Thanks to Neflix I've been watching the first of three DVDs of the old Dukes of Hazzard TV series. The video quality is pretty good, but they should have spent some time cleaning up the audio before transfering the shows to DVD.

The show first aired in 1979 and it's interesting, 25 years later, to note some of the things that made it into the show. In one episode, a pregnant woman steals more than $100,000 from an Atlanta gangster -- the justification for the theft (she's a "good gal") is that her husband was working for the crook, but when he got caught the gangster did nothing to try and get him off. So, she takes the money as some sort of child support -- after all, she says it won't be worth all that much if you figure the annual rate of inflation at 10 percent.

Yep, those were the Jimmy Carter malaise days.

In another episode, the Dukes start up Uncle Jessie's still in an effort to win a $20,000 federal award for a clean-burning fossil fuel alternative (To quote Roscoe: "What kind of fuel do fossils run on?") because the "Ay-rabs" are running up fuel prices. CAIR would have a cow nowadays at the pronunciation.

Anyway, they're a fun walk down memory lane and, all things considered, they have held up pretty well over the years. The car chases are still fun and I can't recall any TV show since that has featured exploding arrows.