The Beverly Hillbillies - Save the Granny!

 By Ilmari

Diary of Jed Clampett 2: “Weeelll, doggies! We were havin’ a mite hoedown, ‘n it was finer’n frog hair, when ever’thang went catawampus and somethang harble and turble happened. Som rullick took granny! I ain’t bein’ prung down by all these common people in this town. I am fixing to bo’ahl a drank that ort to save her.”

After an excruciating road trip, I had finally found the Clampett mansion. I still couldn’t get inside the house, since the front door was locked. Checking the premises, I could go to the backyard, with a nice pool. Continuing around the pool, I arrived at the house of Milburn Drysdale, the manager of the bank holding the Clampett fortune.

The “humour” is killing me

A cutscene started. Jed Clampett was taken to the bank and given the keys to the mansion. Mr. Drysdale suggested that the Clampetts should hold a cocktail party, or as the Clampetts referred to it, a hoedown.

The quality of the dialogue just keeps surprising me

After the cutscene, I controlled Jed’s nephew, Jethro Clampett. Granny asked Jethro to bring her some firewood for the (electric) oven. I recognised this as a classic gag from the series, where Jethro cuts down a telephone pole. There was a telephone pole in the backyard, I just needed an axe.

I’ll stop here to mention how cumbersome the interface is, when you are trying to pick items. The room graphics are full of all kinds of stuff, and there’s really no indication what’s just scenery and what’s something you can interact with. I expected no hotspots, but there’s also no “look”-function to help, so I really have no other option, but to click pretty much everything, whether it can be moved or not.

Despite the difficulty, I managed to pick up a number of items within the Clampett mansion:

• A banana peel
• Granny’s recipe book with instructions on how to make tonic
• A Spanish dictionary
• Scissors
• A remote control
• Corn

Of these, the remote control seemed most useful, since the Clampett mansion had a locked garage. Indeed, it opened and I found bolt cutters and the axe I was looking for. Next steps were obvious. I cut down the telephone pole and took the firewood to the oven.

Another cutscene. I guess it fits a game based on a TV show that I feel more like a passive observer than an active agent. Anyway, the hoedown started, and after a bit of smalltalk, the lights went out and granny was gone.

When the guests had dispersed, I was again in the role of Jed Clampett. Interestingly, the abrupt changes of player character haven’t had any effect on my inventory. I guess Jed and Jethro just swapped items from one pocket to another, when I wasn’t looking. Why on earth they would want to do that for a banana peel is left as an excercise for the reader.

Checking the place, there was a ransom note, pinned on a horn of a rhinoceros, demanding cash for the release of the granny. The game was also hinting I should go to talk to Jethro, who had worked as a doorman at the hoedown, so I walked to the front door.

Jethro had seen a masked figure exiting the mansion with a big bag. Checking the driveway, I saw that the kidnapper had dropped a bowtie. Going through my screenshots, I noticed Mr. Drysdale’s assistant, Mr. Tyler, wore one. Tyler appears to be a character not from the original show, and checking his Beverly Hillbillies Wiki entry, I noticed he was described as the second villain of the BH movie. Dagnabit, I had it!

I had met Tyler for the first time at the bank during one of the cutscenes. The problem was to find the bank, since it clearly wasn’t in the immediate neighbourhood. Indeed, looking back at the whole trip to the bank, I noticed that Jed Clampett had been taken there by a car. It was time to go back driving.

I obviously hadn’t checked the whole Beverly Hills map, when searching for the Clampett mansion, as I had no idea where to look for the bank. While scouting the roads, I tried visiting some of the mansions again, and Jed asked their residents if they had heard of granny. No luck there.

I finally arrived at a shopping street I hadn’t visited earlier. I couldn’t get anything useful from the stores, but on one screen of the street I found the entrance to the bank. Tyler was standing in it, but had nothing helpful to say about the kidnapping. I tried various items on him, and the banana peel did the trick - Tyler fell to the floor and dropped his keys.

With the keys I could slip to an office. In there, I heard granny’s voice in the vault. The vault was shut tight, but granny told me her tonic might help me get inside. Hey, I just happen to have the recipe for it…

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