Pilot

Ponderosa Episode Review

In which Ben needs new family.

I Predict(ed) Way Back When the Show Actually Aired

Okay. I admit a certain interest in seeing this show. I'm not saying I'll make a habit of it, but you have to admit that the Western is a vanishing breed on television. It probably has something to do with the white hat-black hat mentality not being so appreciated these days, where everything is painted in shades of grey.

This show will have a restrained older type in Ben, Adam as the cute but stupid younger one, Hoss, who will take all the stories where he feels not good enough for the girl, and Little Joe, with a little gap between his teeth and at least one episode where he'll have to discover the true meaning of Christmas. My morbid curiosity actually centers around the woman I saw getting off the Cartwrights' wagon in the ad. None of the press on the PAX website mentions a female character. That may be because they're playing up the whole hunks in hats thing, but I'm guessing she may be Little Joe's mother... and that she's dead before the premiere is over.

This is where my mother's Bonanza rule comes from: never marry the star of a show if you're not in the opening credits. Your life expectancy is about three episodes; you meet in one, marry in another and croak in the next. (The Moonlighting rule applies to couples where both are in the opening credits.) According to her, about every so often, one of the Cartwrights would fall for some poor girl, marry her and then she'd be run over in a cattle stampede or accidentally shot or something like that.

I could be wrong, of course, and this girl is just someone's orphaned cousin. But you generally need a big event to kick off a series and I'm betting poor Mrs. Cartwright kicking the bucket may be just what they have in mind.

Was I Right?

Ben Cartwright went through three wives, people, one for each son. And you wonder why it's called the Bonanza rule?

Oh, yeah. She's dead. Tragically killed by accident by the greedy land baron (who not only wants to own the land, but strip mine it as well). Oh well. The show never was about the wives anyways.

The reactions of the guys to their wife/mother's death is a way to get in a little character development in between the fist fights and family homilies. Compared to the episodes I saw during the pre-premiere marathon, they got the characterizations pretty close. Adam is the calm, wise older brother (I guess I have to revise the cute-but-stupid opinion) and Hoss is a big ol sweetheart. Little Joe's tendency to fly off half-cocked and take things a little too personally is well-established, and even pretty well explained, in the circumstances surrounding his mother's death.

And, finally, Ben's got the whole stoic man of honor thing going. I'll give him this: he did stick to his convictions, more so than to his guns, even in the face of his sons' attitudes. Adam and Hoss may have understood intellectually Ben's decision not to hunt down his wife's killer and cut him into little bitty pieces, but that doesn't mean that they were any happier about it than Joe was.

You will notice, however, that the bad guy still wound up dead. Ben Cartwright may be able to take comfort from his convictions, but modern audiences need their pound of flesh.

What Did I Think?

Not being enormously attached to the original probably helps, but this was a good start. We'll have to see what happens next.