Andy Taylor was a wonderful character, but difficult to write for.
Let’s be honest: If we were all a bit more like Andy Taylor, the world would be a better place. Taylor is strong, honest, and morally upright. These are all qualities you’d look for in a mentor or even a friend.
However, striving for perfection is a futile effort, as no one can be just as good as Andy Taylor. Even Andy Griffith, who shares a name and a face with Taylor, has said that the impression that Griffith was simply playing himself in The Andy Griffith Show is “nonsense,” according to an interview with The Charlotte Observer.
However, being too good can sometimes be an issue, as Griffith was well willing to admit. It turns out that when a character is always doing the right thing, they’re not as interesting to write a series about. While we liked Andy Taylor, many of the episodes centered around his attempts to resolve the conflicts of others, rather than within himself. Griffith said that this was intentional.
“Andy Taylor was such a good man,” Griffith said. “But you know, until about the last year [of the show], we could not write shows that were about Andy. Because Andy was too good.”
“You have to have a weakness somewhere in order to write a show for you. There has to be a flaw. And Andy was a good man. So we never wrote, if you look back on all those shows, they were never about Andy. While I was in every show, in almost every scene, it was always about one of the other characters.”
Griffith has often been considered the “straight man” of The Andy Griffith Show, while other Mayberry residents are so zany, Griffith said that the show’s director Bob Sweeney called Mayberry “a normal small town, but it has a border of insanity around it.” Luckily, Sheriff Taylor was always there to keep things in line.
