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A common character in sitcoms
are the healers and repairers of the social fabric.
They are doers of good deeds who
take other people's suffering
and make those people well, again.
They also help hold society together.
Andy Taylor on the Andy Griffith Show
is one such character.
He masquerades as a country bumpkin
sheriff
but we all know he's a young version of
an old wise man.
If you'll forgive a little pretentiousness
he's an old soul -- a bodhisattva --
who cures human suffering with love.
That's what the Andy Griffith Show is
about --
love --
and being at home,
whether it is being at home with yourself, like Andy,
or creating a home for your two young men,
like the wonderful Aunt Bee.
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Someone who isn't at home --
in himself - and doesn't really have his own home --
is Barney Fife, a pretentious, lovable, fool
who Andy helps by covering up his inadequacies
and inventing successes for him.
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There's Andy, below,
with someone else who's not at home --
a harried, hurried, businessman who is stuck in Mayberry
with a car problem.
He's in a rush to leave
because he has forgotten the simple pleasures of
sitting on the porch, playing a guitar
and eating ice cream,
with nowhere to go and nothing much on your mind.
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But Andy will teach him --
you're only stuck
when you don't feel at home in yourself.
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Watching the Andy Griffith Show
we get to experience what it is like
to be a healer and a good parent
to the world.
And we get to experience what it is like
to have a healer and good parent
create a secure and loving holding environment for us
like Andy does for Opie
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and everyone else.
We get to sadistically laugh at Barney's
foolishness
while taking pleasure in altruistically
protecting his feelings,
because we like him so much
and we know that, like everyone else in Mayberry,
he's got a good heart.
By depicting these characters,
the Andy Griffith Show vicariously places us
in a benevolent social world
in which human foibles are forgivable
and love creates a place where even foolishness
can feel at home.
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