The Dukes of Hazzard: The Complete Third Season

Season three (1981-82) finds The Dukes of Hazzard coasting on its popular formula. Cousins Bo (John Schneider) and Luke (Tom Wopat) Duke are still tearing up the road in their '69 orange Dodge Charger (the General Lee), while Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke) everlastingly tries to frame them for everything from the theft of his cutlery at the Boar's Nest ("The Hazzardville Horror") to the heist of Stonewall Jackson's sword ("Along Came a Duke"). Meanwhile, leggy cousin Daisy (Catherine Bach) adds some dimension to her eye-candy character by becoming a reporter for the Hazzard Gazette ("By-Line, Daisy Duke"), as well as a kidnap victim ("Enos Strate to the Top") after her innocuous photographs of Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle) in Atlanta happen to capture a couple of bank robbers in action. Booke's cartoonish villain remains an outlandish self-caricature, chortling over every (doomed) opportunity to nail the Dukes and/or take Uncle Jesse's farm: through a crooked boxing match ("And in This Corner, Luke Duke"), or a bank robbery set up (by Hogg) to appear that Bo and Luke pulled off the crime during the wedding of Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best, in "Mrs. Rosco P. Coltrane"), or even by pretending to be amnesia victim Bo's father ("My Son, Bo Hogg"). After some cast uncertainty in the second season (boycotts, etc.), things have mostly settled down for this 22-episode third season set and the predictability of writer-producer Gy Waldron's (Moonrunners) show makes this shameless, tongue-in cheek fun for fans (though something considerably less for others). DVD extras include a special welcome by Schneider, Wopat, and Bach, the same trio in a commentary on one episode, and a featurette. Optional. (T. Keogh)