Review of The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters

Although the series ran for only 1 season (26 episodes), it gave us a glimpse of mighty things to come for a young Kurt Russell. The show follows the travels from Missouri to the gold fields of California in the pre-Civil War times. Jamie (Russell) is with his Dad, Dr. Sardius McPheeters (Dan o'Herlihy) and assorted other folks headed for California. Characters came and went and the original wagon master Coulter (Michael Witney) gets killed off in episode 10, but shows up in several more episodes that are usually introduced as flashbacks. He was replaced by Charles Bronson. Jamie and his Dad were also accompanied by a orphan girl (Jenny played by Donna Anderson) who Jamie was convinced had her eyes set on the Doctor. She later became attracted to Coulter until his death. The show was geared towards younger males with Jamie invariably wandering off and either getting kidnapped or into other misfortunes requiring wither his father, Coulter or others to rescue him. Another entertaining part was having the Osmond Brothers as part of the group and their singing in a lot of the episodes along with the end theme song.