Jethro psychology

There is a Beverly Hillbillies marathon on this weekend. What better time can you have, I ask, at 3:30 on a Sunday morning than watching Jethro Bodine being psychoanalyzed?

"What is your relationship to your mother?" the Doctor asked.

Incredulous, Jethro replied, "I'm her son." The show went on, the basic story line being that the psychologist must be interested in dating Jethro's widowed mother because she was all he asked about during the session with him.

You gotta love it.

I'm not going to argue that The Beverly Hillbillies was particularly inspired. Well, maybe I am. The mockery they made of modern psychology in that episode was a hoot, under the guise of the fish out of water premise of the whole series. It left you wondering who's the real yokel.

Not to disparage worthwhile psychology (which I suppose has its merits) but people need to be able laugh at themselves, be able to poke fun at even, perhaps especially, things near and dear to them. We don't do that enough anymore. 

And it shows.