While the audience is watching a black-and-white horse opera, a narrator muses on what such a film would look like in the modern times. Rex O'Herlehan, The Singing Cowboy, awakens in color and joins a cliche-ridden town, where the villainous cattle baron (Andy Griffith) and the new Italian cowboys (who always wear raincoats regardless of the temperature) combine forces to drive him and the sheep ranchers to flee.