh, I screwed up, I’m sorry, but then the deep mournful regret that comes from realizing the damage you’ve done to something. And then the return of, I need to do this hard thing to make amends.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
Those are complex adult emotions that Ronnie Howard masters, and it’s weird.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then he never went anywhere. This kid just fell off the face of the earth, left Hollywood.

Marty Schneider:
It’s weird how he just disappeared. Well, he was actually on another show where he played the older brother of a kid, and he went upstairs playing basketball in the first episode and then never appeared again.

Mandy Kaplan:
And…

Marty Schneider:
He’s still playing basketball to this day. That’s a Happy Days reference, audience.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, I got it.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
I got it.

Marty Schneider:
All right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, I was curious if Andy… what’s his name? Taylor?

Marty Schneider:
Taylor, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
If his being a single dad was the first of that we had seen on TV, and was it controversial that he was a single dad?

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Did he ever date? What’s the story with Andy Taylor?

Dan Ludwig:
So I think this was kind of early, because this is very early television as a general concept, but at this period they kind of had a weird relationship with the concept of moms. One of our favorite things to bring up is they have an entire episode about Andy helping a family give birth. The mom is doing a home delivery and the dad is really anxious about it and stuff. And it wasn’t until the end that we had a woman guest on, and she was like, did you guys even clock that they never showed the mom a single time? And we were just like, what?

Marty Schneider:
There’s not even a woman in the episode.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, it is an all-dude episode about a woman giving birth. And we didn’t even clock it. It’s like that, where the concepts of motherhood and just general representation of the fact that women have had sex ever was always kind of weird, which…

Mandy Kaplan:
Not sure Aunt Bee ever has, but go on.

Marty Schneider:
That’s entirely… no, no, no.

Mandy Kaplan:
She is a sexless lady.

Marty Schneider:
No, that is not true.

Mandy Kaplan:
No?

Marty Schneider:
That is not… Can we swear on this podcast?

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, yeah, empty box.

Marty Schneider:
Aunt Bee fucks. We have an entire playlist of Aunt Bee Fucks episodes.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Wow.

Marty Schneider:
Any time a drifter is coming through, like a snake oil salesman, Aunt Bee’s like, it’s time for Aunt Bee to get it in.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
I’m not sure what she’s getting in, but…

Dan Ludwig:
Just a traveling handyman. There’s a lot of, Ernest, you haven’t come over to hang out in a while.

Marty Schneider:
There’s a lot of episodes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, yes.

Dan Ludwig:
The show is so chaste, and then suddenly in this one context it’s just, oh yeah, but also this old lady fucks. It’s so weird.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
But I also want to point out, I think a key element of understanding is understanding what TV was to America at this point. 1960, when The Andy Griffith Show premieres, something like 25 percent of American households, maybe even lower, maybe 15 percent of American households, have a television. By the time the show ends in 1968, that number is 93 percent. So it is exploding in popularity. So TV isn’t new, but it’s now newly ubiquitous.

Mandy Kaplan:
And also…

Marty Schneider:
So Lucille Ball was a mother on screen just ten years prior to this. And you had The Donna Reed Show, led by a woman.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And so actually, to your point, it was strange to have a single dad there. And Andy’s a widower, but that’s never ever said out loud.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
We’re kind of just making assumptions on that. Opie’s mom is never mentioned. He never looks at a picture of mom and goes, I miss her, or whatever.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I thought he said he hit it and quit it one night in Vegas and then took the baby.

Marty Schneider:
So we just have to assume.

Mandy Kaplan:
Is that not… I thought that’s what it was.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah. I mean, a wild thing for him to come back through nine months later.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Dan Ludwig:
There is one point, it’s really quick, but in episode two he says, that skank will never take you away from me. It’s so fast.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, famous quote.

Marty Schneider:
If you look in the background, he’s got travel plans to Japan all written up.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
There’s a whole map of Kyoto and a Japanese statute.

Mandy Kaplan:
I think he said that, Dan, right after Barney said, next time I go tiger hunting, I’m going to take my tweezers. And then I think he said the skank thing. So I think you’re right about that.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, it’s fast, it’s fast.

Marty Schneider:
I think you’re correct.

Mandy Kaplan:
It is fast.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
So it was strange for him to be a single dad. But you’ll notice, from the very first episode, they’re like, well, a man can’t raise a child by himself. We need to bring this old, old woman to do that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
The Alice before Alice on The Brady Bunch. But I mean, then again, Alice was getting it on with Sam. Don’t get me started.

Marty Schneider:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
We are going to move on to season three, episode 16, “Man in a Hurry,” which you said you guys hate it, but the fans love it. And I want to hear both sides of that right after this.

This episode reminds me very much of my least favorite episode of Friends, the one where Ross is getting an award and none of them are getting ready in time and he keeps trying to get them to get ready.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I don’t know if you guys are Friends fans.

Marty Schneider:
I know the episode you’re talking about.

Mandy Kaplan:
But they all are acting in such inorganic ways, and it really bothers me. And that’s what this episode felt like to me. This guy is trying to get out of town and no one’s helping, and it was just contrived. Why do the fans love it and why do you hate it?

Dan Ludwig:
So this is, and we’ll kind of get into the fans’ relationship with this show and how it changes, but this is kind of like the manifesto that they eventually build this off of. Because it’s all about this city slicker coming into town, and he has somewhere to be. He’s in such a hurry. And here in this small town of Mayberry, we like to hang out on a porch for a prolonged period of time, thinking about maybe eating pie at some point.

Mandy Kaplan:
And peel an apple.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, and going to church. And we are not in such a big hurry, and maybe that makes us a little bit better than y’all. And the fans are hooting and hollering, being like, that’s the way to exist! This is what life should be like everywhere at all times. And we’re at that point just being like, fuck you!

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Let the guy go. He has a life. He doesn’t want to hang out on your dumbass porch.

Mandy Kaplan:
He’s got to get somewhere.

Marty Schneider:
I think Dan and I don’t like this episode because we’re the bad guys in this episode.

Dan Ludwig:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Marty Schneider:
We’re Mr. Walker, who’s like, let the man just do his job. It is ridiculous that these two old ladies are tying up the phone line for four hours at a time. What if somebody gets hurt?

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
We really charted a very specific point in the episode where I’m like, and that’s when I burst a blood vessel.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
That is, I think, when I go blind from anger.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Now it’s funny, though, because I can feel myself getting a little older. We were very angry about this when we recorded that episode in like 2021. And I watched it just now, just before we recorded. I was downstairs watching it with my wife, and I was like, you know, I’m almost drawn in because I’m getting a little older. The part where they’re out singing together on the porch, I’m like, this is sweet. I kind of like this.

And then they start in on that bullshit with Barney Fife just repeating his plans for the day over and over and over again. And I said, I’m out. I’m done.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And this is my issue with this particular television program: they are very sanctimonious about it. The fans are, and the show itself is kind of sanctimonious. It does pitch itself as a specific way of life that you should try to uphold. This is a way that people should exist. But then when you try to critique it as a specific way of life, if you’re like, well, let’s talk about this as a system of values, suddenly the walls go up and it’s just a TV show.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
It’s just a TV show. Why are you doing this?

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. So I’m trying to figure out you guys. Are you hate-watching?

Dan Ludwig:
So am I, man, so am I.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, yeah. I should really be charging you for this. Are you hate-watching strictly, or is there a part of you that loves it and cares for the people of Mayberry?

Dan Ludwig:
You could have put it on the board.

Mandy Kaplan:
Or is it just rubbernecking when you pass an accident? I’m confused.

Dan Ludwig:
Oh my God, it depends on the episode, the week, the season we’re on. The specific episode we’ve just watched, it varies from something that we have a lot of affection for, to a psychological experiment I’m inflicting upon myself.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
At times, depending on what season we’re watching, this does kind of turn into the Stanford Prison Experiment, but self-imposed.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
It’s a rough balance. I’ve come to think of us as amateur TV historians, because it’s interesting as an archive, as a timepiece. It’s interesting to see as a point of where beliefs of a certain generation showed up. So I’m approaching it almost like an anthropological study, but also just as a piece of important pop culture and TV.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And I will say maybe 10 percent of The Andy Griffith Show is some of the greatest television ever made. There are some episodes there that I absolutely adore. I’m like, this is pure art. And then there are many episodes that I’m like, this is gibberish.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
How did this get made? And then I look into how did this get made, and I realize, oh yeah, you guys were writing this while it was being made. I understand it. And then it becomes this interesting study in how television has evolved.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. This is, by the way, incredibly nerdy of you both.

Marty Schneider:
It’s deeply nerdy.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Okay.

Dan Ludwig:
Meta nerdy, basically.

Marty Schneider:
If we had walked around doing a study of Trekkies, it would have been the same thing. If we just went around a convention taking notes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Mm-hmm. This is how they behave in the mist.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh yeah.

Marty Schneider:
These are their mating patterns.

Mandy Kaplan:
We’ll get there, yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
The things I kind of find funny over the years about it are when I think the writers got drunk. That point where it becomes completely incoherent, where I’m just like, yeah, it was the ’60s.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Dan Ludwig:
These people were just kind of writing stuff on cocktail napkins and yelling it at somebody. The times when I love it the most are when it is just so up on two wheels and they are making it up as they go along.

Mandy Kaplan:
God, I hope so.

Dan Ludwig:
And there’s just this absolutely sloppy convolutedness to it. I think that’s the time when I have the most affection, which is just like, it was the ’60s. They had no idea what they were doing, and they just let the camera roll for way too long and wrote a plot line that made no sense and had nowhere to go. And that’s when I have the most affection for it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And what you’ve hit there, Mandy, is a question that we ask ourselves all the time. Because I do want to give all this stuff, not just The Andy Griffith Show, but all the shows that we watch, a fair shake.

Mandy Kaplan:
Wait on it.

Marty Schneider:
But we also know, as you know, as a podcaster and host, the audience loves it when we torture ourselves. The audience does love when we are in a little bit of pain.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And that’s when we’re at our funniest, too.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
So we have to balance that out.

Mandy Kaplan:
You made a natural segue there to our third episode, “Dogs, Dogs, Dogs,” because you said something about how this shit doesn’t even make any sense, and here we are.

Marty Schneider:
Some of it is gibberish.

Mandy Kaplan:
So, what if there were too many dogs? is what you wrote.

Dan Ludwig:
Sometimes the plot of the episode is just dogs.

Marty Schneider:
What if there were dogs? But what if there were too many dogs?

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And the thumbnail, on whatever I was watching it on, Pluto TV, the thumbnail might as well have said, this is where Andy Griffith jumped the shark. It was so dumb.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It was just dogs spilling out of a car. That’s the thumbnail. My overarching feeling that I want to ask you guys about is that I know it’s supposed to be very warm and fuzzy and nostalgic, but there’s something about The Andy Griffith Show that makes me feel sad. There’s an underlying sadness to it, which I also found when I did an episode of Make Me a Nerd with Kelly Vrooman about Bluey, because she’s obsessed with Bluey with her kids. And I loved Bluey. I don’t know if you’re familiar.

Marty Schneider:
Familiar with Bluey, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s so sweet, and then I find myself with a lingering sadness hangover.

Marty Schneider:
That could be the melancholy of nostalgia, or it could be that you, like everyone, see beyond this and kind of see the sadness of these characters. Especially, there’s a character there, you met Otis in this episode, and Otis’s entire premise is ha ha, alcoholism. A deeply sad character.

Dan Ludwig:
So we have a theory we bring up sometimes, which is, especially in the early seasons, they do talk about World War II a good amount, about how a lot of these characters are veterans.

Mandy Kaplan:
Hm.

Dan Ludwig:
And a lot of this show, it takes place in the ’60s, it was written in the ’60s, but it really is very nostalgic towards the Great Depression. That’s kind of the vibe it’s going for.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
And a lot of it, I think, comes into this was written by a generation that had just been through economic catastrophe, war, just this endless river of shit that they dealt with. And they are just coming out the other side and dealing with the idea that things are going to be okay for the first time. And a lot of the writing is them reassuring themselves, but also their kids, that things are going to be okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
Hmm.

Dan Ludwig:
They’re going to be fine. Here’s a bunch of dogs. What if this is what our problems are now? It’s no longer that we can’t eat. Now it’s just, what if there were too many dogs? And even in that circumstance, it’s not even really that many dogs. It’s a slightly inconvenient amount of dogs.

Mandy Kaplan:
Seven.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
They act like it’s an avalanche of dogs. It’s maybe a suboptimal amount of dogs. I would be okay with that amount of dogs for 24 hours.

Marty Schneider:
I think I said in our episode, it was the exact wrong amount of dogs to be funny.

Dan Ludwig:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Fewer or more dogs would have been funnier, but the amount they chose was somehow the exact wrong choice.

Mandy Kaplan:
And they let the dogs go, and then they’re like, oops, get them back, and they’re back in five minutes.

Marty Schneider:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
They let them go out in the forest or something.

Marty Schneider:
Right, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
But I’ve seen Lady and the Tramp.

Marty Schneider:
The moral of this is don’t abandon animals, I guess.

Mandy Kaplan:
That is not how it works. Correct, I guess.

Dan Ludwig:
There is a haunting monologue about how those dogs are definitely not going to die in a thunderstorm.

Marty Schneider:
Like…

Dan Ludwig:
They’re not. They’re definitely not.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. Barney knows that.

Dan Ludwig:
Just staring dead ahead into space, being like, they’re going to be fine. They’re going to be fine.

Marty Schneider:
And we applaud Barney. That’s his character development. Good for you, Barney.

Mandy Kaplan:
Dan, could we take that monologue over while I…

Marty Schneider:
You went and you didn’t let those dogs die in an empty field after you abandoned them. Congratulations, man.

Mandy Kaplan:
…slowly whistle the theme song in a melancholy way.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, yeah. The dogs are going to be fine. They will not be struck by lightning or drowned in an empty field. That is not going to happen.

Marty Schneider:
Bring up giraffes for some reason.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Hit the giraffe point.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh God.

Marty Schneider:
That’s really funny.

Dan Ludwig:
It is probably the funniest thing the show ever does, is invoke the concept of a giraffe being struck by lightning.

Mandy Kaplan:
I know, it’s so weird.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s the writers being drunk and needing to get home.

Dan Ludwig:
Oh, absolutely.

Marty Schneider:
So yeah, I gave you a baffling episode. That episode is baffling.

Mandy Kaplan:
It is baffling.

Dan Ludwig:
What if there were dogs?

Mandy Kaplan:
What if there were dogs?

Marty Schneider:
That was an episode of TV that aired alongside I Dream of Jeannie.

Mandy Kaplan:
Am I the only one who suspects Barney is gay and hot for and in love with Andy? And/or does Barney ever get a life outside of Andy?

Dan Ludwig:
He does spend a lot of time at the YMCA. Whenever he is not on the show, the explanation they explicitly say is Barney is at the YMCA again this week.

Marty Schneider:
A lot of time at the YMCA.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I’m on to something.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
You’re really on to something.

Marty Schneider:
But Barney Fife also has one steady girlfriend and one side piece through the entire show.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
So I think we’ve referred to him as Don Knotts, bisexual icon, on our show before a couple times.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Does he ever stick it to Aunt Bee?

Marty Schneider:
God, you know, I don’t think so.

Mandy Kaplan:
They’re not the Sam and Alice of the ’60s.

Marty Schneider:
I think that would feel a little too Oedipal for him, because he is…

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
But yeah, this is also, at least for the first couple of years, until Don Knotts leaves, and the show really goes to shit after Don Knotts leaves.

Mandy Kaplan:
He’s family.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
He leaves in season five. And then the show goes on for three more years. And then the show also goes to color that year.

Mandy Kaplan:
Color, I saw that.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, for three. And the fans are not happy about this. And turns out neither am I, because the color years are really hard to get through.

Dan Ludwig:
It is really like The Office after Michael Scott leaves, but a thousand times more catastrophic.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, just a wasteland.

Marty Schneider:
But those early episodes, a lot of them are like Opie’s two dads. You see it a little bit in this. He’s like an uncle that sometimes gets too involved in this kid’s life.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Marty Schneider:
So Opie’s being raised by two dads.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s pretty hot. Their chemistry is pretty hot. On the porch singing.

Marty Schneider:
Can we ask you? Okay, so we ask pretty much all of our guests who like men this. Is Andy Griffith hot?

Mandy Kaplan:
No, unequivocally.

Marty Schneider:
Okay.

Dan Ludwig:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
His face is too big. No, he’s not.

Dan Ludwig:
Interesting. Do you mean just in general or for his head? Because I can see both.

Mandy Kaplan:
In general, he’s too thick.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
No, he’s not for me.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
And also, how old was he when he was filming this?

Dan Ludwig:
He’s a real billboard of a man.

Marty Schneider:
Understood.

Mandy Kaplan:
Forty, but he looks 85.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, everybody looked like shit all the time.

Dan Ludwig:
There was cigarette smoke everywhere.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Yeah, my TV smelled like smoke.

Dan Ludwig:
Everybody has some country miles on ’em.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. No, I’m not an Andy Griffith kind of gal.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Understood.

Mandy Kaplan:
But some of your guests are.

Marty Schneider:
Understood. Some of them like the daddy.

Dan Ludwig:
We have had people go to the mat for Don Knotts as a sexual icon, and you know, God bless them. Follow your truth. I do not see it, but go for it.

Mandy Kaplan:
To each their own.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
We compared him to Pete Davidson. That’s how long we’ve been doing this, because back when Pete Davidson was the hottest thing in the world, we were like, yeah, okay, if Pete Davidson can be a sex symbol today, I can see how Don Knotts would work in the ’60s.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. No, neither one does it for me.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
This was a non-sexual experience. Weird. Watching The Andy Griffith Show.

Dan Ludwig:
I think that speaks very highly of you. I think not being turned on by anything that’s happened is probably, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Thank you. Nothing.

Marty Schneider:
Probably a good check.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Well, a dead bird gets me a little worked up, but that’s a whole different…

Marty Schneider:
Oh, okay, okay.

Dan Ludwig:
I mean, who doesn’t?

Marty Schneider:
Understood.

Mandy Kaplan:
…episode. You guys mentioned the fandom, and we are going to deep dive into that when we come back.

So you said watch a documentary called The Mayberry Effect.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I simply wrote the word “whoa” when it started.

Marty Schneider:
Okay, hang on.

Dan Ludwig:
Mandy, I’m so sorry we did this.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah. I want to be very clear.

Dan Ludwig:
I’m so sorry.

Marty Schneider:
You asked me for a documentary.

Mandy Kaplan:
I did.

Marty Schneider:
You specifically asked for one.

Mandy Kaplan:
I did.

Marty Schneider:
I told you to just watch the Ted Koppel thing. That’s like ten minutes.

Dan Ludwig:
I was texting Marty as I was watching, like, oh no, oh no, what did we do?

Mandy Kaplan:
I didn’t watch that.

Marty Schneider:
That’s okay.

Dan Ludwig:
What did we do? Oh God. How are you doing?

Marty Schneider:
No, I want to know, Mandy, as somebody who dives into nerddom and fandom on a regular basis, different ones, what was your response to this, besides “whoa”?

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm. This fandom reminded me of the Firefly fandom, the Browncoats, which I did an episode on. Before Make Me a Nerd, I would never have even known what Firefly was. So that fandom, how do I say this respectfully? I related to them. The Browncoats, you should listen to that episode, back in my library. They’ve become a family. We’ve had marriages of Browncoats. We all get together and share our love of something that bonds us, and it was all very positive. And I think I can really relate. I love that idea of finding your people. Like the Bee Girl in the Blind Melon video, topical reference. I like that. There’s something about this fandom that leaves me out, because it’s all white, all Southern, all a certain type of people.

Dan Ludwig:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, and they take it to such extremes that I found it a little uncomfortable watching them.

Marty Schneider:
And they get real mad if you point that out. They get real defensive.

Dan Ludwig:
They really get into Oprah’s face in this.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
There’s a whole segment where they really take Oprah to task on how many Black people are in The Andy Griffith Show.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
They showed, I should have taken a picture, they showed scenes where like, look, there’s a Black townsperson, and they call them “the Blacks.”

Marty Schneider:
In the background, sure, sure. The Blacks, yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, it was very uncomfortable for me.

Dan Ludwig:
There’s circling Black extras in the background like it’s Roswell photos. If you really squint here…

Marty Schneider:
And also you’ll notice that those are high definition.

Dan Ludwig:
You can see one moving.

Marty Schneider:
Those are HD. They’ve been remastered. Think about how blurry that would have aired originally. That Black person in the background, way in the background, that they’re circling with a red line, that might as well be a fire hydrant, for all we know. And I didn’t want to get too much into the race relations with this, but they also lie. They lie about it all the time. They’re like, well, there weren’t Black people on any television show at all. Bullshit. I Spy, starring Bill Cosby, ran on NBC from 1965 to 1968.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
It was a hit show. Other networks had Black people. And then they do this weird thing where they’re like, well, actually, no one would believe that a Black person could be a doctor or the mayor or anybody. No one would believe a Black person could be a doctor on TV. So we would have had to be more racist if we put Black people on. There were Black doctors in the ’60s, man. It’s insane.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, it’s upsetting.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
But similar to the Browncoats thing, where you really have to work into building something when your thing is a nine-episode Fox show.

Mandy Kaplan:
Is that all you have?

Dan Ludwig:
You really have to kind of…

Marty Schneider:
Fill in a lot of blanks.

Dan Ludwig:
Fill in a lot of blanks, which I think is for the better of that fandom. Similarly, they’re really trying to build something around a show that is, at the end of the day, some guys. It’s a show about some dudes in various kinds of hats.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
And they’re really putting their back into making that something that you can cosplay as.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
So I think there’s a very similar energy of working overtime in that fandom to really build something.

Mandy Kaplan:
How big is the fandom? Because they’re in this small town where they do recreations and they have a parade, and that parade seemed wildly underattended to me. And they show the same people in interviews over and over and over.

Marty Schneider:
My favorite shot in the entire documentary is at the end, when they’re all discussing the future of the Mayberry fandom, and several of the guys they interview are like, we’re trying to share this with our kids, but I don’t think the kids are into it. This is going to go. And then Allan Newsome, who is kind of the head of this, he’s now kind of the king of the Andy Griffith podcast or Andy Griffith fan club, I’ll talk about him in a second, but he says something to the effect of, I don’t think that’s true. I think that the show is alive and it’s growing. And then they cut to a crowd shot of the oldest people I’ve ever seen in my life.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, it’s the cast of Cocoon.

Marty Schneider:
Just a whole nursing home full of people.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And so to answer your question about the size of this, they referred to The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club, which is something that had started in the early ’80s. Some people on a college campus together started just writing letters to networks, trying to get them… basically, their goal was if somebody tries to take The Andy Griffith Show off of their syndication, we write them a letter and try to get them to bring it back.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
That’s why The Andy Griffith Show has never been off the air, as they try to claim. And I think that anyone can start a chapter of this, so when they say that there’s like 20,000 chapters or whatever, 10,000 chapters…

Mandy Kaplan:
You guys could be a chapter.

Marty Schneider:
Dan, what’s to say we aren’t? Who says we’re not?

Dan Ludwig:
We’re not, we’re not, we’re not, though.

Mandy Kaplan:
Are you?

Marty Schneider:
We’re not.

Dan Ludwig:
I’m not even going to give that bit room to breathe.

Marty Schneider:
We’re not. We’re not. We’ve talked about it, but we decided that would be touching the subject too much.

Dan Ludwig:
Absolutely not.

Marty Schneider:
That would be getting too directly involved. So I think that maybe their heyday was the mid-’90s, probably when Ted Turner owned the rights to The Andy Griffith Show and would play it on TBS constantly.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
If the Braves game was rained out, guess what? We’re watching Andy Griffith. And so I think that was their heyday. I think a lot of them are dying out. You’ve noted that the parade, the Mayberry Days, is poorly attended. And we’ve had people who live in Mount Airy, who live in that town, email us a couple of times. We’ve heard from people who live there. And they’re like, dude, it’s just a street fair. It’s just a giant flea market the town does. And the Mayberry weirdos have their half a block that they do their thing in. And for the rest of us, it’s just a very boring, local jewelers are putting stuff together, right?

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
Just out of frame, it’s just a normal street fair.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
It might not surprise you to learn that Mount Airy sounds like a really terrible place to live, from some of the people that we’ve heard from.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay. No, that does not surprise me. But I did know, I went to the website and we could buy our tickets. As we record this on September 11th, Mayberry… what is it called?

Marty Schneider:
Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mayberry Days is coming up, two weeks, twelve dollars.

Marty Schneider:
Mayberry Days. Mayberry Days. Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
Gets us in.

Marty Schneider:
We could go.

Mandy Kaplan:
Meet you there.

Marty Schneider:
We could go. Listen, I’ve been saying that I would go for years, and I’ve been to the town. I’ve been to the town.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, you have.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, my dad lives about an hour away from there.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay. What state is it in? North Carolina? Okay.

Marty Schneider:
North Carolina. My dad lives outside of Greensboro. So the last time I was at my dad’s, he was like, we’re just going to go and you’re going to see. So I have been there. I’ve seen all those locations. I wasn’t there during Mayberry Days. I’ve been telling Dan for years I’m going to make us go. But it always happens to fall on my birthday, and I’m like, I can’t spend my birthday doing this. I can’t do this with my life.

Mandy Kaplan:
Heard, as the kids say. Heard.

Marty Schneider:
And also, I think they would kill us, right? These are people who, if they knew what we were doing…

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. I’m getting nervous about the Mayberry Mafia as we are recording this.

Dan Ludwig:
It would be like a smash cut of us running away from a crowd of people.

Marty Schneider:
We might all get pictures of our houses.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Fortunately, I’m pretty sure we can outrun all of them.

Mandy Kaplan:
I think you’re right. “The Mayberry Rap” by Rick Rumble is amazing. The song on the opening credits.

Dan Ludwig:
Oh, my God.

Mandy Kaplan:
If you all value your time on earth, go take three minutes and listen to this song, “The Mayberry Rap” by Rick Rumble. He’s doing impersonations of all the characters. It’s absolutely hilarious.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Not particularly good impersonations, either.

Mandy Kaplan:
He thinks he’s Weird Al.

Dan Ludwig:
They really set the tone by opening with Jimmy Fallon and Will Smith singing The Andy Griffith Show theme song. They’re just like, out the gate, this is what our deal is.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. Oh, yeah. These people are serious. One of the collectors, one of the characters in this documentary that we see over and over and over, I didn’t write down a name, says my wife won’t let me get any more paraphernalia. And I thought, I’m going to go out on a limb and say she is long gone, that wife.

Marty Schneider:
What’s so funny is we’ve said that about Andy Griffith characters. We’ve said Otis’s wife is gone, man. Otis’s wife left. So that gentleman’s name is Allan Newsome.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, that’s Allan Newsome.

Marty Schneider:
That’s Allan.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, that’s the guy.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, the guy with the mustache who plays Floyd the Barber.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. I wasn’t sure. Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
The guy that’s radiating divorce, yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Yep. I have a weird begrudging respect for Allan.

Dan Ludwig:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
Just in that, number one, he’s one of the oldest podcasters.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, yeah.

Marty Schneider:
He’s been doing that Two Chairs No Waiting thing since 2008, when nobody knew what a podcast was. And he regularly generates content about this. So he’s still doing it, so often. And I have respect for anybody who’s able to wrangle a community that strong for so much time and to build that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Marty Schneider:
I have respect for it. But I do think that, again, trying to find the nicest way to do this, there’s a certain element that I love. I like the camaraderie. I like that these people have found something that they bond together over. And I think a lot of it, they’re not going to admit it, but I think a lot of it comes out of a sense of fear. A lot of these people are just like, I don’t understand the world. I don’t recognize it. These people are also afraid. It’s also not hard to guess the political leanings of these people when they have a Make Mayberry Great Again sticker on them.

Mandy Kaplan:
Correct. Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
So I find it fun and interesting that they’ve come together, which is what the best of fandoms do, but where they lose me…

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, and they’re embracing the positivity of the show.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s what they claim. I appreciate that. They’re saying this was a show about neighbors and taking care of each other and a time when we could all join together and be positive. That is fantastic. If that’s really what this is about, that’s great.

Marty Schneider:
But where they lose me is, just one time I need you to be honest and just say, I know this isn’t real.

Mandy Kaplan:
So it’s just a…

Marty Schneider:
I know that this was never real. I know that even when it was aired, it was depicting a time that didn’t exist. And I don’t think, in general, human beings are as good at determining fact from fiction as we think we are.

Dan Ludwig:
What is that?

Marty Schneider:
They have really committed themselves to a lie, and it’s a load-bearing delusion. Again, I have no problem if you… it would be hypocritical for me to be like, hey, don’t go cosplay. Hey, don’t put events together. They made a movie together. They Kickstarter-funded a movie called Mayberry Man, which is awful. But hey, you and your friends want to make a little fan film, that’s fine, whatever.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Where you lose me is when it becomes, this is the film that you should be watching. Why can’t Hollywood make films like this? Why can’t we all live this particular way, because we’ve committed to this belief in the past?

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And that’s what differentiates it.

Dan Ludwig:
It gives away the game at one point when they just cut to some family that are like, yeah, we’re going to Mayberry Days. I haven’t really been able to find any TV shows that align with my values, so I guess we’re going with this.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
And then they cut to their kid at Mayberry Days throwing a brick on the ground.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Dan Ludwig:
There is sort of a thing of, if you’re conservative and don’t really go for a lot of stuff, this is kind of what you’re working with a little bit. Especially, again, back in the ’90s.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure. The kid, you said kid. Can I talk just for a moment about the kid that happens to look like Opie, and he looks like a hostage?

Marty Schneider:
A little bit.

Dan Ludwig:
What the hell was that?

Mandy Kaplan:
And they showed him so much.

Marty Schneider:
He’s on the cover of the DVD.

Mandy Kaplan:
And it feels like the cult took him hostage and trots him out every year, and he’s like, okay, I’m Opie.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
They just follow him around his yard for a while, just asking him questions as he’s like, I don’t know, man, yeah, I guess he’s cool.

Mandy Kaplan:
I felt so bad for that kid. I’m nine, leave me alone.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah. Do you like chickens?

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, listeners, there’s…

Dan Ludwig:
I guess. Is it because Opie likes chickens? Sure! Sure! Whatever will get you off my back. Fine! It’s so weird.

Marty Schneider:
Listeners, there is a scene in this documentary where they follow around a red-headed six-year-old that they, they being the Andy Griffith fan club people, have decided looks enough like young Ronnie Howard that they make him the Opie in their weird little tribute play.

Dan Ludwig:
This is such a weird documentary.

Marty Schneider:
But it’s not enough to just be like, hey, pretend to be Opie on Mayberry Days for today. Hey, we’re going to put on a play. You’re Opie. You know, it’s The Music Man. Amaryllis, Amaryllis, say that. It’s not that. It’s not like, hey, you’re going to play Opie. It’s, do you know that you are the manifestation of Ron Howard?

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, yeah, it’s creepy.

Marty Schneider:
We have brought Ron Howard’s brother to confirm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yep.

Dan Ludwig:
This is a terrible documentary, but what it is great as is a David Lynch fever dream.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, or Waiting for Guffman in real life.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, it’s just long stretches of almost psychedelically weird stuff happening. Like that one guy giving a monologue about how he thought he was going to make it as a career as a Barney Fife impersonator, and that’s why he didn’t see his family for like five years?

Mandy Kaplan:
Is that David Browning, the actor David Browning?

Marty Schneider:
David Browning, David Browning, David Browning, the actor David Browning.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
You know what, Mayberry Days was never the same after David Browning left. They go on and on in this documentary about this guy, David Browning. David Browning is still alive, I should tell everybody. He lives. He just decides, I’m 67 years old. I don’t want to do a Don Knotts in person. I missed my kid’s graduation.

Mandy Kaplan:
Giving out tickets for dogs.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
I missed my kid’s graduation to go pretend to be Barney Fife. He doesn’t speak to me anymore. I’m going to hang it up. I made up that last part about the kid not speaking to him anymore, but I think so.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, good.

Dan Ludwig:
I mean, yeah.

Marty Schneider:
I feel like, come on. If my dad missed a baseball game to pretend to be Don Knotts, I would probably not have a great relationship with him. But they treat his retirement like it’s the worst thing to ever hit this community. He’s alive.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
He’s fine.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And that’s the part of this where I think this gets real weird.

Mandy Kaplan:
It does. But in a way, it is something I couldn’t turn away from. It is fascinating. It’s a character study of these people and their fandom and how far they’ll go. And then the people of the town, not taking advantage in a bad way, but cashing in on this fandom. So they’ve opened all these shops that are reminiscent of The Andy Griffith Show, and they sell paraphernalia. Good on you for figuring out how to monetize this.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, it’s got a lot of things.

Marty Schneider:
But if you talk to the people who actually live there, like we have, like Ted Koppel did in that CBS News segment, the people who aren’t part of this community are frustrated with it. And you know who also didn’t like it?

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Marty Schneider:
Andy Griffith. Andy Griffith did not like living in Mount Airy. He made it very clear. They had to pay him to come back to do the dedication to the Andy Griffith Museum.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Right.

Dan Ludwig:
That is one of the weird things, where they have an Andy Griffith interview and he’s like, Mayberry is not based off of Mount Airy, and then they immediately cut to somebody from it being like, he’s a fucking liar.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
It’s so weird.

Marty Schneider:
We have our own Andy Griffith expert in our pocket that we’ve had on the show. Guy named Evan Dalton Smith. He just released a book on North Carolina University Press. It’s called Searching for Andy Griffith. It’s a very good book. So we’ve had our own biographer come on the show to explain to us. And he also looks at a lot of this stuff and goes, oh, you guys are missing the point. And I think that that’s what drives Dan and I nuts the most, is that there seems to be a big discrepancy between…

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
…the show that these guys have built up in their heads and the show that we’re watching, which is sometimes about having too many dogs.

Dan Ludwig:
Yes.

Marty Schneider:
Not every episode is “Opie the Birdman.” There are a handful of episodes that are as good as “Opie the Birdman,” or better.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm.

Marty Schneider:
But eventually everybody who’s a fan of The Simpsons has to admit that we’re talking about a very specific time of The Simpsons.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Marty Schneider:
Maybe seven to eight seasons.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Right.

Marty Schneider:
And ultimately you start to realize it’s not about the show. It has nothing to do with the show. It has to do with the idea of this place that they’ve seen and they’ve made up in their heads.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And the show or the creators be damned.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm. Dan, parting final thoughts?

Marty Schneider:
Sorry.

Mandy Kaplan:
Bless you.

Dan Ludwig:
So the thing from watching, and we’ve thought about these people so much, but the thing from watching this documentary that really jumped out at me is, I’m watching it and I’m like, this is all so weird and strange and kind of haunting in a lot of ways. But if you replace The Andy Griffith Show with Star Wars, and you replace Barney Fife with Chewbacca, then suddenly the way that these people are talking about this and the way they relate it to their lives is very familiar.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Dan Ludwig:
It doesn’t seem weird. And the thing I was really trying to nail down is, what makes this strange to me as opposed to most modern-day forms of fandom? And I was just sort of like, it’s almost the primordial ooze that modern fandom kind of crawled out of, which is fandom built around nothing. Around this vague idea. After a certain point it’s divorced almost from the show, and they’re not really a fan of the show anymore. They’re a fan of the Mayberry concept.

Mandy Kaplan:
Being a fan, yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Just this complete idea. It’s sort of illustrative of, what is it to build your life around fiction? And if you really take out the fiction, if you get rid of that and you no longer have fantastical worlds to obsess over and stuff like that, what is it to just be a fan of being a fan, essentially?

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. Right.

Dan Ludwig:
And yeah, it’s a weird funhouse mirror look at it.

Marty Schneider:
We’ve talked about what is the millennial equivalent of Andy Griffith. What is it?

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
And the closest thing I can liken it to are the people who are still really invested in Harry Potter. The people who still have not given up on it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Marty Schneider:
If anything, the Harry Potter people are worse, because I guess Andy Griffith himself was at least a halfway decent person.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm. Right.

Marty Schneider:
But I think when you look at the Harry Potter fans that are still sticking around, they aren’t really there because of the books themselves. It’s not like the books were particularly wonderful writing. I think what they are there for is because they miss being part of something huge like that. They miss the feeling that when I crack open this fourth Harry Potter book at midnight, millions of other kids my age are also doing this.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
This is so ubiquitous. And so what you’re actually missing is that sense that this art, this fiction, brought you all together and you all shared something because of it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Connection, community, yeah.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And you’re never going to get that. It’s not going to happen again.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Marty Schneider:
So you wind up with the Mayberry Days situation of, we’re doing everything we possibly can to really cling on to that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Hold on to that, yeah.

Marty Schneider:
And there is something admirable about that, but it’s also something mostly very, very sad.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, unfortunately.

Dan Ludwig:
There’s a thing that a film critic said about the endless reinvention of Star Wars, where the fans are like, it needs to go back to the way it was when it was pure. It needs to be more real, more political. No, it needs to be more fun and goofy. And he just goes, are you sure you don’t just miss what it was like to be ten? Is it not even about Star Wars? Is it just about you, maybe, and nothing will ever take you back there?

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm. All thought-provoking. I am not really a super fan of anything except Taylor Swift. But even at a certain point, I’m like, I’m not spending a thousand dollars on a ticket. No way, no day. So my fandom is very limited. I’m a football fanatic. I have a jersey. That’s it. And I watch football. But I’m a moderate fan.

So this nerd mentality, that’s what I’m exploring through this podcast, is what makes these people really go for it and change their lives and miss family events for this love of this thing.

Dan Ludwig:
I’m assuming as a Swiftie you have had to drop everything and become a Chiefs fan. Is that what had to be done?

Mandy Kaplan:
Bite your tongue. No, bite your tongue. I won’t take it that far. Guys, I got so wrapped up in our conversation that I forgot to say, Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by the peerless Pete Wright. My theme song is “Wonderstruck” by Jane and the Boy. And you can get me on Instagram at Mandy underscore Kaplan underscore Klavens, both with K’s, or on TikTok at MandyMiscast. If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, please, please leave a review. Five stars. It helps more people find the podcast.

If you’re feeling extra supportive, go to makemeanerd.com/join. Hitting that button will get you your episodes ad-free and early. Gentlemen, we are all done here. Where can the people find you and your podcasts? Plug away.

Marty Schneider:
Breaking Mayberry is available wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, et cetera, et cetera. We are on Instagram at Breaking Mayberry. We are on Bluesky at breakingmayberry.bsky.social. That’s where you’ll see most of our clips and things. We also are putting our stuff out on YouTube now, but we’re not going to do YouTube podcasts. We’re just putting clips out there. They’re worth checking out.

Mandy Kaplan:
Thank you for clarifying.

Marty Schneider:
And if you want more bonus content, we also have a Patreon, patreon.com/breakingmayberry. Eight dollars a month gets you bonus episodes. You can torture us, make us watch whatever you want. And I should also say that we are currently not doing Andy Griffith.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh.

Marty Schneider:
We are in the middle of a miniseries called TGI Failures. TGI Failures is a look at all of the attempts at sitcoms that ABC tried to put into the TGIF lineup in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s that didn’t make it. You had Boy Meets World and Sabrina, and you had other stuff.

Mandy Kaplan:
I wonder if you’re going to have any particularly fantastic guests coming up.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah, we’ve considered it.

Marty Schneider:
Oh, we’ve considered a Mandy. Some Mandy-bilities.

Mandy Kaplan:
What?

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah. There’s been some rumblings. We also did not shout out that you named yourself Mandy Griffith on this, and we really did not give you credit for that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh. Thank you.

Marty Schneider:
Yeah, that needed to be acknowledged.

Mandy Kaplan:
Thank you.

Dan Ludwig:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s been a white elephant. All right.

Dan Ludwig:
I know.

Mandy Kaplan:
Thank you so much for doing this. I had so much fun, and you broadened my nerdy horizons. Thank you for being here, and thank you all for listening. Until next time.