Sunday, July 31, 2011

Adventures of Brisco County Jr. 1 - Pilot

Welcome to the first of these, well, I'm still working on a good descriptor. Let's go with rundowns for the moment, until you or I come up with something better. I'm still sorting out exactly how these are going to go, so let's just start. I'm thinking of making this a Sunday feature, but we'll see about that as well.

Plot: It's the first episode, so it's all about setting up the overarching plot and introducing the characters. In this case we see John Bly (Billy Drago) and his gang escape incarceration, killing Marshall Brisco County Senior (R. Lee Ermey) in the process. Which leads to a group of robber barons, ahem, I mean, successful businessmen, hiring Brisco County Junior (Bruce Campbell) to track down and recapture Bly and his gang. I assume he's hired by these guys because they don't trust law enforcement to protect their holdings as they'd like. First on Brisco's list is Big Smith (M.C. Gainey), who's supplementing his slave trade in Chinese laborers by robbing a government train. Brisco comes under attack briefly from the Scarred Foot Clan, who believe him to be an agent of Big Smith's. There's also the discovery of The Orb, which will be a frequent Macguffin.

On the character introduction front, we me Socrates Poole (Christian Clemenson) who serves as expository source/sink, since he's the go-between for Brisco and the barons, but doesn't know much about the rough-and-tumble. There's Dixie Cousins (Kelly Rutherford), traveling singer and Big's paramour. Lord Bowler (Julius Carry), rival manhunter, and Professor Wickwire (John Astin). I'll tell you now that Mr. Collier, the newspaper reporter, and Wickwire's daughter Amanda will not be recurring characters. Also, the landscape painter is played by Carlton Cuse, series creator.

The pilot also establishes a few things about Brisco. Despite his scruffy appearance, he attended Harvard and studied law. Spent some time as a lawyer, but didn't care for it. He thinks it was better to have wasted 7 years in college, than an entire life in a job he hated. While he flunked Greek History/Mythology (twice), he does know Latin well enough to send telegraph messages in it. Has been punched by girls who attended Catholic school before. Mostly, Brisco is looking to the future, for what he calls, 'the coming thing'. New ideas that will change the world, essentially.

Now let's go to the tape!

Does Brisco use his gun? He draws it, but it's kicked away.

Things Comet (Brisco's horse) does: Opens doors, talks (not really), tracks Brisco across long distances, cuts through ropes with his hooves.

Brisco Kiss Count: 2+ (1 from Dixie, 1 from Amanda). I say "+" because I'm sure there was more kissing with Dixie during the bedroom scene, but those weren't shown, and thus cannot be confirmed.

John Bly Spreads His Arms Dramatically Count: 3. What? he likes to spread his arms to punctuate a point. Like Atomic Robo, he speaks with his whole body.

Is Pete Hutter (John Pyper-Ferguson) in this episode? Yes.

Pete Hutter Quote: 'Personally, I have little use for this current crop of Frenchmen, who slap their paint on in big, bold strokes of vibrant color. Call themselves Impressionists. Guess I'm just a classicist at heart.'

Non-Pete Hutter Quote: 'I want this job - and I'm the man to get it done. Never mind I'm Brisco County's son. This job isn't my birthright. The important thing is I can outshoot, outride, outspit, outfight, and outthink John Bly or any one of his gang.' (Brisco to the robber barons)

Brisco's Coming Things: San Francisco's trolley system, Pete's assertion trains go over 100 mph, Wickwire's rocket, the abbreviation UFO (standing for Unearthed Foreign Object).

John Bly Gang Count: 1 - Big Smith (fell out of a train while on a high bridge).

Stuff The Orb Can Do: Provide superhuman strength. Use of The Orb may cause rapid aging, resulting in a death like Walter Donovan's from the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Also, The Orb itself is bulletproof.

Other: How did Bly get Collier's tie pin? Were the guards dumb enough to let a reporter get that close to Bly? When Brisco's about to be hung for cheating at cards, his hands are tied behind him. As he makes his escape, he grabs hold of the reins as he rides off. It'd been nice to see him working free of the ropes. The Scarred Foot Clan attacked Brisco at his hotel room, but even knowing their assassination attempt failed, didn't stick around since Brisco was able to go back and retrieve his coat and hat. Did Brisco really need a rocket to catch the train? Comet was right there. Yes, Comet would have been knocked out by the gas, too, but with the time Brisco wasted riding back to Wickwire for the rocket, he could have caught the train sooner. A guy riding a rocket to lasso a train was pretty cool. Brisco's Senior and Junior are both lefties. Brisco uses the aliases Roscoe Merriweather and Kansas Wiley Stafford.

That took almost as long to write as it did to watch the episode. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it.

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