New York lawyer Oliver Douglas quits his job at the law firm of Felton, O'Connell, Clay, Blakely, Harmon, Dillion & Pasteur and buys a farm in Hooterville, sight unseen. The locals are astounded that Haney had managed to unload the place on someone and try to talk him out of it. Laying her eyes on the dilapidated farmhouse for the first time, Lisa bursts into tears.
Lisa gets her first look at their dilipidated--and empty--farmhouse and is horrified. Oily Mr. Haney, who previously owned the dump, took everything with him, including the bathroom fixtures, and tries to resell them to Oliver. Eb, one of Haney's workers, is hired on as their farm hand. Lisa goes out to meet the locals, most of whom have entered a pool wagering on how long the Douglases will stay. Lisa is ready to immediately return to New York, but after a chat with Kate Bradley, she decides to give farm life a try.
Oliver wants to start farming but Lisa demands he have their house redecorated first. Sam Drucker recommends a decorator from Pixley. Kate Bradley tries to tutor Lisa in the kitchen since she doesn't know the first thing about cooking. Kate starts by showing her how to make something easy: hotscakes. Adding to the chaos is Oliver's mother, who arrives to rescue Lisa from her nightmarish country life.
Mr. Haney rents Bertram the rooster to Oliver for fifty cents a day. Unfortunately, he's a "pecker", not a "crower", so he also gets a chicken named Alice. Oliver then sets about getting a phone installed in the kitchen (though the line won't be connected for three months), the plumbing and roof fixed, and electricity via a rickety power generator. Mr. Douglas also meets his county farm agent, the absent-minded Hank Kimball, who takes some soil samples for analyzing.
Oliver's mother sends the Douglases their furniture from New York, while she also rides down to visit them. While Oliver and Lisa wait for the furniture to arrive, Eunice is stuck with Uncle Joe on his handcar, getting to Hooterville. Things go bad to worse when Eunice finds herself the target of Newt Kiley's bull, and the Douglases' furniture is delivered to Mr. Haney's instead.
Oliver is frustrated because, among other problems, his new plow won't arrive in time for planting season. Uncle Joe has a solution that, naturally, benefits him as well. He charges farmers one dollar each to enter a plowing contest, promising them free lunch and big prizes. This is all news to Oliver as the neighbors on their tractors start descending on his farm.
It's planting time in Hooterville and Oliver is shocked that the locals make their crop choices based on aches and pains. Back on the farm, Oliver assigns every electrical device a number from one to seven in an effort to keep their creaky generator from blowing. All gadgets up to a total of seven can be plugged in at the same time, but Lisa can't quite grasp the concept.
With their phone still not connected, Oliver asks Mr. Kimball to put some pressure on his mother, who owns the telephone company. Kimball says he and his mother aren't speaking, but Oliver convinces him to make up with her. His mom is so grateful, she promptly has a phone installed--on top of a pole outside their bedroom.
While Oliver tries to recall how long he's been married to Lisa, she flashes back to last year's anniversary which ended with them in jail. The trouble began when a panicked Oliver found corn bores in his terrace garden. His mother, refusing to keep party guests waiting at the Waldorf while Oliver plays farmer, started tossing his "crop" off the balcony. Pots crashing onto the street below did not please the NYC cops.
Lisa is shocked that Hooterville doesn't have a beauty salon. She calls her mother-in-law who ships out her hair dresser, Claude. (She blackmails him with one word: "Scranton".) Setting up shop on the Cannonball, he gives the Hooterville women new hairdos. Now, they're too "beautiful" for farm work.
After Lisa delivers an ultimatum, Oliver hires incompetent carpenters Alf and Ralph Monroe to enlarge the tiny bedroom. The Monroes have just begun moving the walls when the building inspector, the father of Eb's girlfriend, "disapproves" the project and condemns the whole house. Oliver is left with an open air bedroom without a roof.
Oliver's upset that Lisa listed him the new phone directory as an attorney. He fears he'll be flooded with calls wanting his legal advice. Instead, lawyer Douglas becomes cranky when his phone doesn't ring. Meanwhile, Lisa tackles a formidable task in the kitchen: baking a cake. When Oliver finally gets a potential client, the unlucky man encounters Ralph's plank, Lisa's 20-pound pound cake and Haney's truck.
While fixing the TV antenna, Oliver falls through the roof and sprains his ankle. A parade of Hooterville residents shows up to give their regards while he's off his feet, but instead of sharing the food they've made for him, they crowd him off his own bed to watch Frankenstein Meets Mary Poppins on television.
Ralph Monroe finds herself smitten with Hank Kimball, but discovers that he won't date a woman with a man's name. She asks Oliver to file court papers to have her name changed to something more feminine. While in court, Oliver learns that his license to practice law is not recognized by the state. This sends Oliver back to the books to study for the state's bar exam.
Lisa agreed to try out Green Acres for six months. Today's the day she decides whether to stay in Hooterville or return to New York. Everyone anxiously awaits her decision. In the meantime, Oliver flashes back to their first days on the farm, his physical mishaps around the house, and Haney's lousy products.
Tired of repairing the rickety generator that Haney sold him, Oliver checks on the status of his electricity. Learning that his application was never mailed, Oliver decides to deal with the power company in person. He finds that nothing in Hooterville is done simply--or correctly; he ends up with a meter that runs even when it's disconnected and another pole by the bedroom window.
A drought in Hooterville has crops wilting in the fields. Oliver is so desperate, he agrees to pay Haney $350 if he can bring some relief. That's when Haney presents dancing Chief Thundercloud. When the rains eventually arrive, Oliver refuses to pay. He says the Chief's dancing is not what did the trick.
The "Every Other Wednesday Afternoon Discussion Club" decides to bring culture to the valley by starting the Hooterville Symphony Orchestra. Oliver calls the women "nuts" for considering such a ridiculous idea. Undeterred, Lisa calls her conductor friend Sir Geffory, aka "Poopsie", to come and conduct the orchestra. What he encounters is the Hooterville Volunteer Fire Department Marching Band playing the only song they know.
Lisa tells the story of how she and Oliver met. During WWII, Oliver's plane was shot down and he was stranded in a tree. Lisa rescues Oliver, but doesn't trust him because he "spends more time talking than smooching". After Lisa's story, the farmers of Hooterville discover their crops are being destroyed by some unknown insect. Mr. Kimball identifies it as the "Bing Bug". The farmers appoint Oliver to dust all the crops, but not being in the cockpit for years causes trouble for Oliver in Mr. Haney's cheap plane.
Mr. Haney has Willie the well-witcher to witch him a new well. But when Mr. Haney has plenty of water, Oliver loses his water. The same thing happens when Oliver has a new well witched, then the Ziffels run out of water. When they get a new well, then Mr. Drucker runs out of water. Oliver decides that Hooterville should open a reservoir. Soon afterwards, everyone has enough water, but when everyone turns on their faucets, they lose their electricity.
Oliver ends up with a new client named Collins, who turns out to be a very attractive woman, whose first name is Amy, who wants Oliver's legal help about her farm. Oliver has to make regular visits to Amy's farm to help her with her farm. Lisa begins thinking that Oliver is cheating on her, and after hearing Doris Ziffel talking, believes that Oliver is going to kill her, and runaway to South America to elope with Amy. Little does Lisa know the facts, and that Mrs. Ziffel was really talking about the recent episode of her favorite show.
Ralph Monroe is devastated when Mr. Kimball turns her down again. Lisa decides to help Ralph out, by making her more feminine. Oliver is forced to sleep in the barn with Eb, while Lisa works day and night to doll up Ralph. Later, at a dinner party, the new Ralph is presented to the unsuspecting Mr. Kimball, who likes Ralph even less now, for Lisa claims she didn't have enough time to make Ralph fully feminine.
Oliver's back on his soap box, delivering fiery patriotic speeches after getting a bill for the State Farm Unattached Duty Tax. No one in Hooterville seems to know what the tax is for, so Oliver tries to contact his assemblyman. That's when he learns Hooterville hasn't held an election for one since 1922. He and Lisa travel to the state capital to meet the governor and remedy the situation.
Lisa is homesick for the Park Avenue penthouse. So Oliver tells her the story of Gus and Etta, a farmer and his Hungarian wife who are broken and poor, but make the best of their new-found farm life. Unfortunately, the story ends with their farm being destroyed by a freak flood, and Lisa then longs for Park Avenue even more.
James Stuart from the agricultural department wants to do a film on the pitfalls of new farmers. The locals think "Jimmy Stewart" is coming to make a big Hollywood movie so they all enroll in Haney's acting school. In the meantime, Oliver's farming practices prove especially embarrassing for the camera.
Oliver decides to have an old fashioned Christmas by chopping down a tree off his property. Mr. Haney warns him that it's against the law to chop down a tree on his own property. So Oilver goes to Drucker's & asks Sam if there's such a law as that. Mr. Drucker tries to sell him an artificial tree with a squirter to squirt the pine ooze out as well as artificial candy canes & popcorn string. Mr. Drucker advises him to get a permit from Hank Kimball, County Agent. After getting the permit, he finally gets to decorate his tree. Over @ the Ziffels, Doris is upset that Arnold has an artificial tree & tells Fred that Mr. Douglas had the right idea. The gang attends the Douglas home to admire the Christmas tree. But they are chased away when Lisa brings out the fruitcakes made out of hotcakes!
It's tomato planting season and Oliver needs some useful weather information. Hooterville relies on WPIXL-TV's Mildred, a little old lady who prances out of her dollhouse, or Walter, the singing weatherman. Both are constantly wrong so Oliver contacts the Weather Bureau which predicts warm days and nights. With the plants in the ground, Hooterville suffers the coldest night of the year. Incredibly, it's Lisa's crepe suzettes that save the crop from the cold.
Oliver misunderstands when the Hooterville bigwigs ask him to be a judge. He thinks he's being appointed an appellate judge but they just want him to judge apples at the county fair. The Douglases travel to New York so Oliver can get some judging advice while Lisa shops for a robe and wig for His Honor.
Oliver has to choose between being a farmer or lawyer when he gets an offer to practice in Washington, D. C. The official-looking letter, however, has the locals convinced that Oliver is hiding an juicy secret from them. After ruling out tax cheat and counterfeiter, that leaves only one choice: CIA agent.
According to Oliver, every farm wife should be growing her own vegetables so Lisa starts her own garden. Armed with useless pamphlets from Mr. Kimball and a flask of perfume, Lisa begins work. It's hardly a money-saving proposition after she buys a tractor, farm supplies, and hires Alf and Ralph as her housekeepers.
Tired of Doris' nagging about having to beat their laundry on a rock in the creek, Fred buys a Grabwell washing machine from Mr. Haney. The boat motor in a barrel goes berzerk, spraying water and clothes everywhere before chasing the Ziffels out their front door. Oliver is more than happy to take their case and stick it to Haney in the courtroom.
Lisa says that woman in her family must marry an American every fourth generation to keep the huge ring she now wears. She regales Hooterville with the story of her great, great grandmother, the Queen of the Gypsies, and her courtship of an American artist, Cornelius. Much stealing and dancing is involved.
It all begins when the driveshaft comes apart on Oliver's tractor. He decides to phone the company (his phone sits atop a telephone pole) to have a replacement part shipped to him, but can't get through because the operator is not available - she's at home cooking a rump roast. Eb mans the antiquated switchboard, but is only able to play recordings explaining the operator's absence. At Drucker's General Store, Oliver discovers that everyone has come to tolerate the operator's frequent absences. Oliver's blood pressure rises a few more notches when he can't use Drucker's two-piece telephone, which sits below the counter (whose very short cord is too long, per the phone company's constitution). The final straw comes when Mr. Trendell, the phone company CEO, refuses to reason with Oliver, viewing his grievances as mere complaints from an unhappy subscriber. Frustrated with the outdated equipment, frequently absent operator and the phone company's notoriously poor customer service, Oliver
Oliver's without an operator on his first day as president of the Hooterville Phone Company. As he wrestles with an exploding switchboard, the locals gossip about how he stole the company from Roy Trendell in a rigged card game. Lisa figures out how to put calls through, but had rather flirt with the president than work the switchboard all night.
The Douglases find a note from Eb saying he's eloped. While he's on his honeymoon, his cousin Walter will cover his duties. Unfortunately, Walter's experience is limited to bartening at the old Stankwell Falls Lounge. This leads to more destruction than usual on the farm and everyone thinking Oliver's opening a cocktail lounge.
Oliver is tired of paying storage for something neither he or Lisa can recall, so he has it shipped to Hooterville. Inside a giant crate is a genuine Stavinski birdbath that Lisa had bought years earlier for Oliver's birthday. The hideous collection of pipes and faucets leads Oliver to plot "the thing's" demise.
Lisa tells another version of how she and Oliver met during World War II. As a member of the Hungarian underground, she saved him from Nazis by hiding him in a barn and earned him a Purple Heart by poking him in the rump with a pitchfork. They saw each other again after the war when Lisa was a professional cello player.
Oliver gets the usual runaround from Haney when he complains about the ancient tractor he'd bought. But suddenly, it's a new, honest Haney who offers to buy back the tractor and the "dump" of a farm he sold Oliver. Coincidently, he's just learned that the Douglas farm is in the path of a proposed new highway. Oliver's soon onto his scheme and decides to make the charlatan squirm.
Alf and Ralph announce that they are FINALLY going to finish the bedroom for Lisa and Oliver, but when a fight breaks out between brother and sister, Ralph comes to stay with the Douglas's and since Ralph refuses to work on the bedroom because it reminds her of Alf, Lisa hires her as the maid, but when Oliver realizes she's a good cook he has trouble letting go of her, Alf eventually comes and apologizes and the two go home, Oliver then realizes that Lisa is a good plasterer and goes into the bedroom with Oliver.
Oliver's crabby attitude leads everyone think he's about to snap from overwork. To help him relax, Lisa takes him on a picnic by the lake. That's where he runs into gun-totin' Ira Hatch, who hassles him about trespassing on his property. When he tells the locals about the old man, they declare Haney the winner of the "Oliver Douglas crack-up pool" because Ira had died 20 years earlier.
Eb finds a runaway boy in the barn. When Oliver askes for his name, the boy tells everything but. Claiming such names as "Paul Frankcann", "Carlos Hot Pepers", "Pretty Boy Floyd", and "Al Hamilton" he tries to hide from police when Oliver reports him. The boy then runs away to the Ziffel's claiming to be "Oliver Wendall Douglas Jr." when the Douglases come to pick him up, he disappears and reappears at Drucker's claiming to be "Fred Ziffel Jr.", when Oliver drives over to Drucker's, the boy hitches a ride with Hank Kimball claiming to be "Sam Drucker Jr.". On their way to the airport, they're pulled over when the officer identifies the little boy as Gilbert Henshaw, who in return, claims to be "Hank Kimball Jr." The next day, Gilbert is home, but Eb discovers four more run away boys in the barn,
Boy genius Dilly Watkins improves farm life for Douglases with his new electronic inventions. Besides the barn door opener that works when Eleanor moos at it, there's the television camera that sends pictures of the cow to the bedroom set. Oliver doesn't realize the camera is transmitting to all the sets in the valley, turning him into an overnight Nielsen sensation.
Arnold tries to open a bank account, so he can save enough money for a new color TV set. While at the Pixley Bank, two robbers come in and rob it, and Arnold's $5. While the two flee, they decide to hold up in the Douglas' place. Once inside, Lisa finds their picture on the newspaper, and she is taken hostage. Oliver comes home, and he is held hostage. Arnold steals their bag, and takes it to the police, while the crooks force Lisa to make hotcakes. Eb is later captured, and as the robbers leave to take Oliver's car, the police arrive and arrest them.
Everyone in Hooterville, except Oliver, is overcome with spring fever; even Sam Drucker is wearing his spring toupee. Deciding to revive the Hooterville spring festival, Lisa visits the neighbors to drum up support. Meanwhile, Oliver tries to do his planting with Eb who can't understand how to work the automatic planter.
Eb's latest career choice is that of a barber. He talks Oliver into paying his tuition to MIT, a mail-order barber college. Eb's sent a dummy head and hair to practice on and receives his grades by mailing the trimmed toupees back to the school. Lisa is excited about Eb's education while Oliver is irratated by all the hidden costs he keeps being asked to pay.
It's planting season in Hooterville, but Oliver doesn't know what to plant...the other farmers aren't in the mood for planting this year because they lost so much money from their crops last year. After many thoughts...Oliver discovers that the land in Hooterville is perfect to plant rutabagas. With that, Lisa gets everyone into the spirit of the new "Rutabaga Bowl". She even is sent up in a hot air balloon, to send out rutabagas across the country that says "Eat Hooterville Rutabagas."
At Sam Drucker's store, Oliver and Lisa meet their new neighbor, who is also expecting. She decides it's time, so Oliver offers to drive her to the hospital. Once back home, Lisa had already offered to "sit" with her other 4 children...and Eb. Oliver doesn't mind at first, but quickly changes his mind after the kids break dishes, run amuk in the house, and when he is forced to sleep in living with the boys, while Lisa, Ralph, and the other girls sleep in the bedroom. Things are even worse when Oliver finds himself drive each kid to school at a different time, then having to turn right around and pick them up a different times. Later that night, it's a wild goose chase at the drive in as each kid ends up getting lost. The day they finally have to go home, they end up staying longer after one of them catches the measels from Ralph.
Arnold's performance as a British police dog in the Hooterville theater production of Who--the marquee wasn't big enough for Who Killed Jock Robin?--turns him into an overnight star. Lisa is so impressed, she arranges for an old friend to give him a Hollywood screen test. The Douglases are soon Tinseltown bound, escorting the hammy actor west for his big showbiz break.
Oliver and Lisa chaperone Arnold to Hollywood for his screen test. Producer Boris Fedor isn't interested in the pig; he's just using him to pressure a greedy horse to come back to work. When the horse's agent balks, the publicity machine starts promoting Arnold as the studio's next big star. A stunned Oliver, who came along for laughs, can't believe what he's witnessing.
The Douglases are asked to donate old clothing to a charity rummage sale. Lisa is glad to give away Oliver's entire wardrobe, but can't part with any of her dresses. Each has a memory attached, leading to flashbacks of Oliver asking Lisa's father for her hand in marriage, the Douglases' honeymoon in Switzerland and their first party in their new Park Avenue apartment.
It's "Old Mail Day" and Sam Drucker hands out letters that have gotten misplaced in his post office. Having learned nothing from his previous letter-writing fiascos, an upset Oliver complains to the Postmaster General for delivery service. The locals soon turn on Oliver because Drucker's General Store is never open; he's always on his bicycle delivering mail.
The Agricultural Department is sending a student to learn the ropes from agent Hank Kimball. No one's too interested until Terry turns out to be an attractive blonde co-ed. All the men of Hooterville, eligible and otherwise, fall over themselves flirting and fawning. On the night of the big barn dance, the Douglas living room is packed full of maneuvering men, each thinking they're her date for the evening. Terry's choice turns out to be none of the above.
After Joe Carson quits as head of the Hooterville centennial celebration, Oliver gets the job. His idea is to stage a re-enactment of the town's founding starring he and Lisa as Horace and Doris Hooter. In the dramatization, saloon girl Doris fleeces Horace out of the money he'd hoped to buy a farm with. Eventually, he gets his money back, thanks to her skills as a card shark, and they marry and settle Hooterville.
Lisa's convinced that Hungarian gypsies have placed a curse on her when she receives a dreaded blue feather in the mail. To "de-hexify" her, Haney sells Lisa a ridiculous recipe that she mixes up, places in a green purse, and hangs outside the front door. Eb gets a look at it and panics because the "green purse hex" will bring a drought. He counteracts it with his own concoction in a yellow purse. Oliver takes action to put a stop to all this foolishness.
After Oliver orders the Monroe brothers to finish work on the bedroom, they confess that they never got a building permit. Oliver storms off to get one himself, only to discover his barn is in Hooterville but his house is in Pixley. Haney, who sold them the farm, offers to hook a rope to the house and pull it to Hooterville with his truck.
Oliver has the bad idea of getting into the chicken raising business. Haney wants to sell him a ridiculous egg laying contraption, the Monroe brothers build a disastrous chicken coop, and Lisa wants to raise the chicks as human children. The serious trouble begins when the 1000 baby chicks arrive. The brooder stops working and the babies have to stay warm. Lisa's motherly instincts save the day.
Even though taking separate vacations was Lisa's idea, she misses Oliver before she even gets to the airport. Her constant phone calls and the goofy locals who think he tossed her out of the house irritate Oliver to no end. He gives up and hops a plane tojoin her; the layover in Cuba was an added surprise.
Criminals rob a jewelry store in Chicago and stash their haul in a grain bin. The expensive gems end up packed in boxes of Crickly Wickly cereal shipped to Hooterville. Lisa knows real jewels when she sees them, but Oliver's sure they're just costume. After taking them to be appraised, the sheriff arrests Oliver for the jewelry store heist.
The law office of Douglas and Williams is open for business, even though the sign has Oliver Mendell Douglas (later Oliver Wendell Wilkie Holmes) listed as a partner. Unqualified secretary Lisa destroys a office typewriter before having the new phone connected to a fire alarm "clanger". Later, to boost business, she advertises a grand opening special with free prizes and discount law services.
The Hooterville Young People's Agricultural Society, comprised of Eb, Hank and Arnold, flies to Washington, D. C. for the national convention. When the stewardess tries to throw the pig off the DC-3, the Douglases come on board to smooth over the problem. With Arnold hiding in "the occupied", the plane takes off with the whole Hooterville crowd aboard.
With the Douglases in Washington, the "Haney Farm Mindin' Service" leases out their house (for $4 a day) to a couple with six children. Meanwhile in D.C., Lisa and Eb go to the White House to have unannounced lunch with the president, Kimball causes chaos for the Secretary of Agriculture, and Arnold causes problems in a laundromat. Oliver calls an early end to their trip, forcing Haney to quickly dispose of his new tenants.
After a friendly doe wanders onto the farm, Lisa starts a drive to ban deer hunting. When the governor arrives in Hooterville for the start of hunting season, Lisa presents him with her petition. He threatens Oliver and Lisa with jail time because her petition promises everyone who signed it a one-hundred dollar payment.
A check of their their marriage license revals that Oliver and Lisa aren't husband and wife. They'd been mistakenly given a license to practice dentistry. Refusing to stay in the house with a bachelor dentist, "Dr. Gronyitz" moves in with the Monroe brothers until they can re-tie the knot. Their church wedding goes fairly smoothly considering Hank Kimball is the best man and Ralph Monroe is the maid of honor.
All of Hooterville is excited about the upcoming big dance. Eb, however, is obsessed with raising $20 to buy his girlfriend a birthday present. Oliver tells him to be ingenious, so he begins leasing out the Douglases' wardrobe, telling people they're strapped for cash. Eb's big brainstorm: sit for ten babies while their parents go to the dance.
From inside an old trunk Eb found in the barn, Lisa begins reading the diary of Lydia Plunkett who, in 1898, becomes a traveling saleswoman for a corset company. Lydia falls in love with rival salesman Harry Wright, whose career falters as a result of her success. The two marry, she becomes president of the corset company, and unhappily tends house. He eventually tires of being a housewife and leaves her. As Lisa continues reading, Eb is entranced by the story, but Oliver scoffs at the soppy romance.
Local inventor "Looney Luke" Needlinger has built a contraption that turns hay into milk. Convinced it will make them rich, Haney and Fred pitch Oliver on investing in the machine, but he thinks they're being conned. After seeing the milk maker in action, Oliver convinces a chemist to give the devise a once-over. What he discovers insures that cows will always have work.
Oliver, Lisa and Eb talk about reincarnation after watching a movie about a grandfather who returns as a racehorse. Later, when Eb goes missing during a nasty thunderstorm, Lisa is worried sick that something bad has happened to him. She's greatly relieved when he returns home safely--"reincarcerated" as a dog.
Fred Ziffel finds out that Arnold may in line for a inheritance. Arnold has the ability to predict the weather with his tail, supposedely making him a direct discendant of Herman, a spokespig who could also do the same. All of Hooterville, including Lisa tries to get Oliver to take Arnold to Chicago to receive the pig's $20,000,000 inheritance.
When the Douglases, Eb, and Arnold return from Chicago, Arnold becomes a gift-bearing pig. He gives Mr. Kimball a wristwatch, Lisa an expensive braclet, and Oliver a shrunken head. Arnold soon finds himself the target of every seller from Hooterville, Pixley, and Crabwell Corners, who want their hands on Arnold's inheritance.
Oliver's angry over Hooterville's dirt road, especially after learning the money to pave it was appropriated thirty years earlier. Never content to leave well enough alone, he descends on the state capitol demanding that something be done. He makes little headway until Lisa mentions the name of powerful hot dog vendor Big Joe Haney.
Alarmed by the dropping population of Hooterville, Oliver calls a town meeting to find a way to keep the young people from moving away. Lisa urges him not to become involved because his "goo dooding" always backfires, but he forges ahead anyway. Soon, he's involuntarily volunteered his barn to be the valley's new youth center.
Oliver tries to pick up a special delivery letter that arrived for him at the Hooterville post office. He and Lisa end up traveling all over the valley because Drucker mistakenly gave it to Hank Kimball, who gave it to Fred Ziffel, who gave it to Arnold. Arnold dropped it in the mail, sending the Douglases to the Pixley post office where two sets of identical twins are working at the windows.
With minimal help from Eb, a stressed Oliver begins planting his corn crop. Lisa tries to be a useful farm wife by making dreadful lemonade which Oliver pours out onto the ground. The next morning at that spot, he finds a giant cornstalk that reaches into the clouds. At the top of the stalk there's a Jolly Green Giant who bellows "Ho, Ho, Ho" and drops down creamed corn, both in the can and by the bucketful.
Sam Drucker stocks no "cosmeteticals" in his store, so Lisa offers to put together a display for him. When 395 cartons of Lady Love cosmetics are delivered, Lisa pushes Sam out the door and converts his business into a "beauty saloon". After Oliver tells her she must move her business somewhere else, she sets up shop in their living room
The discovery of a Wish Book from 1898 leads Haney to tell the story of Calvin and Tessie Whittaker, who once owned the Douglases' house. When a magic lantern is mistakenly delivered by the catalog company, Calvin opens a Wall Picture Theater in Pixley, thrilling audiences with a slide of Abraham Lincoln standing on his head. Eventually he goes to Hollywood to pitch his ideas, but they call him a nut. They even scoff at his idea to put a mouse named Dickey into films. They love Tessie, however, and she becomes a silent film star.
Oliver's old friend, reporter Mort Warner, comes to Hooterville to relax and soothe his rattled nerves. He's ready to flee in less than one day. Mort is frightened by Lisa's syrupy coffee, hosed down with oil by Oliver's rickety tractor, and has his bed invaded by a TV-watching pig. Fred Ziffel peers at him naked in the outdoor shower, Mr. Haney gouges him with his phony Auto Club, the sheriff arrests him for stealing the Douglas' car, and quail-hunting Hank Kimball fills his behind with buckshot.
While Oliver's in New Yorkfinishing a casefor his old law firm, Lisa and Eb discover "Little Freddie" on the doorstep. Oliver panics when Lisa calls and tells him about the baby, but fails to mention it's a baby dog. Unable to talk Lina into contacting the sheriff, he abandons his case and races back to Hooterville to take charge.
Haney's latest attempt to cheat Oliver could land him in jail if he doesn't repay his $200 by six o'clock. He uses Oliver's irritation over Colby's renegade cow, the Douglases' cow Eleanor and a misplaced phony bovine to his advantage, selling and reselling all three cattle to make money. Along the way, Lisa and Eb become convinced that Oliver is a cold blooded "cow shooster"
In just his first day as the School Board President, Oliver has started a grammar school protest. The kids are upset that their mascot, Arnold, has been thrown out for popping his teacher with a pea shooter. Fred asks Oliver to represent his "son" on grounds that he was discriminated against, but all Oliver can do is talk to the school's determined principal.
Oliver unintentionally provides the motive for the residents of Hooterville to illegally receive more than $500,000 from the Internal Revenue Service. The locals think all they have to do is write in and state their losses--not understanding that they actually have to file taxes first. Eventually, to get its cash back, the IRS invests in Haney's monkey racing track.
Oliver wants to have a simple, romantic Sunday picnic with Lisa. His afternoon for two turns into an irritating crowd when everyone invites themselves and tags along. Joining the couple are Eb, his girlfriend Linda and her accordion, her parents, Sam Drucker, his date and her sousaphone, Hank Kimball, Linda's Grandpa and some old lady he hit on at the gas station. That night, Oliver and Lisa take refuge in the barn when the crowd shows up at their house.
A wild story told by an 11-year-old about his recent trip to the moon enthralls Eb and Lisa. Oliver believes none of it, especially when the kid sells Lisa a "moon rock" for $14. But once the rock starts beeping under the moonlight (and when Arnold snorts at it), he suspects he's the subject of a practical joke. Oliver ships it off to NASA for their scientists to examine.
Lisa's skittish Uncle Fedor uses the Douglases home to hide out--mostly under the bed and sofa. He claims he's on the run from the Secet Police who want him for smuggling a secret formula. When a man with a scar and another without an ear are spotted in Hooterville, his wild tale starts to seem believable.
It's Oliver's birthday, and everyone but him wants to celebrate. It also (coincidentally) happens to be Arnold's birthday too. Everyone tries to persuade Oliver to get Arnold a birthday present, while he thinks he deserves one because he's human, while Arnold isn't. It turns out Arnold, and Lisa are the only one's who get Oliver a gift, and when he and Lisa go over to the Ziffel's house for his party, only to find that there wasn't one, they return to find all of their furniture stolen.
Lori, the little girl who missed the train back to the city, is staying with the Douglases. Lisa's plan to introduce her to the local children by having a party and gets out of hand; the festivities grow to include an elephant and Haney giving biplane rides. While Oliver fights to downsize her event, he searches for a replacement part for his ancient Hoyt-Clagwell tractor so he can begin planting.
Eb won't stop badgering "Dad" to buy him a car, though an increasingly irritated Oliver keeps saying no. Meanwhile, Lisa is busy lavishing gifts on little Lori. Feeling he's been replaced in the Douglas family, a dejected Eb runs away to find a new job. He stops by Drucker's store just long enough to tell Sam how Oliver keeps him locked in leg irons and lost his $4000 on a drunken gambling spree in Las Vegas. Eb quickly returns home to discover Oliver isn't the monster he's been claiming.
Lisa tells Lori yet another version of how she and Oliver met. In this one, she was living in a Paris apartment with her father, the deposed King of Hungary. While he was plotting his return to power, Lisa was working as a waitress at a sidewalk cafe when Oliver stopped by for six bottles of champagne. The King wants her to marry a baron who will bankroll his army, but Lisa loves poor American Oliver Douglas.
After saying good-bye to Lori at the airport, a distraught Lisa seeks a job to fill her days. When Haney spots her applying at the County Welfare office, he assumes she's there for the free soup. Soon, Hooterville's convinced "dumb dumb" Oliver has lost his money and sent his wife out to find a job.
The new schoolteacher, Carol, arrives in Hooterville and Eb's heart is aflutter. Eb's current local girlfriend(Darlene) wants to go to the dance which Eb asked Carol to. After seeking advice from Oliver and Mr. Haney, Eb hatches a plan to do double duty and take both girls. Oliver feels the wrath of Darlene's daddy, when Eb lies that he has a wife in Racine, Wisconsin. All works out, when Carol's out-of-town boyfriend arrives to take her to the dance and Eb gets to escort Darlene.
Confusion takes over Hooterville as a bank robber and his girlfriend hold up in Pixley. The main problem is that the bank robber looks, and sounds exactly like Oliver Wendall Douglas! The first one to get confused is Eb, when he sees what looks like Oliver cheating on Lisa by kissing another girl. The look alike also causes confusions for Mr. Drucker and Mr. Kimbell when he makes a visit to Sam's store. On suspision, Oliver is arrested, while Mr. Drucker and Mr. Kimbell hold up the bank robber and send him to jail. Oliver and the robber are in jail, and the police can't tell who is the real Oliver, but they have Lisa come in to identify the real Mr. Douglas. She picks the robber, but Oliver comes up with an idea to reveal who is the real Oliver, when he has himself, and the robber write down where they believe Lisa has a mole.
Wanting a better paying career, Eb enters the accounting program of a correspondence school. When they mistakenly enroll him in their acting course, Eb believes it's destiny calling. Despite a disastrous attempt at makeup, he studies by dramatizing everyday events; a boring meal becomes dinner with King Louis XIV with Lisa as his serving "wrench".
After Lisa hears a women's liberation speaker, she demands that Oliver share the household chores while she runs the farm. While he meets with nothing but red tape while trying to build a tool shed, Lisa gets the permit and completes the building with ease. A skeptical Oliver is in disbelief that his wife is so successful at "men's work".
Oliver's happy to let a paint company put a fresh coat on the house as an advertising stunt. But to everyone's surprise, the wood is so porous, it sucks up the paint as quickly as it's applied. In the kitchen, Lisa is taking three weeks to practice cooking spaghetti and meatballs for Oliver's birthday.
With just two weeks until their wedding, Eb and Darlene still don't have a location for the ceremony. Mr. Haney's first suggestion, to have it for free at a car wash, doesn't wash. His second scheme, which comes complete with a household of furniture, gets Eb's signature on the dotted line. Darlene's father, however, refuses to let her get married on television in a furniture emporium's front window.
When the Ziffels come down with the flu, Arnold the pig stays with the Douglases for a few days, complete with his baggage & ukelele. On a trip into Pixley, Arnold waits in the car, while the Doulases run an errand. Arnold witnesses the Pixley Bank being robbed and notices the robbers description. But with all his squealing he loses his voice, and cannot tell the sheriff what he saw. Mr. Haney tries to sell Mr. Douglas a witness protection service for Arnold. Mr. Kimball tries to track the robbers and ends up giving the real robbers info about where Arnold can be found. The robbers take Eb hostage, thinking he is Arnold. Arnold saves the day by leading the Douglases to the robbers hideout and helping capture them, by pushing a ladder over their heads. Arnold thus collects the $2500 reward.
Drobny the pet duck, which Lisa received from her uncle in Hungary, is lonesome. He annoys Oliver by playing his phonograph and dancing while Oliver is trying to do his taxes. Lisa sets out to perk up Drobny's loneliness by inviting Arnold the pig over to play. But alas the language barrier is to great to overcome. Drobny speaks only Hungarian, while Arnold speaks English, French, Spanish, and a little Japanese. Lisa decides Drobny needs a girlfriend and they set out to secure one for him. Mr. Haney tries to sell Gertrude the female duck, to the Douglases for $600. When that fails, he accepts the $20 that Oliver offers. Drobny & Gertrude hit it off so well, they are expectant parents soon. But of their 3 offspring, 2 are ducklings and 1 is a baby chick.
Ralph wants Hank to ask her to the Carpenter's Ball, but he comes up with feeble excuses to avoid going. Planning to get the two together at the event, Lisa asks Hank to be her date to the party. In no time, Hooterville is convinced that the Douglases' marriage is on the rocks and that Lisa and Hank are running off to Acapulco.
While fixing a leaky sink pipe, Oliver is reminded that he needs to fix other things around the place, like the loose floorboard on the front porch. After checking it out, he determines it is dryrotted and needs to be replaced. He places a sturdier board on top of it, so no one will get hurt, until he can repair it. Mr. Kimball arrives and removes the sturdy board, sighting it as a tripping danger. He immediately walks on the dry rotted board and falls into a hole up to his knee. With his injury, he needs to recuperate at the Douglases. Lisa bandages his foot and Hank's admirer Ralph arrives to play nurse for her "Hankie-poo". The annoying patient makes matters worse by blowing his kazoo when he needs Oliver or Lisa. Mr. Haney tries to get Mr. Douglas to sign an out of court settlement in Mr. Kimball's (now his client) favor for $50,000; refusing Mr. Douglas throws Mr. Haney out. Since the patient has taken over Oliver's bed, the Douglases sleep in the barn.
Lisa & Oliver decide to take a college course together in Pixley. Oliver chooses a farming course meeting on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays and Lisa decides on a Psychology course, simply because it meets on Tuesdays & Thursdays. After a few lessons, the zany members of Hooterville become enthralled with "Doctor Lisa", who helps solve Eb's, Mr. Kimball's and Arnold's problems with logical reasoning. Mr. Haney tries to sell Oliver a pyschiatrist's couch once used by Dr.Sigmund Frood. An exasperated Oliver has to make an appointment with "the doctor" when he intrudes on Mr. Drucker's psychiatric visit. Lisa gives up her practice to be Oliver's wife again.
Lisa cons Oliver into taking a 'fifth' honeymoon together, this time in Hawaii. When they check into the honeymoon suite, they are unaware that the hotel manager's daughter, has given her friends the suite for their honeymoon also. Since the suite has two bedrooms it's just a case of both couples avoiding each other while on their honeymoon(s), for a while anyway.
Oliver is looking through his old Christmas Cards to find the return address of an ex-secretary of his who had moved to California. He wants to contract her because when his watch broke before, his secretary at the time found a repair shop that was able to fix it. The secretary, Carol now works for a Realtor who she ends up saving from being coned out of $10,000 from a con man that her former boss, Mr. Douglas had tried to indite back in New York. By episode end, Carol remembers the name of the watch repair shop on Madison Avenue.
Reunion special featuring Marc Summers ("Double Dare") interviewing Eddie Albert, Eva Gabor, Pat Buttram, Alvy Moore, and Sid Melton.
Tv movie that reunites most the show's cast members. The Douglases move back to New York. But when Haney tries to get everyone's property so that a developer can build on them, the residents go to New York to get Douglas to help them. But he's a little hesitant.
The first show of the series. Mr. Granby quits his bank job and is determined to grow his own food on his own farm. This is the Audition show, which aired at the end of March in 1950 three months before the summer series began. Mr Granby finally did it; he quit his job at the bank and bought a farm near the town of Dubdale.
"Granby Plants A Crop". What to plant? Corn? Wheat? It’s a funny thing about people; farm people work hard so they can save enough money to move to the city and city people work hard so they can make enough money to move to a farm. John Granby was a city fellow before he bought his farm in Dove Ville though he doesn’t know the first thing about farming and now he has to decide which crop to plant, wheat, corn or potato!
"Mr. Granby Discovers Electricity". Granby decides an electric milker is needed for his farm. The announcer (possibly Johnny Jacobs) almost gives the wrong system cue. John Granby is trying to listen to the ball game on the portable radio and his wife and daughter keep interrupting him until finally the battery runs out and he still hasn’t heard the score. Martha and Janice take the opportunity to convince John that they should get electricity.
"Mr. Granby Fights The Love Bug". Granby's corn is doing poorly, but he won't listen to the county agent's advice.
"Mr. Granby Lays An Egg". The farm need chickens, so Granby buys two hundred of them, all roosters! It’s early evening at Granby’s Green Acres on this July 31st and inside the weather-beaten farmhouse we find John Granby seating himself at the dining room table about to do his monthly bookkeeping. Swiftly he adds up the months profits makes a lightening calculation and says, “Martha where’s the red ink…”
"Mr. Granby Breaks Down". Granby becomes very sensitive to noise. The sequence makes excellent use of sound effects. The last show of the series. It’s early evening in Doveville the hour when the farm chores are done and farmers are relaxing a moment before sitting down to supper. This is the picture we see in the farmhouse of Granby’s Green Acres with one exception; Mr Granby is anything but relaxed…
A gallery of stills from the production of the show.