In light of this weekend's foiled car bombing in London, I thought I would celebrate John Edwards' brilliant notion that the war on terror is a made-up campaign slogan for the Bush administration by discussing something near and dear to many Americans' hearts, The Andy Griffith Show.

As someone who had never even seen an episode of the show before I met my husband, I have now seen virtually every single episode, and am able to quote from many of them. In fact, pretty much any conversation can turn into an Andy Griffith quote, much like that beloved holiday classic, Christmas Vacation. (Do you really think it matters, Eddie?) When 10:00 rolls around, I'm listening for the whistle. I'm like Pavlov's dog. I hear the whistle, I know it's time to go to sleep.

So what I'm wondering is, how can a show that was so great in black and white be such an utter disaster in color? When 10:00 comes, my DVR switches my TV over to Andy Griffith automatically. I don't even have to see it to know it's in color. The whistle has a higher pitch. I'm not kidding. And when it comes on and it's in color, my enjoyment of the day goes down a notch. Sad, but true.

My friend Mark Varner taught me that I could turn the color off and try and fool myself into thinking it's a black and white episode, which actually can help, but it's never quite enough.

Black and white TAGS episodes have the potential to make me laugh until my side hurts. There are just some classic comedic moments in those first years. Ron Howard was absolutely adorable, and you just can't get much funnier than Don Knotts, espcially when paired up with Andy. My personal favorite episode is "Mountain Wedding," with the fantastically quirky Ernest T. Bass. Please feel free to share your favorite. I'd love to hear!

I've often wondered how such a fantastic show could have fallen apart over the period of one summer. It couldn't have been just adding color. For most shows, that was a vast improvement. So, I admit, I decided to do a little research.

Of course, the number one thing that hurt the show was losing Barney Fife. Since originally Andy Griffith had said he only wanted to do five seasons, Don Knotts went ahead and signed a movie contract. When he realized that the show was going to go on, he tried to get out of it but wasn't able to. Losing him left a huge hole in the cast that proved impossible to fill. Not the least of which was the opening for a new deputy.

Which leads me to the next point. Who in the world thought that Warren Ferguson and Howard Sprague would be likeable characters? They're just not. Warren is an idiot, and not in the "bless his heart, he's such an idiot" cute way. He's just... an idiot. Howard Sprague has to be one of the most annoying television characters ever invented. I'm sorry, but the guy is a complete dweeb. He's in his 40s, has no idea how to relate to women, a town clerk who thinks his own jokes are funny enough to go on television, and he lives with his overbearing, domineering mother. I do not like anything about him. Sometimes characters are so pitiful that it's supposed to endear you to them (think Ross Geller before he became completely neurotic.) But there is nothing endearing about Howard Sprague. Nothing.

Even Helen is annoying in color. In black and white, she's a strong woman who knows what she wants out of life, while still being beautiful and feminine. In color, she's always running around spazzing out about one thing or the other and whining to Andy about it.

Which in fairness actually wasn't her fault. She was only acting out what was written for her. My research proved what I had long suspected, and that is that the same year TAGS went color and lost Barney, they also lost their show producer/story consultant, Aaron Ruben, as well as two of their main episode writers. They lost another good writer after the first color season, and by the last season it was a completely different production team. Apparently, these replacements came from the bottom of the plot pool.

The story lines of the colored episodes just lack the Andy Griffith Show spark. There is nothing interesting about them, and some of them are just downright idiotic, like Goober thinking that his dog can talk because Opie and some new kid tied a walkie talkie around his neck. The big "a-ha" moment of this episode is Andy telling Opie, "Sometimes practical jokes can hurt people. You go home and think about that." Fooling Goober couldn't have even been fun; it was clearly way too easy. It's not a feel-good moment like the last line of "Opie the Birdman," where Andy comforts Opie's grief over setting his birds free with that famous line, "But don't the trees sound nice and full?" Now, that's a great TV moment.

I just wish that there was a way we could all join together as an Andy Griffith fan conglomeration and demand that TV networks only air the first five seasons. I did read that there was a station in Huntsville, Alabama and a station in Macon, Georgia that used to air the colored episodes in b&w. Apparently it didn't fool anybody. Howard Sprague is ridiculous, in living color or not.

So in conclusion, I guess Andy Griffith is one of the first shows that really jumped the shark, but it wasn't with a plot line. I wonder if he ever regretted going past his original five-year plan. I wish he could have pulled a Seinfeld and "gone out on a high note." As it was, I don't think it could have gotten any worse.