I was reading one of the reviews posted by someone and their description caused me to picture McHale's Navy as a parallel to Andy Griffith. It would be like McHale was Andy and Parker was Barney Fife. Fife was always getting into stupid troubles, like Parker... and Andy was always making him look good, like McHale.
What do ya think? Kind of a Naval Andy Griffith?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Drain 2-6-7 is the target area... Drain 2-6-7!
Interesting thought. There are definitely some similarities between Barney and Chuck...but I just don't see Quinton and Andy having much in common. For one thing, McHale had to follow orders of Captain Binghamton, while Andy was normally in charge, only occasionally having to deal with Mayberry's Mayor.
If I had to live on some desert island with no TV, only DVDs of my 10 favorite shows of all time, McHale's Navy and Andy Griffith would be in that collection.
I always thought of it as Sgt. Bilko at sea.
McHale was too conniving to really be a good comparison to the straight-arrow Andy Taylor.
Well one thing McHale and Andy have in common is they're both good-hearted men.
One reason McHale had to resort to his shenanigans is because he had Binghamton on one hand to deal with and Gruber on the other. Keeping himself and his crew out of trouble with a commander bent on doing them in was as much a priority as fighting the Japanese. And Binghamton was pretty underhanded himself which didn't give McHale much choice but to fight fire with fire.
And you're right about Bilko. Borgnine always said McHale was sort of a knockoff of the Sgt. Bilko show.