Opie Flunks Arithmetic - S5-E30
Continuity mistake: At the end, when Helen shows up at the courthouse and tells Andy that Opie got a B+ on the test, her purse vanishes and then reappears while she's sitting on the banister beside the desk.
Opie Flunks Arithmetic - S5-E30
Continuity mistake: When Barney, Andy, and Aunt Bee are at the table after Opie goes upstairs to study, in shots that face all three of them there are things on the middle shelf to the left and right of the center plate, but then in other shots either the left item is gone, or the right item is gone.
Opie Flunks Arithmetic - S5-E30
Other mistake: When Aunt Bee walks out of the grocery/meat store the door's located between the grocery's one display window and the TV display window, but the grocery store actually has two display windows with its door between the two. This was shot on the soundstage, not backlot.
Answer: As noted in the previous answers, in real life, things like this provided wind and/or rain deflection, and also maintained a bit of privacy when blinds were raised somewhat. The interior courthouse set was located in the studio, so the "outside" Main Street didn't exist. I believe these things were added to the courthouse windows for practicality, to avoid some crew movement being visible on the opposite side of those windows. These are not "window boxes" to hold anything, as they're actually bottomless; we can see the Venetian blind's long pull cords under them. They're made of plywood and simple to build, so the "material and labor" was inexpensive. Similar variations made of different materials are in other movies/shows. In 1957's "12 Angry Men," textured chicken wire glass panels are in the jury room windows, and in "Jesse Stone: Night Passage" another type is in Jesse's office windows.
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