The Dukes of Hazzard was part of America’s redneck fetish in the mid-to-late 1970s, otherwise evident in popular songs, movies, and television shows highlighting fast cars, truckers, citizens’ band radio, moonshine, irreverent hicks, and cluless lawmen. Created by writer-producer Gy Waldron and inspired by his own 1975 bootlegging comedy, Moonrunners, Dukes milked seven seasons of material from the tale of a Deep South family of reformed whiskey-makers and their running feud with a greedy impresario and his chief lackey, a buffoonish, venal sheriff.
This three-disc set includes all 13 initial episodes of Dukes from 1979, a period fans fondly recall because some of the programs were shot on location in Covington, Georgia, rather than a Burbank backlot. Also noteworthy is that a couple of key characters, particularly Hazzard County’s corrupt lawman, Roscoe P. Coltrane (James Best), hadn’t gelled yet into permanent hayseed stereotypes and were arguably more interesting at the beginning. At the center of the action is Sheriff Coltrane’s nemeses, cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat), a couple of wild boys buzzing through the backwoods in the “General Lee,” a souped-up Dodge Charger. Bo and Luke are good at heart but have to behave themselves while on indefinite probation, complicating but not halting their efforts to vex Roscoe and his patron, diminutive bigwig Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke). The enmity runs both ways: Roscoe and Boss Hogg, with the aid of witless Deputy Enos Strate (Sonny Shroyer), dream up ways of eliminating the Dukes–including their wise old Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle)–but their efforts always backfire.
While every episode is a variation on the previous one, predictability is a virtu in Dukes. The series pilot, “One Armed Bandits,” finds Luke and Bo, with help from their sexy cousin, Daisy (Catherine Bach), diverting slot machines (smuggled into Hazzard County by Roscoe and Boss Hogg) to sundry watering holes where they can raise money for Bo’s girlfriend’s charity. In “Money to Burn,” Boss Hogg tries to frame Bo and Luke for robbing an armored truck, while in “Deputy Dukes,” the unarmed guys are forced by Roscoe to escort a deadly prisoner from one town to another. The Dukes hit back in “Daisy’s Song,” investigating a scam that took Daisy for $50 and implicates, of course, Boss Hogg and Roscoe. Yes, it’s a show about rubes, car stunts, and a legacy of moonshine, but there’s something comforting about it, in a tongu-in-cheek way.
The Dukes of Hazzard settled into a comfortable run in season 2. The show, originally shot on location in Covington, Georgia, was now permanently produced on a backlot in Burbank, California. While a couple of cast members (Ben Jones, who plays mechanic Cooter Davenport, and James Best, who portrays Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane) briefly boycotted the series in its second year (ushering in a parade of brief replacements, including Mickey Jones of the Monkees, Dick Sargent of Bewitched, and James Hampton of F Troop), the actors relaxed into their now thoroughly cartoonish characters.
What else can one say: The General Lee, the souped-up ‘69, orange Dodge Charger that belongs to cousins Bo (John Schneider) and Luke (Tom Wopat) Duke, has a full tank and is ready to ride. The Duke boys, scions of a proud–though reformed–moonshining family, are still on probation with the law but continu to root out the criminal schemes of diminutive villain Boss Hogg (Sorrell Brooke) and his Wile E. Coyote-like lackey, Sheriff Coltrane. Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle) is still a fount of grizzled wisdom as well as Boss Hogg’s old whiskey-running nemesis. Cousin Daisy (Catherine Bach) still burns up the road with her short-shorts, and Coltrane’s deputies Enos (Sonny Shroyer) and Cletus (Rick Hurst) remain idiots with an edge of sympathy. Season 2 highlights include a funny fan favorite called “The Ghost of General Lee” (also co-star Schneider’s favorite episode), in which Bo and Luke are assumed to have drowned when their stolen car ends up at the bottom of a pond. Hearing that Boss Hogg plans to blame them anyway for a theft they didn’t commit, the Duke boys haunt him and Coltrane with apparitions of the General Lee as a “ghost.” NASCAR legend Cale Yarborough makes an appealing gust in a story about the development of a secret turbo charger and Hogg’s effort to steal it, while Loretta Lynn turns up as herself in a damsel-in-distress tale, featuring the country superstar as a kidnapped hostage. “Witness for the Persecution” introduces a recurring theme on Dukes: Occasions in which the vile Hogg must be protected from his enemies by hiding out with (gasp) the Dukes. The best of The Complete Second Season, however, may be “Days of Shine and Roses,” in which Hogg and Uncle Jesse, after watching a film of their old moonshine-delivery exploits with the Ridge Runners Association, get into an argument about who was best and decide to resolve the qustion with a grudge race. Special features include Wopat and Schneider’s screen tests, and a documentary about the Dukes‘ 25th anniversary festival in Tennessee, featuring series stars and stunt drivers. –Tom Keogh
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