Thank god for Daisy Duke.  Because without Daisy (Catherine Bach), there would be nothing eye-worthy or redeemable in “A Little Game of Pool,” a billiards episode from the fateful fifth season of the television series The Dukes of Hazzard.

For the ill-informed, The Dukes of Hazzard was about the Duke family, and in particular, Bo and Luke Duke, who raced around the unpaved roads of fictional Hazzard County, Georgia in their 1969 Dodge Charger stock car (the General Lee), jubilantly toying with and escaping from the county’s porcine commissioner Boss Hogg and his inept sheriff and deputies.  Much of every episode was devoted to the Dukes successfully jumping their car over every conceivable type of hazard and obstacle.  Hardly the best TV, the General Lee, along with Daisy Duke and her eponymous short shorts, have long become pop culture icons.

The fifth season (1982-1983), as Hazzard fans know too well, was the one when the original Good Ol’ Boys (Tom Wopat as Luke Duke and John Schneider as Bo Duke) had a contract dispute with CBS and left the set in protest.  The producers resolved the problem by hiring two lookalikes to literally take their place.  Enter cousin Coy Duke (Byron Cherry) and Vance Duke (Christopher Mayer) as the Bo and Luke Duke doppelgangers.  Cardboard cutouts, these Dukes (especially Coy) are painful to watch. It’s no wonder they were let go one season later.

All of which is to say “A Little Game of Pool” already was facing a bad break.  The rather illogical narrative focuses on Boss Hogg’s (Sorrell Booke) ill-begotten attempts first to buy, then to steal, and finally to win in a game of eight-ball, the General Lee, so that he can sell it to some “road pirates.”  When his efforts to buy and steal the car fail, Boss Hogg challenges Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle) to a game of staked pool with “ridge runner rules.”  Uncle Jesse, fancying himself a local pool shark, considers Boss Hogg to be a “little warm-up” before the upcoming 37^th Annual Tri-County Pool Championship and readily accepts the wager.

To the best of my knowledge, “ridge runner rules” is some Hazzard County malarkey that requires a spit-shake and allows the challenger to define the stakes.  Boss Hogg gleefully announces that he will bet his convertible against the Duke’s General Lee.  Apparently the rules also entitle a player to select someone to play in his place in the event he is physically unable.  So, feigning an arm injury, Boss Hogg reveals his sub-in to be Chickasaw Thins (great name!), a local pool hustler.

What? No cue ball?!

Like so many other billiards TV episodes (e.g., Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”),   “A Little Game of Pool” is absurdly bad when it comes to its billiards authenticity.  Never mind the common problems that rile pool enthusiasts, such as there’s no way Uncle Jesse ever played pool based on his stroke and grip, or overusing page-one  trick shots to prove Chickasaw Thins is a pool shark. The errors in “A Little Game of Pool” are far more egregious, such as sinking the eight-ball on the break and saying “that’s not bad for starters” or failing to use the cue ball and shooting directly at the five-ball.  Unfortunately, the title of this episode says it all.  It’s treated like a “little game” rather than a sport worthy of at least a smidgeon of on-screen accuracy.  Oh well, at least there’s Daisy Duke.

“A Little Game of Pool” is available to watch on Amazon Instant Video.