Everybody knows that familiar whistling tune that opened up each episode of The Andy Griffith Show, which has far outlived the series itself. From 1960 until 1968, the Andy Griffith-led sitcom aired on CBS, in black-and-white originally and later in color with the sixth season. But how did this television giant end? You might think that the show would’ve concluded as triumphantly as it began, complete with the return of fan favorites and plenty of laughs to go around. Well, the way that Andy Taylor (Griffith) and the town of Mayberry said goodbye was less of a strong farewell and more of a “we’ll see you next time!” Here’s how the show ended.
How Did ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ End?
After eight seasons and 250 episodes (if you include the original “pilot” that aired as part of The Dan Thomas Show), The Andy Griffith Show ended pretty strangely compared to how other longtime sitcoms bowed out. In Season 8, the series introduced newcomer Sam Jones (played by Ken Berry) to the community. A widowed farmer with a young son named Mike (Buddy Foster), effectively echoing Andy and his boy Opie’s (Ron Howard) dynamic, the Jones boys slowly took over The Andy Griffith Show, with the titular star taking a back seat throughout the final season. Longtime characters such as Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), Helen Crump (Aneta Corsaut), Goober Pyle (George Lindsey), Howard Sprague (Jack Dodson), and even Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts, who had left the main cast after the fifth season), continued to appear. Still, the Jones boys were the rising stars.
The series finale, entitled “Mayberry R.F.D.,” follows Sam as he invites a friend of his from Italy to the United States to help him work on his farm. But when Mario Vincente (Gabriele Tinti) arrives, he brings with him his sister Sophia (Letícia Román) and his father (Bruno Della Santina), unbeknownst to Sam. Though Sam isn’t sure at first, he eventually lets all three Vincentes stay, only for it to become something of a disaster. Yet, despite the troubles they face, the Vincentes are beloved by the town and welcomed with open arms, including by Helen and Aunt Bee. While recurring characters like Goober and Howard show up here, noticeably absent from the series finale are Opie and Barney Fife, the two characters who fans wanted to see send off The Andy Griffith Show with its star.
Of course, Andy himself doesn’t appear much in this episode, and when he does, it’s only to guide Sam as he decides whether to keep the Vincentes around. At the very end, it’s Andy who brings Sam to the town hall meeting, officially inducting the Vincentes into the community. In the series’ final moments, it’s not Andy, Opie, and Aunt Bee we’re left with, but Sam, Mike, and their new house guests, which doesn’t particularly sit well with fans. Not unlike Gunsmoke‘s anticlimactic series finale, The Andy Griffith Show‘s final half-hour wasn’t so much a testament to the show’s impressive run but rather a vehicle for the network to push audiences into the future.
“A Girl for Goober” Was a Better, yet Still Imperfect, Ending for ‘The Andy Griffith Show’
While “Mayberry R.F.D.” was the last episode that audiences saw aired on CBS, the final episode filmed of The Andy Griffith Show was the penultimate “A Girl for Goober.” This episode featured Andy, Opie, Helen, Goober, and Sam (though Aunt Bee was absent). In many ways, “A Girl for Goober” feels like a better conclusion to The Andy Griffith Show, if not just because of the way these characters (minus Aunt Bee, of course) are handled by the CBS series. Sure, it still feels more like your standard Andy Griffith hour than a series finale, but it’s a bit closer than “Mayberry R.F.G.” ever got.
In this episode, Goober is looking for love and ends up matching (via a test he took and sent back in the mail) with an intellectually fervent young woman, Dr. Edith Gibson (Nancy Malone), who is leagues beyond him. Nevertheless, he pursues her as his friends Andy and Sam already have beautiful young women by their sides, hoping he can find the same. Of course, things don’t play out the way Goober might’ve liked, and when it’s revealed that he’s not the brainiac Edith thought he was, things end shortly after. But she comes around to Goober in the end, and while we don’t expect he and this doctor are going to tie the knot, it gives him hope for his future. The last scene of the episode puts Andy, Sam, and Goober at the police station as they talk about life and love. Again, it’s not exactly a perfect conclusion for our characters, but it’s better than many of them not appearing at all, as was the case with “Mayberry R.F.D.”
According to MeTV, The Andy Griffith Show officially wrapped on February 21, 1968, with “A Girl For Goober.” That evening, the cast and crew reunited in Toluca Lake for a wrap party to celebrate their 249 episodes together. Griffith, who had already had a tough time uttering his final line filmed for the show (a question he poses to Goober at the end of the episode), didn’t have much to say to his Andy Griffith Show family. “Well, it’s been awfully good,” he told them. “It’s been the best eight years of my life. I’ll see ya again.” For a man who brought so much joy for so many years, it turns out that sometimes even Andy Griffith doesn’t have all the words to say.
Andy Griffith Returned Soon Enough in ‘Mayberry R.F.D.’
No doubt, it can be difficult to leave a group like that behind after so much time, but thankfully, Andy Griffith was onto something when he said he’d be back down the road. See, the series finale, “Mayberry R.F.D.” (R.F.D. stands for “Rural Free Delivery”), was titled as such because it was meant to be a backdoor pilot for an Andy Griffith Show spin-off. The famed CBS series had already spun off before with Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (which starred Jim Nabors as Goober’s cousin Gomer, yes, the namesake of that Full Metal Jacket nickname), so ending the show with yet another series was an exciting prospect. Although many would’ve likely wanted to see Andy and Opie’s adventures continue into a new show, Sam and Mike were solid placeholders for the town of Mayberry.
Mayberry R.F.D. aired only five months after The Andy Griffith Show ended, centering on Sam Jones and his family. Strangely absent from the series was the Vincente family, who had been such a big part of the series finale that we thought they would be a shoo-in for the spin-off, but evidently, it proved too tiresome to bring them back to town. However, returning characters included Aunt Bee, Goober, Howard, and other Mayberry favorites, which helped make Mayberry R.F.D. feel like more of the same. In many ways, the Sam Jones-centered show was more of a sequel series than a traditional spin-off like Gomer Pyle, and that was to its benefit. Still centering the story in Mayberry helped bring in fans of the original series, and bringing back old-time favorites certainly didn’t hurt.
But no matter how much it wanted to be, Mayberry R.F.D. wasn’t The Andy Griffith Show. Sure, Andy Griffith returned as Andy Taylor in a handful of appearances in the first season (and only once more thereafter), but he and Opie were no longer the central focus of the town’s happenings. Bringing back cast members from the original series may have helped get Mayberry R.F.D. off the ground, but it also prevented the show from finding its own identity apart from the original. Of course, the series was successful in the ratings for its first two years, though it was ultimately canceled after its third season as another victim of CBS’s infamous “rural purge.” After that, we didn’t see much of Andy Taylor or his friends again. But what happened to Andy following The Andy Griffith Show?
But What Happened to Andy Taylor in the End?
In the premiere episode of Mayberry R.F.D., after dancing around it for years, Andy and Helen finally get married. That’s right. Rather than end The Andy Griffith Show with a wedding, the writers opted to push audiences to the spin-off to see what happened next. Aptly titled “Andy and Helen Get Married,” the premiere brought back all the familiar faces who returned for the Mayberry continuation, as well as Ron Howard’s Opie and even Don Knotts, who returned as Barney to celebrate his friend’s happiness after an extended absence. While Andy and Helen’s marriage is the event the episode centers around, the episode is really more about Aunt Bee after Sam tries to convince her to live with him and Mike on the farm, an offer she decides to take up by the end.
After that, Andy returns to Mayberry a few times post-Andy Griffith and still acts as the town’s sheriff in Season 1. But by Season 2, Andy and Helen have started a family of their own. Living in Charlotte, Andy took a job with the State Bureau of Investigation, and around the same time, Helen gave birth to Andy, Jr. In “Andy’s Baby,” the family (sans Opie) returns to Mayberry to christen their newborn, which causes a stir among the usual suspects, who all fight to be the Godfather. Andy never appeared on Mayberry R.F.D. again, despite being credited for the third season episode “Alice and the Professor.” With Andy gone, Mayberry eventually pushed Goober into the role of sheriff, though the show didn’t run on much longer before its own cancelation.
‘Return to Mayberry’ Was the Proper Ending to ‘The Andy Griffith Show’
Griffith, who later landed the lead role in Matlock, eventually returned to Mayberry again in the 1980s for a made-for-TV reunion feature that reunited a large bulk of The Andy Griffith Show‘s original cast. Titled Return to Mayberry, the show acted as a crossover, continuation, and series finale for The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and Mayberry R.F.D., bringing back Andy, Opie, Barney, Gomer, Helen, and a host of others from the original shows. However, this time around, it’s Sam and his son Mike who are absent from the cast and aren’t mentioned (though, neither is Andy and Helen’s son, who would’ve been nearly 18 at the time). Another strange hole in Return to Mayberry is Aunt Bee, who is said to have died prior to the events of the film. Some have speculated that actress Frances Bavier was sick at the time and unable to return, while others claim she wasn’t interested. In any case, Favier died only a few years later.
Return to Mayberry ends the Andy Griffith saga with a bit more heart than “Mayberry R.F.D.” or the subsequent series ever could. For starters, Andy returns to his North Carolinian hometown to see Opie become a father and to run for sheriff again, only to learn that Barney is in the race. Not wishing to run against his friend, Andy stays out of it, helping Barney behind the scenes and even helping him find love with his former girlfriend, Thelma Lou (Betty Lynn). Throughout the made-for-TV picture, Andy gets to deliver his own grandson and (unsurprisingly) gets re-elected as sheriff after Barney discovers that Andy was going to run originally. Ending on a much more satisfactory note than the Sam Jones-centered finale, Return to Mayberry was the last we saw of these characters, and somehow, that seemed alright. “Well, they were the best years of my life,” Andy Griffith explained concerning the original series in the 1993 reunion The Andy Griffith Show Reunion: Back to Mayberry, “the absolute best.”
