Amazing that no-one called the producers for this obvious sexual come on. I was six when the first advertisements for the show were shown and I immediately recognized the bait and switch. Everything about the show was suggestively sexual and it never delivered. In the opening we have three gorgeous girls swimming nude in a water tower. The water tower is used to service a 100-year-old steam locomotive. Why, in heaven's name would any intelligent woman get into a 100-year-old filthy, unfiltered water tower? And why be (apparently) nude with your sisters? Why because the producers are telling you this is a sexy show. The theme song invites you to ride the train that goes along the tracks to the junction. Petticoat Junction! The question I have is why would anyone want to do that? The Shady Rest is a run-down hotel in the middle of the sticks. Do you have to ride a train to get there? Isn't there a modern hotel off the interstate? Obviously, the hotel has no pool. Why else would the girls get in that rancid water tower. Maybe they had to bathe in the tower, because this hotel has no plumbing. Ewww. Then there is the hotel name. It's the Shady Rest. Shady as in "suspicious, suspect, questionable, disreputable, dishonest, illegal, dishonorable, unscrupulous or unethical." Oh sure, throw in the word "Rest" so the owners can claim innocence, but really would you board a 100-year-old train to go to a run-down dump hotel, that offers the opportunity to get out of direct sunlight? Then there are the other cast members. Edgar Buchanan, Bea Benadaret, Smiley Burnette and Rufe Davis. Benadaret was a classic whore house madam. She was there to collect the cash and keep the girls in line. The other old men would be chosen because they were no longer a threat to the girls and would not corrupt the "merchandise". They were sort of octogenarian Eunuchs. Even though I was six I saw through this bait and switch. The show itself was as asexual as possible. The plots were always about the has-been old comedians. After the suggestive opening, he girls were no where to be seen. This was in the age of strict censorship. Barbara Eden couldn't even show her navel in her Jeanie costume. If you were lured in to see an adult sexy program, you were taken for a ride on a 100 year-old train. As a comedy, the shows weren't funny. It was as bland as any show has ever been. I think people tuned in to see something happen. It never did.

I wouldn't even watch this one when I was a kid and would watch almost anything. There was no real "concept" as there was for the other sit-coms of the age... "Green Acres" had city folk in the country, "Beverly Hillbillies" had country folk in the city, but this was just a hotel in the same fictional vicinity as those other two superior shows came from. It was difficult to tell the three girls apart, especially because of the casting changes. And, to be really nit-picky about it, I remember learning from characters on one of the Paul Henning series that the Cannonball only traveled between Hooterville and Pixley, back and forth... so where is the "Junction" of which the title speaks?Nothing here of much interest. I tried it again as an adult to see if I was missing anything, and the answer was "no".

no pun intended! That whole theme of the Chico-Chico train pulling into "petticoat junction" is such a blatant latent subliminal seduction, catching us up in the momentum, carrying up in boleroish thrusts clear through to the commercial break preceding the exposition of the story, such as it might be, as the girls strip down, hearing their suggestive sotto voce as punctuation/incantation reminding us that the junction in question is - don't ever doubt it - "petticoat junction!" "And that's uncle Joe, he's movin' kinda slow at the junction"!As for mike minor, this was a hunk o' man, not the kind of guy you'd see on the dick van Dyke or the Lucy or the leave it to beaver or any TV shows at all for many years to come, for that matter. I have to add more comments now. Of course the girls were all hot. Did Aunt Bee really appear on this show, as one post here would suggest? I know sometimes there was this kind of cross pollination of characters between backwoods rube themed shows. Very appropriate for a spinster aunt named with affection after two of the biggest stars of the insect world!At least this show didn't have people like Mr. Haney and all the others on Green Acres which made that show so abominable for long stretches.WOO WOO PETTICOOOOAT JUNCTION!

When this show first premiered its biggest attraction were the three Bradley daughters. However, you really got to see a great comedy and the real stars were the late great Bea Benederet as Kate and the late and equally great Edgar Buchanan as Uncle Joe, who was always looking to get rich quick. The girls themselves were pretty well fleshed out characters themselves. Billie Jo was the ambitious star-struck one, Bobbie Jo was the somewhat dim bulb and Betty Jo was the tomboy. Betty Jo became the most evolved character as you saw her grow up from being a girl who was pretty much pre-occupied with sports into a beautiful young woman who eventually settled down and married the man of her dreams. Too bad Bea Benederet passed away. When that happened the wind seemed to go out of the show and within two years it was gone. Perhaps it was a precursor of things to come becuase within a year after it had gone off the air all the great rural television shows were virtually wiped out in the infamous purge of 1971.