Petticoat Junction: Season 02 (1964)

The second season of Petticoat Junction carries on the tradition of season one: Widowed Kate Bradley (Bea Benaderet) continues trying to make financial ends meets as owner of the Shady Rest, the only travelers' hotel in the town of Hooterville, and also seeks out eligible boyfriends for her toothsome daughters Betty Joe (Linda Kaye), Billie Jo (Jeannine Riley), and Bobbie Jo (Patricia Woodell); Kate's shiftless uncle Joe Carson (Edgar Buchanan) persists in dodging honest work by pursuing a million-and-one scams and get-rich-quick notions; and Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane), the conniving trouble-shooter for the C.F.&W. Railroad, tirelessly hatches new schemes to put his line's last remaining steam engine, the Hooterville Cannonball, out of commission (Indeed, so obsessed does Bedloe become in this pursuit that his obsession takes a Freudian turn in the offbeat episode "Bedloe's Nightmare"). A few casting notes: the season opener "Betty Jo's Dog" introduces canine actor Higgins, later to gain fame as the titular star of the Benji movies, in the role of the Shady Rest's unnamed pooch. In "As Hooterville Goes," Virginia Sale makes her first series appearance as Kate Bradley's overbearing social rival Selma Plout. In a later episode, it is rumored that Kate's daughter Billie Jo is engaged to Selma's son Dan, played by Mike Minor -- who would become a Petticoat Junction regular two years later in the role of Steve Elliott, the future husband of Billie Jo's sister Betty Jo! And Byron Foulger, who in season six would begin showing up in the recurring role of train conductor Wendell Gibbs, plays Mr. Guerney in "The Shady Rest Hotel Corporation." Although no longer the fourth most popular series in the U.S., Petticoat Junction managed to finish its second season in a respectable 15th place. Like season one, season two of Petticoat Junction was filmed in black-and-white -- and as a result, has been removed from the series' all-color syndicated package. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi