F Troop

I watched this in re-runs throughout the '70s. The "Old West" setting is just that - a setting. The real laughs are how they put in 20th-century gags ranging from old showbiz groaners to mid-'60s topical events like the Playbrave Club and a rock group called - wait for it - "The Bedbugs" (don't ask where they got the electric guitars.)

The show ran on ABC for only 2 years, one in b/w, one in color; even so, it's still better than 90% of what's been aired as "comedy" since then. I wish somebody would put it out on video.

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.

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.

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 saw this show during it's regular run. I thought it was hilarious.

It's so easy now to pick on things that are not politically correct.

If people can't see the characters for what they were, caricatures, then obviously you have NO sense of humour. If you can't laugh at yourself, why bother at all?

It's so easy to apply today's standards to people from a different time. It would be more appropriate for us to understand that different time. I suppose we should criticize the way blacks were treated in movies made in the 1920s, 30s 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and so on. America's perceptions, values and morals were different then. If you can't understand that, I would suggest you don't watch any movie or TV show made before 1995.

F-Troop was totally fictional. And it WAS, for it's time, very funny. I liked it then, I like it now. But I guess we just can't have a show that shows EVERYONE as inept. I mean we have a white officer who's clumsy, and most likely would have never qualified to be a private, let alone an officer. There's the Sgt. who's always scheming to make a buck. And the Indians, cowardly, perhaps, but they also have their own shining moments too. You have to watch the entire series to see all the different things that go on. The Indians are not the only ones made fun of in this COMEDY. More often than not Chief Wild Eagle got the better of his white partner in what ever deal they were cooking up.

I somehow doubt that it would succeed today. Most of it's humour would go over the heads of many people today who would instead focus on the "demeaning" way the Indians are treated. More's the shame we forgot how to laugh at ourselves.