In a TV season not distinguished for innovation or originality, it becomes necessary to seize upon the cross-pollination or corn transplant taking place between the Petticoat Junction and Green Acres series on CBS, and determine whether or not it is meritorious enough to warrant becoming a trend.Those of you watching CBS on Tuesday at 9:30 and Wednesday at 9 have no doubt by now become aware that the characters in Petticoat Junction have become geographic neighbors, through the sale of a farm, to the city-folk characters portrayed by Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor in the new Green Acres series. (They're on the cover with the Petticoat gang: Linda Kaye, Gunilla Hutton, Lori Saunders and Bea Benaderet.)
Nearly every week one or more of the PJ characters find themselves involved with either or both of the Green Acres tenants, or vice versa.
The genealogy of this cross-over gimmick came about when Jay Sommers, a producer, brought the Green Acres show to Paul Henning, the producer of Petticoat Junction and Beverly Hillbillies. Sommers first conceived his brainchild as Granby's Green Acres and he had it on radio some years ago with Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet, who now is Kate on Petticoat Junction. The radio version only lasted 13 weeks.
During Henning and Sommers' discussions with CBS, the idea of linking the two series together (everyone involved is too modest to claim individual credit) was born, so here we are, so to speak - or even more pertinent - where are we?
If this idea of crossing one series to another breeds a successful hybrid, and there are indication that it may be working, then we must be braced for a rash of such Luther Burbanking in the coming TV seasons.
We already visualize Donna Reed and her slightly dull husband coming to Washington to visit the newly married Farmer's Daughter.
Those raunchy heroes of Laredo are a chinch to become involved with the Virginian, if the trend catches on, and Lucy somehow or other will be meeting up with My Three Sons or Gomer Pyle.
It is even conceivable (is there anything which isn't on TV?) that there will be a cross-over of network lines with Dr. Kildare consulting Dr. Casey or Ed Sullivan taking his latest group of acrobats over to Dean Martin to mix with the latter's Krofft puppets.
The whole thing could reach a climactic point by having Pa Cartwright hire Lawrence Welk and his gang to come to the Ponderosa to play at the wedding of Hoss to Hazel. You ask how Hoss would meet Hazel? Don't worry. Love and residuals will find a way.
Actually, there was a more serious precedent for this kind of TV cross-breeding two years ago when an un-wed mother in a Dr. Kildare wound up getting psychiatric treatment the following week on NBC's old Eleventh Hour series.
A year later the producers of Dr. Kildare and Mr. Novak had a joint script dealing with the problem of venereal disease among tee-agers, but NBC decided such problems should not be brought into the home where teen-age viewers might learn something.
In other words, you can cross-breed on TV for laughs but nothing else.