Review of "Jed Pays His Income Taxes," episode 28 of the Beverly Hillbillies

 Review of

Jed Pays His Income Taxes, episode 28 of the Beverly Hillbillies

Four out of five stars

One of the best casted shows

 It has been several years since I watched an episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” When watching this episode one conclusion in inescapable. The show was one of the best casted shows ever produced. Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett, Irene Ryan as Daisy Moses (Granny), Donna Douglas as Elly May and Max Baer Jr. as Jethro Bodine were made for their roles. While the humor is very dated in the sense that it appears childish to modern viewers, the body language of the main characters makes up for some of it.

 In this episode, an IRS agent arrives at the Clampett mansion and is driven away by Granny at the point of a gun. The agent then goes to banker Milburn Drysdale in an attempt to get an explanation of how Jed was suddenly earning millions after having nothing. The explanations involve flashbacks to how the Clampetts lived before they sold their land for the oil underneath. Again, the humor is rather corny, the characters are overplayed as ignorant hicks, yet there is something endearing about their simple lifestyle.

 In the middle sixties when the series was produced, there were still areas of the United States where people lived like the Clampetts originally did. Therefore, there was some truth to their origins and nearly everyone knew it. This made the deep country humor more realistic than it is now. Furthermore, there are few taxpayers in the country that would resist the opportunity to chase an IRS agent away by brandishing a gun.