One of the great Western TV shows for one reason, it's a binging series before they were called such a thing, and HOW THE WEST WAS WON was a hybrid of serialized nighttime soaps, and it's a Western drama albeit far different from James Arness's legendary HOW THE WEST WAS WON, having ended after 20-years the previous year...
His role here is much different than Marshall Matt Dillon in that Arness is more a progressive Western character being that he loves Indians more than whites...
The downside is the Indians are either perfectly perfect, like enlightened Buddhists, or horribly savage liken to old John Ford pictures that, by the 1970's, liberal actors were always complaining about...
This episode's strength is the romance between the oldest, classy and pretty sister... refusing to be a dirt-knuckled farm girl and falling in love with a handsome Mormon, played by an actor who did a lot of "handsome man's man" commercials, with a chin-dimple deeper than Martin Kove or even Kirk Douglas...
There's a twist at the end of the connected story that is quite good, and is where Eva Marie Saint's replacement Fionnula Flanagan pays finally her dues as a series regular...
But the best soap-tinged aspect is Bruce B's relationship with feisty small town tomboy with a heart of gold Elyssa Davalos... one of the prettiest girls of that era, playing the kind of lass you'll think will never fold... till she does... and it ain't easy...
But it's not all perfect as the main story involves Ricardo M ("your people are like leaves of a forest" yuck) as a proud Indian chief having trouble with, get this, Russians! This during the cold war... a kind of top-news novelty plot-line for then-modern audiences... and it's pretty ridiculous...
It's ironic that the best stories are what would on-paper seem like sappy romances for girls and the worst involves pridefully muscular men, who are far more melodramatic and corny.
His role here is much different than Marshall Matt Dillon in that Arness is more a progressive Western character being that he loves Indians more than whites...
The downside is the Indians are either perfectly perfect, like enlightened Buddhists, or horribly savage liken to old John Ford pictures that, by the 1970's, liberal actors were always complaining about...
This episode's strength is the romance between the oldest, classy and pretty sister... refusing to be a dirt-knuckled farm girl and falling in love with a handsome Mormon, played by an actor who did a lot of "handsome man's man" commercials, with a chin-dimple deeper than Martin Kove or even Kirk Douglas...
There's a twist at the end of the connected story that is quite good, and is where Eva Marie Saint's replacement Fionnula Flanagan pays finally her dues as a series regular...
But the best soap-tinged aspect is Bruce B's relationship with feisty small town tomboy with a heart of gold Elyssa Davalos... one of the prettiest girls of that era, playing the kind of lass you'll think will never fold... till she does... and it ain't easy...
But it's not all perfect as the main story involves Ricardo M ("your people are like leaves of a forest" yuck) as a proud Indian chief having trouble with, get this, Russians! This during the cold war... a kind of top-news novelty plot-line for then-modern audiences... and it's pretty ridiculous...
It's ironic that the best stories are what would on-paper seem like sappy romances for girls and the worst involves pridefully muscular men, who are far more melodramatic and corny.
