SADDLE UP!

The Western was a staple of scripted television for many years dating back to it’s inception in the 1940’s.  The trend began to wane in the mid 70’s and has been a rarity ever since.  Every so often an inventive producer comes up with a “horse opera” that captures the public taste like HBO’s DEADWOOD and recently, AMC’s excellent, HELL ON WHEELS.

     A level of comfort exists in the traditional western because the line between good and evil is clearly delineated.  The good guys are saints and the bad guys are  so nasty they could school the devil.  No middle ground.  Unlike in real life where much occurs in shades of gray. 

     Most of the popular westerns were one-hour shows but there were a few half-hours like the enjoyable THE GUNS OF WILL SONNETT (1967-69) starring Walter Brennan and Dack Rambo.  The premise had a grandfather and his grandson searching the old west for the boy’s missing gunslinger father.  During their search they made time to help people in need.  Walter Brennan was old but he was a fast draw and whenever he had to prove it he did so with the tag line, “No brag, just facts.”

     Besides the wandering loners (KUNG FU, CHEYENNE), buddies on the run (ALIAS SMITH AND JONES, THE OUTCASTS) family ranch life (THE BIG VALLEY, LANCER), stoic lawmen (GUNSMOKE, LAREDO, CIMMARON STRIP), government agents (THE WILD, WILD WEST, THE BARBARY COAST) and revisionist westerns (PARADISE, DEADWOOD), another sub-genre emerged.  This was the modern western.  The hero often, but not always, drove a car or jeep and used such new-fangled gadgets like walkie-talkies and handcuffs.  There was CADE’S COUNTY with GLENN FORD riding over bumpy sagebrush and the short-lived but interesting NAKIA with a young ROBERT FORRESTER as a Native American Deputy Sheriff.  He actually rode a horse sometimes.

MCCLOUD, starring Dennis Weaver, was one of the most successful.  Based loosely on the Clint Eastwood film, COOGAN’S BLUFF, it was a fish-out-of-water story of a New Mexico deputy marshal temporarily on loan to the New York City P.D.  Somehow this simple looking country boy, who was actually Sherlock Holmes in a Stetson, showed those big time city slickers a thing or two about rounding up sophisticated suburban varmints.  His tag-line was “Uh-huh, there ya go.”

     With the social and political upheaval that dominated the public consciousness starting in the late ‘60’s, television shows began to reflect these moral and ethical complexities.  Westerns were no longer just the land of simple black and white hat justice.  (Even the cool good guys wore black hats and kissed a different pretty girl every week.)  They started asking questions about human rights, corruption, exploitation, and the impact of human interaction on the overall environment.  Because Premium Cable hadn’t exploded yet, television was not really equipped to handle the grittiness of the “Revisionist Western” with the same depth that features were allowed.  The whole Revisionist idea turned what we thought of as the old west on its ear.  Some cowboys mercilessly slaughtered Indians who were minding their own business because they wanted their land.  They raped women, smoked dope, embezzled money, and intimidated rivals with blackmail.  And these were the  “Good Guys.”  In the film, “DOC,” about the famous Doc Holliday, we learn his partner Wyatt Earp was a coward and a back-shooter.  Doc, himself, kept throwing up every few minutes, and actually shot and killed his kid apprentice for being insolent.  To be fair, Doc warned the kid in the beginning by telling him he was not the best role model.  This was strong stuff and television was not going near that subject matter or the blood and gore and excessive nudity required to overstate the point and provide wonderful, salacious entertainment.  It was the ‘70’s and people wanted to see the flaws in their icons just like we were witnessing in the nation’s capitol a la The Watergate Affair and the Pentagon Papers.  Understandably, bloodless tv shoot-em-ups with easily resolved morality issues, fell out of favor.

     In recent years JUSTIFIED successfully resurrected the modern western.  Based on bestselling late author Elmore Leonard’s character, Raylan Givens, a Stetson wearing, straight shooting, quirky deputy U.S. Marshal.  Givens first appeared in the novels, “Pronto” and “Riding The Rap” and later in the short story, “Fire In The Hole.”  His last appearance on the page was in “Raylan” which was written after JUSTIFIED premiered on tv. The setting for this show is a rural Kentucky and surrounding areas.  Although this is clearly the 21^st century, the people are all versions of southern small time folk with their easy, syrupy drawl, and  “aw shucks” casual charm.  Of course underneath all somewhat idyllic surface is the scheming, plotting, edgy back-biting found in the best Tennesse Williams play or Carson McCullers gothic novel.  Add sex and gun play and you have a rootin’ tootin’ hit which this show clearly is.

     KILLER WOMEN, an ABC mid-season show, is a network attempt at the modern western.  Sofia Vegara and select group of producers adapted this from an Argentenian show based on actual cases where women murdered men.  It was an anthology that detailed the reason for the woman’s crime and ended with her committing the act.  Some of the women were abused, some were in other desperate circumstances, and some were just petty, vindictive, or psychotic.  The American version, developed by Hannah Shakespeare centers the procedings around a female Texas Ranger, herself a secret victim of abuse, who specializes in tracking down female killers.  A continuing story thread has the Ranger trying to divorce her abuser, a prominent local politician.  He constantly puts up legal roadblocks while attempting to re-establish his control as she begins an affair with a handsome FBI agent.  This switch from anthology format to a permanent main character was made to make the show more accessible and unified.  It’s not a bad show as many critics would have you believe.  It just needs to be in a better time slot (it’s up against two popular shows; CBS’ PERSON OF INTEREST and NBC’S CHICAGO FIRE)and time to find it’s footing.

     The reasons JUSTIFIED is successful and KILLER WOMEN’s broadcast order has been cut from 8 to 6 (which means it’s doubtful the show will return after it’s run) probably have more to do with the networks they’re on and the time slot more than anything else.  FX is home to JUSTIFIED and being a cable station it’s freer to explore more adventurous content than network television.  Also it’s a niche show which means the expectations are more narrow.  People who liked the ground-breaking THE SHIELD, which put FX on the series map along with NIP TUCK, have decidedly darker and more perverse tastes.  JUSTIFIED can push the language, nudity, and violence envelope significantly where KILLER WOMEN must rely on a certain slickness instead.

     In today’s television landscape, the western is not a dead genre but a tricky one.  Conceptually, the idea of a lawless frontier parallels the internet and other emerging communication delivery systems that we are still trying to figure out how to regulate and control.  The hackers are like gunslingers and outlaws.  The average user is a town denizen.  And the government…well, they’re the government.  This new situation makes cowboys relevant again.  Maybe not like the 50’s and 60’s.  More like revisionist stories from the ‘70’s.  Every so often we’ll get a HELL ON WHEELS but it will most likely live on the rough and tumble grit of cable land and maybe NETFLIX, AMAZON, and their future relatives.