Television's Mysteries
By T Frady, Sat Dec 10th

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. That's whatRod Serling would say. It appears to me that the Twilight Zonemay have affected more than the 30 minutes it controlled everyweek those many years ago. So with the keys of your imaginationlets journey farther into the Outer Limits of television anddiscover that the weird and the bizarre were not just limited tothe great classic sci-fi hits like the Twilight Zone and theOuter Limits. Nor is the unexplained always presented onRipley's Believe it or Not. 

The Mysterious changing Andy Taylor What happened to AndyGriffith from the black and white days of the Andy Griffith Showto the days of color? It is common knowledge the black and whiteepisodes with Barney were more funny and entertaining, but whydid Andy suddenly change from a loveable country bumpkin, whowas always wise but never serious, to a almost bitter man thatseemed to even lose his country accent?

Is the original answer for this something that belongs in theTwilight Zone? Did the writers of the show have an intriguingplot to reveal that just never came to be? What could make a manchange so drastically from the changing of black and white tocolor? Is there a scientific explanation? Could the answer be asbizarre as a UFO kidnapping? Was Andy Taylor replaced with aclone? Were we watching two different dimensions of time andspace?

I have some more reasonable explanations, but you be the judge.Perhaps Andy had attempted to quit smoking which made him grumpyin real life. Perhaps he was trying to impress the equallygrumpy Miss Crump or should we say Miss Grump. Why, oh why,didn't he marry the lady druggist? Perhaps none of this wouldhave happened.

The changed Andy happened about the time Barney Fife left town.Did the antics of Don Knotts keep Andy in a good ol' home townmood? Or did the emergence of the Jughead hat wearing Gooberaffect Andy in a way that can't be explained. After all, justbefore the show turned color, Andy threatened the life ofGoober, after he put a car together right inside the court house.

So what do you think? Was it aliens, a lack of nicotine, Goober,Gomer, Miss Crump, or no Barney? You be the judge, I justpresent the facts as I know them.

The Disappearing Son on Happy Days What about Chuck on HappyDays? How could a mother and father completely forget they everhad a son? But if you watched the recent Happy Days reunion ifthen there was no reasonable explanation given as to why Chuckjust disappeared. In the final episode of Happy Days, Mr. C evenrelates to the audience how he was happy to have raised twochildren, not three as we know really happened. Is this anothercase of alien abduction? There is precedence for this strangephenomenon. If you have seen the recent movie The Forgotten,

youcan see how aliens can put the mind whammy on parents, makingthem completely forget their kids for purposes of evil alienexperiments on parental mindsets. Surely the explanation cannotbe as simple as the writers were just too lazy to keep up withthe fact that the Cunninghams had another son beside Richie.Perhaps the strange powers of the Fonz were not simply from hiscool as we were told. Maybe the Fonz himself was an alien withthe power of mind control over other humans, including the powerto snap his fingers to bring herds of screaming girls to hisside. Now that I think of it, no wonder people think Elvis isstill alive. Maybe he too was from another world. Could it beElvis and the Fonz were part of a rival gang from Ork preparingfor the arrival Mork from Ork?

More Unexplained Phenomenon There are many more strange andbizarre unexplainable phenomenon on television.

1.Where did all the deputies go after the first episode of theDukes of Hazzard? Clearly there were more than Enos and Rosco inthe pilot episode.

2. On the last episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures ofSuperman, a baby arrives just for the closing moments of theshow, just because the Kents want a child. No explanation isever given. Is it then just coincidence that Dean Cain wouldsoon host the new Ripley's Believe It or Not?

3. How can Metropolis be in Kansas as it is only a couple ofhours away from Smallville on the popular WB hit Smallville? Onone episode Clark climbed a water tower with a friend and theycould actually see Metropolis without X-ray vision. In the pastit has always been accepted that Metropolis represented New YorkCity.

4. After 9 years of episodes, can anyone truly say that any ofthe bizarre happenings on the X-files were ever explained. Whatmind control did they use to force us to watch year after yearwith no answers? I beg of you Chris Carter make a movie orsomething that can explain all of this unexplained phenomenon. 

5. On The Greatest American Hero, a 1980's tv show about ateacher who gains Superman like powers by wearing a super suitfrom aliens, there was one strange occurrence. The GreatestAmerican Hero's main character Ralph Hinkley inexplicablybecomes Ralph Hanley. What happened? Well even though Ralph gothis super suit from aliens this was no alien conspiracy. Afterthe attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan by JohnHinkley, they decided to rename the main character to avoid anyassociation with the John Hinkley.

I'm sure there are many more unexplained events on televisionthroughout the years, but was it all by television writers, ordid Rod Serling's Twilight Zone infect the rest of TV history aswell?

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