F Troop

There was a time, perhaps when our better sensibilities knew it, when we were allowed to laugh at all races, religions and socio-ethnicities without being labeled "racist". It was a gentler, more naive time indeed, and the airwaves broadcast TV aimed at the silly side of life. "Gilligan's Island", "The Beverly Hillbillies", "I Dream of Jeannie", "Petticoat Junction", "It's About Time" and of course, "F-Troop".

There is a common thread in all of these shows: Simple, honest people are ennobled. Officious, pompous people are made fun of. Everyone is fodder for fun - no-one is above being poked at.

Ken Berry as William Parmenter is amazing in his comic timing (Mayberry RFD was a big step down for me). Melody Patterson is absolutely delicious jail-bait as "Calamity" Jane, and of course Frank DeKova and Don Diamond as Chief Wild Eagle and Crazy Cat, and Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, as Sgt. O'Rourke and Corporal Agarn, respectively, are mirror-images of avarice and opportunity.

The relationships of these last 4 characters were the most typical of TV, but smartly turned on it's head: Agarn and Crazy Cat, full of ideas and energy, scheming and snatching at everything that moved, in their climb to "success". Sgt. O'Rourke and Chief Wild Eagle, as the "Establishment", wisely knowing when to take opportunities, but at the same time wringing their hands about their underlings almost as to say "What is it with the kids these days"?

This was wonderful social satire loaded with sight-gags, something for young and old. Unfortunately we Americans seem to have lost the knack for subtle comedy, as we now linger under the thumb of blistering insults and mechanical obviousness. I don't know if we get it ourselves these days - perhaps that is why people look at the show and react first without giving the show any thought.

I don't mean to discount the valid views of other, more PC posters, but they're missing the point. TV and film are just time capsules...you can no more examine history through something like "F-Troop" than experience the future through something like "2001". Ultimately, they're both the '60s.

What you can do is understand the period and sensibilities of that time, and remember one major lesson - something we were learning then but have perhaps since forgotten: That we are all the same under the skin. And at best, we should be taken very, very lightly.

I wish that Warner Brothers would come to their senses and see that there are many of us who would buy the complete series of F-Troop once on DVD...I hope they realize that there IS a market for the show to this day! The company of Warner Brothers should respect the will of all us true admirers of this show which (to myself and many others) has got to be one of the best written comedies of all time...It definitely is up there with shows such as "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners"...As I recall all the times as a young boy that I would sit and watch the hilarious antics of the members of F-troop and the Heckowee tribe, (excuse me if I misspelled the name), I start to laugh deep inside once again...I really do , Sincerely hope that Warner Brothers release this series before we all get to old and start dying off - Please Release The F-Troop Series On DVD As Soon As Possible - Thank You!

Without a doubt the funniest thing to come out of America. It also sums up the time when it was made and I can't see anything similar ever being made again.

As children we watched it but now as I watch it again and again I realize that I never got the jokes the first few times through anyway.

e.g. Agarn needs to see the medicine man at the Indian camp to find out whether he's a kleptomaniac so the medicine man gives him some deer skins to look at that have berry blots on them (i.e. a Rorschach test) and asks him what he sees. In explanation the medicine man say that this test was invented by a great Indian medicine man called Roaring Chicken. For short they call it the RoarChick Test!! Now that is clever AND funny.

Many other similarly clever jokes. Great scenes of pathos with lots of sentimentality before the days of the studio audience which nowadays bursts into sickening applause over that sort of thing. Catch it if you've never seen it... or watch it again if you have. It's still funny.

I truly loved this show. Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch were a great comic team and they had a great chemistry together and Ken Berry was great at slapstick and this show was truly a showcase for that talent. It also could be seen as a parody of capitalism, especially in the case of the Hekawwe's. Wild Eagle had to have been one of the great con men in the history of television.

Although it only ran for two seasons, "F Troop" was a consistently hilarious western spoof that should have stayed on much longer. It didn't just stick to satirizing westerns--the show managed to throw in vampires (Vincent Price showed up in one episode), James Bond-ish secret agents (Pat Harrington as "Agent B. Wise"), rock bands (Agarn leaves the army to manage a group called The Bedbugs) and just about anything else they could think of. The show was crammed with memorable characters: Ken Berry's well intentioned but bumbling Capt. Parmenter, Forrest Tucker's scheming capitalist Sgt. O'Rourke, Larry Storch's loyal but not particularly bright Cpl. Agarn, Joe Brooks' sight-impaired lookout Cpl. Vanderbilt. The real find, though, was Frank DeKova as Chief Wild Eagle. DeKova parlayed his sinister, menacing appearance into a career of playing cold-hearted killers and various psychos. As conniving Chief Wild Eagle, though, he showed a flair for comed y that was wholly unexpected. Although he went over the top sometimes, he was consistently fun to watch, and you really looked forward to his appearances. There were some truly funny running gags (Parmenter's "Please Jane, not in front of the men" whenever Jane tried to put the moves on him; directions to Fort Courage that always went, "Make a left at the rock that looks like a bear, then a right at the bear that looks like a rock"), but the one that everyone remembers is when O'Rourke would say to Agan, "I don't know why everybody says you're so dumb", and then ten minutes later, in the middle of another scene, Agarn would turn to O'Rourke and say, "Who says I'm dumb?" A truly funny show that should have lasted longer than it did.

P.S. There's a blooper reel in circulation that has about 10 minutes of "F Troop" outtakes on it. If you ever come across it, snap it up. It's even funnier (and far dirtier!) than the stuff that made it into the show.