The Patty Duke Show

From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.

The Patty Duke Show was a moderately successful spin-off of The Dukes of Hazzard, featuring Patty Duke as the young heiress of a global fashion magnate, producers of a line of comically short shorts for which she is named. Having served extensively as both a jet-setting aide to Cooter - now written, improbably enough, as a member of Congress - and a pit crew member for General Lee at NASCAR races all throughout South America, Duke returns back to her Hazzard County roots and must live in an apartment with her dirt-encrusted, hog-wallowin' cousin Larry.

While at times comprised of little more than episodes of The Odd Couple with the names hastily revised, The Patty Duke Show was nonetheless rather well-received. However, the decision to play up Larry as a cross-dresser for comedic effect proved ill-advised, as lines about "wantin' t' get all up in cuz's Patty Dukes" caused discomforting amounts of unintended sexual tension; the show met with cancellation shortly thereafter.

Theme Song

Meet Larry, who's lived most everywhere,

From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.

But Patty's only seen the sights

A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights --

What a crazy pair!

But they're cousins,

Identical cousins all the way.

One pair of matching bookends,

Different as night and day.

Where Larry adores a minuet,

The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,

Our Patty loves to rock and roll,

A hot dog makes her lose control --

What a wild duet!

Still, they're cousins,

Identical cousins and you'll find,

They laugh alike, they walk alike,

At times they even talk alike --

You can lose your mind,

When cousins are two of a kind.

Trivia

While the theme song paints Larry as the savvy sophisticate, the show itself featured Patty as the suave, well-traveled one. This is because in the pilot episode, Patty did play the ditzy hayseed, only to find her role later switched with Larry's due to a tragic error involving a pitcher of mojitos and the overzealous use of a find-and-replace word processing feature. The theme song was deemed too costly to re-record and too catchy for anyone to notice anyhow, so the aural error was allowed to stand.