A moody, chore-adverse Israel falls for the daughter (Robin Mattson) of a wandering and grifting sculptor (Tim O'Conner), and confronts adolescence.
In the series finale, expectations are kept low from the onset in a human-interest story that doesn't stray far from the fort and farm. Mattson is Israel's first and only love interest; she would go on to a career of several decades in the soaps. 60's TV journeyman O'Conner - better known to sci-fi fans as Dr. Huer in the early 80's "Buck Rogers" - is alternately a sympathetic and then unsettling widower determined to immortalize his late wife's image as a ship's figurehead, grifting to support his obsession while his daughter is increasingly repulsed by their life on the road.
Fess Parker is determined to end the series by passing out favors to co-stars, and this one is a showcase for Israel. Darby Hinton is still a bit young for teen stories, but he is at least brought up to the doorstep of young adulthood. He is allowed to break out of the cute-kid persona as the hour develops.
Parker, in keeping with his last-season pattern, largely hovers outside the camera until the denouement. He was never to have a memorable final acting coda; this was his last time as the Crockett-Boone persona, and 1970's TV attempts as a modern rural sheriff and widower father of daughters never took off, and he concentrated his efforts on operating a successful winery. In the last episode Daniel is shown plowing a field, so the endless hunting trips are apparently drawing to a close as agrarian life takes over; some likely unintended but fitting symbolism.
A very minor historic note - O'Conner says he is on his way to take his figurehead to a Royal Navy vessel, but the Stars and Stripes are flying over the Boonesborough schoolhouse.
The series ends in 1970 at about the right time; Vietnam and domestic social upheaval had altered the TV landscape to one far different than that of DB's 1964 origins. The appetite for traditional TV Western melodrama was washed away, and its core audience - retirees who as homestead-era youngsters heard frontier tales from their elders during the 1910's - was passing on. Attempts to reignite the genre since then have achieved only niche success; writers are confronted by a box of genre exhaustion (1960's viewers can easily recall many recycled storylines), competing demands of realism and melodrama, and a tendency to be lured into homage. But a fitting epitaph is that we still have Westerns - we just call them science fiction.
Given the material, no grand finale for DB, but the denouement reflects a tip of Parker's coonskin cap to his fans, fitting enough to bid farewell to a series and an era.
In the series finale, expectations are kept low from the onset in a human-interest story that doesn't stray far from the fort and farm. Mattson is Israel's first and only love interest; she would go on to a career of several decades in the soaps. 60's TV journeyman O'Conner - better known to sci-fi fans as Dr. Huer in the early 80's "Buck Rogers" - is alternately a sympathetic and then unsettling widower determined to immortalize his late wife's image as a ship's figurehead, grifting to support his obsession while his daughter is increasingly repulsed by their life on the road.
Fess Parker is determined to end the series by passing out favors to co-stars, and this one is a showcase for Israel. Darby Hinton is still a bit young for teen stories, but he is at least brought up to the doorstep of young adulthood. He is allowed to break out of the cute-kid persona as the hour develops.
Parker, in keeping with his last-season pattern, largely hovers outside the camera until the denouement. He was never to have a memorable final acting coda; this was his last time as the Crockett-Boone persona, and 1970's TV attempts as a modern rural sheriff and widower father of daughters never took off, and he concentrated his efforts on operating a successful winery. In the last episode Daniel is shown plowing a field, so the endless hunting trips are apparently drawing to a close as agrarian life takes over; some likely unintended but fitting symbolism.
A very minor historic note - O'Conner says he is on his way to take his figurehead to a Royal Navy vessel, but the Stars and Stripes are flying over the Boonesborough schoolhouse.
The series ends in 1970 at about the right time; Vietnam and domestic social upheaval had altered the TV landscape to one far different than that of DB's 1964 origins. The appetite for traditional TV Western melodrama was washed away, and its core audience - retirees who as homestead-era youngsters heard frontier tales from their elders during the 1910's - was passing on. Attempts to reignite the genre since then have achieved only niche success; writers are confronted by a box of genre exhaustion (1960's viewers can easily recall many recycled storylines), competing demands of realism and melodrama, and a tendency to be lured into homage. But a fitting epitaph is that we still have Westerns - we just call them science fiction.
Given the material, no grand finale for DB, but the denouement reflects a tip of Parker's coonskin cap to his fans, fitting enough to bid farewell to a series and an era.
