YMMV / The Beverly Hillbillies

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Miss Hathaway is a lesbian, with her crush on Jethro as a front. This is helped along, obviously, by the Real Life lesbianism of both of her actresses — Nancy Kulp (in the TV series) and Lily Tomlin (in the film).
  • Although he's often the bad guy in the story compared to Miss Hathaway, Mr. Drysdale is simply a man trying to please his clients at all costs.
• Critical Dissonance: Upon its premiere, critics roundly panned the series as unfunny and hoped the series would flop. Viewers, however, adored the show to the point where it was the top-rated program in the country for the first two seasons. It consistently remained in the Nielsen Top 20 for eight out of its nine seasons, including five seasons in the Nielsen Top 10.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sonny only appeared in ten episodes, but his actor received lots of fan mail.
• Playing Against Type: While playing the part of a dim-witted backwoods yokel was certainly nothing new for Jim Varney and in fact almost resulted in him not getting the part, his performance of Jed is vastly different from that of Ernest; he plays the character mostly straight and while he has very limited understandings of modern civilization, he is much more intelligent and less gullible then Ernest and is not afraid to be firm when the situation calls for it. He manages to channel the likability afforded to the character by Buddy Ebsen while giving a great performance in the role, even able to give sentimentality in one scene where he talks to Ellie May about having to raise her without a Ms. Clampett. Jim's background as a Shakespearian actor allowed him a much bigger range of performances than most people think.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • R&B singer Teena Marie, then still a child, appeared on the episode "Doctor Jed Clampett".^note Credited as Tina Marie Brockert.
  • Recurring character Janet Trego was played by Sharon Tate, in one of her first roles before becoming famous later in the decade until her infamous demise.
  • Vanessa from "War of the Roses" is played by Rosalind Knight, who would later be best known for playing Beryl Merit in Gimme, Gimme, Gimme and Horrible Grandma in Friday Night Dinner.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Elly-May could potentially be an FTM trans man, as she seemed actually quite pleased when Ms. Hathaway confused her for a man, and her natural discomfort wearing feminine clothing.
• Unintentional Period Piece: This is a show made primarily in the 1960s, so this is a given.
  • In the first episode, the oil company employee asks the Clampetts for a telephone, and they are so out of touch with technology, they find the concept ridiculous. Nowadays, with the ubiquity of cellphones, the joke would be harder to pull off: the employee would have cell phones and the Clampetts would likely encounter them, even in the hinterlands of Arkansas.
  • California was a popular place to move to in the 1960s for the rich and famous, but with California undergoing a cost-of-living crisis and climate-driven water scarcity in the early 21st century, the Clampetts would nowadays be more likely to move to states like Texas or Arizona.
• Values Dissonance: While an old woman defending Dixie is pretty normal in the 1960s, Granny's love of the Confederates would not nearly be defended.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Some sources refer to Irene Ryan's character as "Granny Clampett." She is actually Jed Clampett's mother-in-law and her character's name is Daisy Moses.
  • Those only vaguely familiar with the characters also tend to refer to Jethro as "Jethro Clampett" - even though he's not Jed's son but his nephew and regularly goes by "Jethro Bodine" throughout the show's run.
• Vindicated by History: The show remains a staple of syndicated television to this day, and still brings in decent ratings, mostly on digital subchannels dedicated to reruns of this nature — so much so that it's hard to believe critics absolutely hated it when it first aired.

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