This episode seemed more designed to make a serious point and bring out the goodness of the characters, than it was to make you laugh. Most series in the day did this on occasion, but Andy Griffth was better than most when they did this.
We see Opie shocked to bring home a report card with all A's, but extremely proud, as are his Paw and Aunt Bee. Until the next day when Miss Crump calls Opie to her desk and rather simply explains that she made some mistakes transcribing grades and his was one of the ones where she made mistakes. She puts down the correct grades and Opie is sad to learn he did poorly.
But when he gets home, he is stunned to see Andy has purchased a brand new bike for him. Andy keeps talking about how proud he is of his son "getting all A's" that Opie just doesn't know how to tell him right then.
He goes to the courthouse the next afternoon ready to tell him, but again is embarrassed by the way Andy keeps bragging about Opie's grades. Andy learns it from Miss Crump, who, to her credit, takes the blame for the mistake. Andy goes home to talk to Opie only to see a note that he is running away from home until his paw can be proud of him again.
Andy explains that he is always proud of Opie and that he's not mad about what happened.
To me, the best parts of the drama here are how Opie first reacts to the new bike, right after learning he did poorly. His thoughts are to not ride the bike but to really study hard to get the grades Paw thought he already got. Later, when Andy stops him as he is running away, he tells him right away about the mistake. There was never any lying--unlike certain other sitcoms of the era where a certain young boy seemed to never go through a day without lying--and Andy didn't overreact when he learned about Opie's real grades.
The best comedy part was probably Barney's feeble attempt to show Andy his great memory, where he once again cannot remember a single word to the passage he memorized as a kid that he thinks he still remembers.
On the serious side, it was a good episode as far as it went. But it wasn't all that funny.
The worst part is how they had to get to the main plot through the weak plot device of having the teacher copy down all the wrong grades for the boy onto his report card. Doing this all by hand, she would say (think), "O.K., next is Opie. Let's see...in history (run finger over from his name to the grade...he got an A, (repeat) in math...an A..." She would have had a grade book where each subject has all the students on a list on a different page, with all their grades in a row and the final computed grade somewhere on the right, typically. To move her hand crooked and report, say, the grade of the student right below Opie onto Opie's card, for one subject is believable. But how could she have done something like that for every subject, or even most of them? Each time she turned the page, she would have re-found Opie's name and moved to the right to get to the grade, to then copy it to his card. She could not possibly have forgotten which student's card she was recording since she has to look for his name on each page. She could not possibly have accidentally moved her hand up or down a line for each of the subjects in which she put down the wrong grade.
And she could not possibly have not thought about how Opie's card showed all A's without realizing that cannot be--she would know he didn't do nearly that well.
For that matter, a boy who did really poorly in one subject, and average or so at others--who got back all sorts of C or D grades for the last 10 weeks or so, would not possibly have thought he got all A's. A kid may not really know if he's going to get, say, a B or an A, but if he's hovering between C and D, he KNOWS an "A" on the card is incorrect. What I'm saying is that the way the writers had this "series of mistakes" happen was most unbelievable.
We see Opie shocked to bring home a report card with all A's, but extremely proud, as are his Paw and Aunt Bee. Until the next day when Miss Crump calls Opie to her desk and rather simply explains that she made some mistakes transcribing grades and his was one of the ones where she made mistakes. She puts down the correct grades and Opie is sad to learn he did poorly.
But when he gets home, he is stunned to see Andy has purchased a brand new bike for him. Andy keeps talking about how proud he is of his son "getting all A's" that Opie just doesn't know how to tell him right then.
He goes to the courthouse the next afternoon ready to tell him, but again is embarrassed by the way Andy keeps bragging about Opie's grades. Andy learns it from Miss Crump, who, to her credit, takes the blame for the mistake. Andy goes home to talk to Opie only to see a note that he is running away from home until his paw can be proud of him again.
Andy explains that he is always proud of Opie and that he's not mad about what happened.
To me, the best parts of the drama here are how Opie first reacts to the new bike, right after learning he did poorly. His thoughts are to not ride the bike but to really study hard to get the grades Paw thought he already got. Later, when Andy stops him as he is running away, he tells him right away about the mistake. There was never any lying--unlike certain other sitcoms of the era where a certain young boy seemed to never go through a day without lying--and Andy didn't overreact when he learned about Opie's real grades.
The best comedy part was probably Barney's feeble attempt to show Andy his great memory, where he once again cannot remember a single word to the passage he memorized as a kid that he thinks he still remembers.
On the serious side, it was a good episode as far as it went. But it wasn't all that funny.
The worst part is how they had to get to the main plot through the weak plot device of having the teacher copy down all the wrong grades for the boy onto his report card. Doing this all by hand, she would say (think), "O.K., next is Opie. Let's see...in history (run finger over from his name to the grade...he got an A, (repeat) in math...an A..." She would have had a grade book where each subject has all the students on a list on a different page, with all their grades in a row and the final computed grade somewhere on the right, typically. To move her hand crooked and report, say, the grade of the student right below Opie onto Opie's card, for one subject is believable. But how could she have done something like that for every subject, or even most of them? Each time she turned the page, she would have re-found Opie's name and moved to the right to get to the grade, to then copy it to his card. She could not possibly have forgotten which student's card she was recording since she has to look for his name on each page. She could not possibly have accidentally moved her hand up or down a line for each of the subjects in which she put down the wrong grade.
And she could not possibly have not thought about how Opie's card showed all A's without realizing that cannot be--she would know he didn't do nearly that well.
For that matter, a boy who did really poorly in one subject, and average or so at others--who got back all sorts of C or D grades for the last 10 weeks or so, would not possibly have thought he got all A's. A kid may not really know if he's going to get, say, a B or an A, but if he's hovering between C and D, he KNOWS an "A" on the card is incorrect. What I'm saying is that the way the writers had this "series of mistakes" happen was most unbelievable.