Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor play a city lawyer and his wife who wants a quiet life in the country. They buy a farm in Hooterville (never mention a state). Eva (Zsa Zsa's sister) is a delight and hysterical as Lisa, his wife. Eddie's Oliver Wendell Douglas always means well. He wanted to get out of the rat race in New York City. Arnold, the pig, is a delight. He watches television shows and gets drafted by the army. Mary Grace Canfield played Ralph, the female carpenter and sister. Things always go on in Hooterville and it's not as boring as it seems. Life seems rather interesting on a farm than in the city. Lisa and Oliver always get into trouble but always manage to get out of it with laughs galore. Eb, the farmhand, thinks of him as surrogate parents. The locals are just as much fun especially the older couple who treat Arnold like a son than a pet. He lives like a king.

I've known many who pan this show as pure drudge. Nay, I say to thee, this show was the pinnacle of genius. The jokes may be 'childish', 'sophomoric' and 'dumb' but they are meant to be. This show is one of the most amazingly funny shows ever produced BECAUSE it's humor is so dumb. It's meant to be dumb and done so well, the average person just does not get the joke. And think about it, Eddie Albert was a VERY accomplished actor. Does anyone really think he'd sign on to a stupid show? A brilliant show made to seem stupid, YES! And Eva Gabor, the ONLY Gabor worth ever remembering (were there any others, eh, who gives a damn?) was dumb so brilliantly, how could you not love her and her character? I don't care what anyone says, if you watch this show with an open mind, or even a closed one that can grasp pure satire and NOT laugh your ass off, you need some serious counseling. Small, rural town life satired to the point of absurdity while also skewering uptight, big city snobs is just too funny to every dismiss as anything but brilliant. I've used that word a lot, and I mean it.

If you remember in Holiday Inn Bing Crosby just like Eddie Albert wanted a life of ease and comfort and away from the daily grind of show business. In a year on the farm he found just how hard life can be there and decided on something else which was the crux of that film. Fred Astaire gave him a geranium plant to satisfy his agricultural urge as he put it.Bing wasn't half as determined as Oliver Wendell Douglas played by Eddie Albert who was a Wall Street lawyer, but who also wanted to get to a simple life on the farm. But his time on the farm lasted for seven seasons and was still going when Green Acres went off the air. Albert was the fictional reincarnation of Wendell Wilkie who Harold Ickes once characterized as the "simple barefoot prairie lawyer from Wall Street" who also had a farm background in rural Indiana.But Douglas never saw a farm he only imagined what it was like. Well no one in our society works harder than farmers, even those who don't work for themselves, but might work for some agri-business outfit like Archer Daniels Midland. It's 24/7 for those folks with no vacations and the women work as hard as the men. Crops don't grow by themselves with a decent yield and livestock has to be tended and fed to multiply.None of this did Albert realize when he bought a farm in fictional Hooterville, also known as the home of the Shady Rest Motel in Petticoat Junction. The same show regulars did double duty in both shows, making them the hardest working cast in television during the Sixties. The comedy came from two sources on Green Acres both equally funny. The first was Eddie Albert, Wall Street lawyer and a curious combination of eager apprentice farmer and lawyer used to dealing with powerful folks. As often as not the rustics of Green Acres got the better of him.Secondly though there was Eva Gabor. She'd have much preferred to stay living on Park Avenue as the theme said every week, but she dutifully followed her husband to Hooterville. They invented the word 'chic' for Eva Gabor, but she too was at a loss dealing with her environment and by the rural folks who just didn't quite get her as she didn't get them. Of course it helped to have the best hooters in Hooterville, beating even Bea Benaderet's three daughters from Petticoat Junction.The interchangeable regulars were a trip though. My favorites were Alvy Moore as the brain dead county agent and Pat Buttram the ever scheming Mr. Haney who even got the best of Wall Street lawyer Albert from time to time.Eddie Albert was one of the most versatile players that the big and small screen ever knew. That man could play everything from gentle hero to some of the slimiest villains the screen ever saw. But he will forever be known for this show as his career part where his comic side was given its best opportunity.Green Acres was an integral part of CBS network's rural lineup that included Andy Griffith, Gomer Pyle, Petticoat Junction and the Beverly Hillbillies. All those shows were sacrificed in the eternal quest for younger demographics. I doubt if a show as gentle, but as absolutely hysterical as Green Acres could ever be duplicated again.

Watching this as a child during the late 1960's I didn't like this show. I didn't find it funny because it frustrated me! With all of the locals frustrating Mr. Douglas endlessly, they frustrated me too. Stumbling upon the show years later, the frustration was gone and I could finally enjoy the humor of it all. This was light years ahead of the tame (and boring) "Pettycoat Junction." This was life with "The Three Stooges." I always loved the on-going home improvement projects with the closet doors opening to the outside, the telephone poll phone, the over-blown big chic New York City furniture stuffed into a little farmhouse, Lisa's pink appliances, her cooking, Arnold the pig and many more. When they say they don't make 'em like they used to, they don't, and that's a darn shame.