Don Knotts has died.
From CNN.com
For the record, I don't like the Andy Griffith show, and Deputy Barney Fife is a big reason for that. But I had a great deal of respect of Knott's talent and performance. He seemed like one of the truly nice guys, and he will be missedDon Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" and would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on "Three's Company," has died. He was 81.
Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, said Sherwin Bash, his friend and manager.
posted by Jonathan at 7:54 AM
4 Comments:
Was he any relation to Knott's Berry Farm Knott's?
I do realize I could google this information but I was just free associating.
See, I thought he was brilliant on the Andy Griffith Show and I couldn't stand Mr. Furley (or ANYBODY on Three's Company, for that matter). You have to admit he was more restrained than Art Carney. The show would never have succeeded to the extent it did without Andy Griffith as straight man (the same reason Bud Abbott was paid much more than Lou Costello), but when most people think of the show it's Barney Fife they remember.
Most of his films (we shall not speak of The Incredible Mr. Limpet) were very funny. One of the reasons I have such a great respect for and close identification with Wakko Warner is the fact that he's a Don Knotts fan.
His passage is nearly as painful for me as were the deaths of Jim Henson and Theodor Seuss Geisel.
This is james, btw.
Wakko is far and away the most brilliant of the three.
He speaks to my soul
I was a Yakko fan until someone pointed out that Wakko was the middle child. At that point I realized became aware of how truly bizarrely eccentric Wakko was, as compared to the smoothly polished contrariness of Yakko; after that, it was fait accompli.
Knott's characters in general, and Barney Fife in particular, embody that hopeless cluelessness that made me despise, for example, Julia Louis Dreyfus' Elain Benes. On the other hand, Knott's performances were very evidently art of a very high caliber, and something of his humanity was somehow able to penetrate through the character and redeem Barney Fife. You knew, somehow, that Deputy Fife had a soul, all the evidences to the contrary.
Still, I can't handle the relentless assault on sensibility that Deputy Fife subjects us to, throughout an episode, for EVERY episode. I used to like The Andy Griffith show, until I was aware enough to notice that, yes it was always Andy's sensibility versus the hayseed idiodicy of everyone else. Not just Deputy Fife, but Aunt Bea and Gomer Pyle and Floyd the barber and.... It just became too much. And Fife's constant screen time made him the obvious focus for my inner elitist.
Still, as I said before, Knott was an artist of the highest caliber, and Fife, for all that he irritates me, is fundamentally a good person. I won't be able to watch an episode the same way again.
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