Show: “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”
Episode: “Opie Joins The Marines” (Season 2)
Role: Opie Taylor. (As if the title of the episode didn’t completely give it away.) You might be surprised to discover that, despite being a spin-off from “The Andy Griffith Show,” there were precious few occasions when Gomer Pyle received visits from his friends and family from Mayberry, NC. In fact, of the 150 episodes of the series that were produced, only three – count ’em – three episodes featured folks from back home stopping by. We saw Goober pop up once (“A Visit from Cousin Goober”), and Aunt Bee found time in her busy schedule to bless Gomer with her presence (“A Visit from Aunt Bee”), but this time we’re giving props to Opie’s unexpected appearance, which came about through one of the all-time classic sitcom plot lines: a kid running away from home.
Why the props for such a predictable premise? Because Opie lives in North Carolina, and “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” took place in California. We have to give Opie credit: when he decides to run away, the kid doesn’t take the half-assed way out. In fact, the idea that a 12-year-old boy could’ve managed to make it across country by himself is something that Gomer can’t even wrap his head around. Now, granted, the man’s not Einstein, but, still, we were kind of wondering about how he managed it ourselves.
Opie: I hitched a ride on a plane.
Gomer: (Dumbfounded) Well, how in the world could you do a thing like that?
Opie: Well, I went to the airport in Raleigh, and I told them I was traveling to California with my grandma, but we got separated while we was changing planes.
Gomer: (Aghast) You didn’t!
Opie: And they felt sorry for me and put me on a plane.
Gomer: (In a censuring tone) Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!
You didn’t realize Jim Nabors had that kind of range, did you? Well, he moves back into his dumbfounded expression when Opie explains that he’s traveled cross-country to join the Marines. Why? Because he wasn’t doing so well in school, and to keep from having to deal with a pissed-off Andy Taylor, he figured maybe he’d better go away for awhile…’til, say, adulthood.
Unfortunately, the timing really just couldn’t be worse for Gomer to have a 12-year-old boy stashed in his barracks; there are “newspaper people” – otherwise known as reporters, we suspect, but that’s the expression that’s used in the episode, so we’re sticking to it – touring the camp, and Sgt. Carter (Frank Sutton) has already got his eye on Pyle as being the one who’s most likely to be responsible for something newsworthy. As soon as they hear Carter’s loud mouth, Gomer and his bunkmates – Pvt. Duke Slater (Ronnie Schell) and Pvt. Frankie Lombardi (Ted Bessell) – immediately stuff Opie in the nearest locker. Fortunately, Carter leaves the premises before Opie suffocates, and young Mr. Taylor asks if maybe he could just explain to the sergeant why he’s there, to which Slater and Lombardi respond with the perfect tandem “NO!” The preferable solution, clearly, is to sneak Opie out in a trashcan…but Carter intervenes, and the operation fails. Next up: dumping him in a laundry bag and trying to get him out that way. Alas, Carter rears his head once again.
“It sure was a lot easier getting in here than getting out,” opines Opie, who’s gotten so frustrated about the whole thing that, after getting stuffed in the locker yet again to avoid the sergeant, he decides to speak up and make his presence known. Carter comes within a few heartbeats of an aneurysm at the sight of this red-haired rapscallion, and Opie’s heartfelt admission of where he’s from and why he’s come doesn’t do anything to tone him down. (“There’s a Marine base in South Carolina! Can you go there to enlist?”) He tells Gomer to keep him under wraps ’til dark, then to take him anywhere or to any other branch of the armed forces, just as long as he gets him off the base…but before Carter can even get out of the barracks, the press representatives arrive, and it’s back into the locker for Opie. Despite one horrifying moment when it appears that one of the photographers is going to take photos of the contents of each and after locker, the group departs without finding the lad; by the time Gomer and the gang open the locker to let him out, however, he’s fallen sound asleep.
Gomer gets Opie a hotel room, where Mr. Pyle finally gets a chance to call Andy back in Mayberry and fill him in on his son’s whereabouts. Sheriff Taylor reacts in a way that would chill any kid to the bone, refusing to talk to his son and instead only saying, “I’ll talk to him when I get there.” Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest part. There’s more than one level of waiting involved here, though: as Gomer prepares to leave Opie by himself in a hotel room, he’s stricken by concern when he considers the boy having to stay there all by himself. So it’s back to the base they go…an action which brings Carter spitting distance from a stroke. The sergeant personally escorts Opie back to the hotel, and when he tells the boy how awful he was for running away, he’s shocked to hear Opie agree with him; even more surprising to him, however, is Opie’s acknowledgment of the “knucklehead” nature of his actions and his comment about how you can’t be “a squared-away Marine” if you make too many such maneuvers. The next thing you know, Sgt. Carter has been charmed by Opie, too, inviting the boy back to the barracks for the night.
At this point, things happen approximately – but not exactly – as you’d expect them to: the press representatives come into Sgt. Carter’s barracks, Opie’s presence is revealed, and everyone starts trying to take responsibility for him being there, first the sergeant, then Gomer. Finally, however, Opie stands up and gives a monologue that should’ve become an audition staple for kid actors, where he speaks lovingly of Gomer’s letters home to Mayberry and explains how Pyle’s prose convinced him that if he was going to join the Marines, it had better be in a platoon under the command of Sgt. Carter. The reporters are on the verge of weeping and immediately go nuts about the great human interest angle of this story (“You could start a recruiting drive with this!”), and all’s well that ends well…until Andy arrives.
There’s a surprising moment immediately prior to Andy’s arrival where Sgt. Carter and Opie get a surprisingly touching scene together; Carter considers how his own father would’ve acted in a similar situation and decides that he wants to talk to Andy before he sees Opie, if only to say something along the lines of, “My dad would’ve beaten me to within an inch of my life, but Opie doesn’t deserve that.” And in an odd turn that you wouldn’t see nowadays, Andy arrives looking downright pissed. I mean, there’s no chance that he’s going to be going the “I’m just glad you’re okay” route; he actually looks at Carter and says in an utterly humorless voice, “Where’s the boy, sergeant?” This might be the most serious you’ve ever seen Andy Griffith look outside of his role in “Fatal Vision.” Even more odd (at least by today’s sitcom standards) is the reunion between Andy and Opie, which basically just involves Andy asking, “You ’bout ready to come home?” When Opie nods, his pa replies, “Let’s go,” puts his arm around his shoulder, and they walk off silently, causing Sgt. Carter to say with a big shit-eating grin, “You know something, Pyle? The world has changed a lot since I was a kid.”
What the hell is he smiling about? That Opie didn’t get his ass beat…? Yeah, there’s a happy ending for you…’til they get back to Mayberry!
