Teammates try to pull the ball from his fingers as Knotts quivers, squirms, contorts, grimaces and pops his eyes even farther. He is carried to the men's room where the crowd gives his hand a swirly in an effort to flush the ball off. Meanwhile, his dopey pal puts a paper toilet ring around his neck, crowning the humiliation and sparking another spasm of wretchedness. To all these things, Knotts' characters are atrociously vulnerable. Physically and emotionally, they are subject to every bump and eddy of the human intercourse around them, until they worry so much about it all that they become oblivious to anything outside the overstimulation of their imaginations.
Life's just a crock.
But even the solace of despair is denied this sap, for he has a mission to fulfill. On Andy , Barney's agonies were regularly reduced to the ridiculous, usually with Sheriff Taylor's help. On the big screen, his torment makes Knotts holy, and as a holy fool he brings down the high and the mighty. His persecutors are humbled, exposed and mortified as his bumbling, accidental interference puts their schemes awry and he trips his way to the doll of his dreams and the respect of his neighbors. In the end, Knotts is the hero in all his films, but an ironic one.