Bonanza 1:2 - Death on Sun Mountain, oh yeah, and in the valley too

In this episode of Bonanza, which by the way, I actually kind of enjoyed (certainly much more than the first episode!), I decided that at some point in my life, I'd like to make my way through all 431 of these episodes. Why?

Well, this episode actually caused me to think a little bit.

If I can suspend my disbelief - if I can just pretend that it's set in 1858 or 1859 rather than 1849, I actually find myself enjoying it a lot more. It's definitely the post-Mormon period of the area, at least by the looks of the town: full of gruff men, not a lot of families - certainly no plural wives! - all the women are prostitutes, and saloons exist. In Judge Hyde's day, even dancing was outlawed! (I'll find the source citation for that later).

But hey, the prostitute in this episode, Glory, was articulate and intelligent. Much more humanizing than the previous episode's portrayal of women. She was not very happy with her lot in life, but she kind of accepted it.















This episode also explored the question, "Why on earth would anybody want to come to nowhere, Utah Territory, anyway?" Chasing dreams, the future - risking everything.

Some reasons in this episode include:
- making a new start after a failed past (i.e. murdering your jailer in Missouri). I can make a fortune selling food to miners!
- finding a place to settle where maybe somebody will love me or at least pay for my services permanently? I guess that was Glory's motivation?
- we were starving in Kentucky already, so why not starve in a place where we have a chance to dig money out of the ground?

For example, there was this side story of a family who came out from Kentucky.

"Hey! Should we listen to these Cartwright guys? I want some beef jerky!"

"But sweetheart, don't you know that all the side characters they touch end up wounded or dead?" 

I was much, much sadder about the death of the Indian and the severe wounding of this Kentucky miner than I was about the Antelope Meat seller guy's death (who we were supposed to mourn). Why? 

Well...that woman coulda basically been Sophronia. A poor wife struggling in terrible conditions. Though, those conditions don't look half as terrible as reality probably was. I mean, that log cabin is at least twice the size of the demo ones in Far West. But like, I guess they had to fit the camera crew inside, so there's that.

I like that in this series there are some real moral dilemmas. I also like that it showed some complexity between the relationship between the settlers and the Indians. 

I don't like that they couldn't seem to find real Indians to play the Paiutes. I mean, the wigs and makeup on white guys were not convincing at all.