Miasmatic Review

At least they are not inbred.

On Saturday for my wife’s birthday, I told her I would take her to do anything she wanted to do. I had a sitter arranged from noon until 8pm. I was hoping she would want to go to a hotel for an afternoon of wild, kinky sex. Instead, she decided she wanted to go see some movies and then go to one of her favorite restaurants for dinner. She wanted to see War of the Worlds and Fantastic 4, so that is what we saw. Prior to the movies starting they have this slide show ad/trivia to keep the huddled masses entertained so I, er we, er they don’t start picking the stitching out of the chairs in some strange obsessive-compulsive disorder boredom avoidance habit. Whoever created this slide show had some serious issues. They had two different trivia questions that had NO follow slide with the answers.

One of the two trivia questions was “Which two good ol’ boys are playing brothers in the upcoming Dukes of Hazard Movie?” There was a picture of the General Lee with the actors leaning up against it cut out. My being a Dukes of Hazard fan knew the answer was Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville. Being in an extra butter and salted popcorn haze didn’t notice the wording problem with the question. My beautiful and observant wife did. From the picture it was obvious they where referring to Bo and Luke Duke, however Bo and Luke are not brothers; they are cousins. My wife and I discussed it for a little bit and it started me thinking on what a screwed up family they came from.

Okay, you have Bo, Luke and Daisy that are all cousins. Jesse is not one of their fathers as they all refer to him as Uncle Jesse. Now, Jesse raised all three of them. What happened to their parents? Was there some terrible moonshining accident that killed three sets of parents leaving Jesse with their children? Is this why Jesse never had kids of his own and if he did, where the hell are they?

Now when Bo and Luke left to try their hand on the NASCAR circuit (The season that Tom Wopat and John Schneider left for contract reasons), Cousins Vance and Coy came to live with Uncle Jesse. These are two more cousins, Vance and Coy referred to each other and Bo, Luke and Daisy as cousins. Jesse was again their Uncle, so neither could be Jesse’s kids. Now I know is some of the other episodes they had other cousins that popped in for one episode (I know because I just saw those episodes in the last couple of months). The English one was a cousin by marriage, but the other didn’t say that. We now have six cousins, different parents.

Using deductive reasoning, we can come to some conclusions. Grandpa Duke was a busy man! He had at least seven boys. How do we know this? They all have the last name Duke. Meaning that Jesse had to have six brothers in order to have 6+ nephews and nieces with the last name Duke. Sure, he could have had a sister that had a child out of wedlock, but this was during the late 70’s and early 80’s on TV. They had yet to address that issue and I could be wrong, but I don’t think the networks at that time would allow it. But back then, when the child was born, wouldn’t the child still have the father’s last name, not the mothers? Okay, maybe the mother didn’t know the father. Now we get back to the networks not allowing that story line.

Where the hell are all the parents of these kids? Not once do I recall seeing a one on any of the episodes. Is there a Duke family curse? If you don’t run moonshine you will die and the creepy confirmed bachelor uncle that does make moonshine will take raise your children. What the hell people? In addition, if grandpa duke was producing children like a madman, did his children not breed? There is not one sibling amongst any of the kids that where on the show? Does this mean that their parents had just enough genetic material to breed once and that was it? Maybe moonshining has other side effects besides going blind; maybe it makes you sterile! I honestly don’t know.

Coming to the realization that I have already spent excessively too much time contemplating the genealogy of the Duke of Hazard I’m going to wrap this up. However, I know at one point I’m going to loose sleep on this. While laying in bed staring at the darkness, I will start pondering where all the Duke spawn came from. I’ve already been obsessing on this for 2 days and it’s only getting worse.