My Favorite Western Related TV Episodes (for BigBlackHatMan)

Happy anniversary BigBlackHatMan, as a tribute I am going to talk about western related TV shows.

Western's are great. There is something about that period of time when America was being pioneered which storyteller's love to explore. There have been great movies set in the Wild West as well as some great television shows such as Gunsmoke, which was on for 20 years! The stories are so popular and so well known, that TV shows which have nothing to do with the wild west will very often do homage’s to that period. That is what I wanted to discuss, those programs which did some sort of throwback episode as a tribute to the one period of American history which is so engrained into our culture that it's the closest thing this country has to a mythology (except for Star Trek, but that's a whole other discussion).

MY favorite Western related TV Episodes. This list is in no particular order.

#6.Lois & Clark, "Tempest Fugitive". This isn't the best example but I really wanted to mention it. H.G.Wells came from the past to get Superman's help because a villain he brought from the future was loose. The villain, named Tempest, wanted Wells to bring him back to when Superman was baby so he could kill him. In order to delay his plans to kill Superman, Wells sends them back to the days of the old west. In a saloon we meet Clark's great great grandparents, and run into Jesse James. This is only a small part of the episode, but the western stuff is really cool. Some of the jokes, like making fun of what Lois is wearing and Jesse James upset that Tempest had a bigger and better gun, are good.

#5.The Brady Bunch, "Ghost Town U.S.A.". In the first episode of the Grand Canyon episodes, the Brady's pull into an old ghost town and make camp. The set was the old Bonanza set, and is close enough to being western related for this article. The kids film a stagecoach robbery and we get a look at the old saloon. Then an old prospector, afraid the Brady's are going to lay a claim on his fortune, lock the family in a jail in the sheriff's office. After Peter and Bobby recall some Western movies, Mike realizes they can escape by tying their socks together and getting the duplicate key. They manage to escape but are still stuck in the town because their car was stolen. Because it's the Brady's everything works out just fine, but this as close to a Western as this show gets. I could nitpick the absurdity of the story (why does the prospector listen to Bobby of all people?), but I'll refrain.

#4.Star Trek, "Spectre of the Gun". When Captain Kirk ignores a warning buoy telling them to keep away from a planet, the aliens decide to punish the crew by placing them in the Gun Fight at the O.K. Corral, and they are the Clampetts! This is a third season episode which does not suffer from the budget cuts from that year, the reasoning for the half completed sets makes sense (because the aliens could only get so much info from Kirk's memory). In fact, this is one of the best episodes of that year. The acting is good, and we even get a shoot out which kills Chekov. Unable to avoid the gun fight, Spock uses his telepathic abitilies to make sure that the crew believe the bullets are not real, a "spectre", and cannot harm them. Kirk then fights Wyatt Earp, but when he refuses to kill it impresses the aliens who let them go. Nice homage and here's a fun fact. DeForest Kelly who plays Dr.McCoy played Morgan Earp in the 1957 film "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

#3.Star Trek-TNG, "A Fistful of Data's". The title is an obvious parody on the great western "A Fistful of Dollars." In the episode, Worf and his son go on the holodeck to enjoy a story from the "Ancient" west.Worf is the sheriff and his son is the deputy. In a saloon they find and arrest a man wanted for murder. However, at the same time a computer malfunction seals them in the holodeck, and causes all the characters to resemble the android Data. Not only resemble him, they have Data's powers and abilities. When the gunfight comes down, Word has to deal with the fact that his opponent as the speed and accuracy of an android (and, of course, the safeties are off). Fortunately Worf has half a brain in the episode, and is able to use his communicator to fashion a force field which protects him. Then the story ends and the holodeck releases them. A cute episode, including Troi as a gun totting stranger with a decent western accent.

#2.Family Matters, "The Good The Bad and the Urkel." After getting into a brawl with Steve's father over the Urkels' smelly backyard compost heap, Carl dreams of a feud between their two families in the Old West. There, he is the local sheriff who has shot and killed Doc Urkel. Before long, his outlaw son comes to town looking for revenge. Challenged to a quick draw, Carl is engaged in a shootout with Two-Gun Urkel, the most annoying gunslinger in the West. This is a really cute episode, we get a typical saloon scene and Rachel gives a cool song and dance number. Harriett is the uptight schoolteacher.  In the end Carl shoots Urkel, and feels full of remorse. He wakes and tells Steve he plans to apologize to his father.

#1.Head of the Class, "Exactly Twelve-O’clock". In a very clever nod to the great "High Noon", this episode is about Arvid who has been threatened by the school bully. He will be beat up "at exactly twelve o'clock". Arvid then has some western fantasies where he is the marshal of a town where the bully is now a criminal just released from prison and coming after him on the exactly twelve o'clock train. This was so well done; they even used a backlot for some of the shots and filmed it in black and white to give a real "western" feel. The actors did a great job, and unlike Family Matters which dabbled in clichés this episode played the western scenes straight. And like Gary Cooper, Arvid chooses to stand up for himself despite the odds. However, unlike Gary Cooper he has friends watching his back so the bully backs off. This was a real good Western homage, and I also liked the lesson in the classroom; Mr.Moore (Howard Hesseman) gives a nice discussion on how the old west has permeated our culture with their classic stories of good guys vs. bad guys. If you never saw it, try to find it.

The old west was a very special period, and it's no wonder TV enjoys reflecting on it once in awhile. Personally, westerns were never my favorite thing but some I liked. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" with John Wayne and James Stewart was great, it remains my favorite.