Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.: “Pilot”

I always seem to be discovering new TV shows either two seasons after everyone else has discovered them or else after they're gone off the air.

This show is one of the latter examples, and the sad part is that I had plenty of opportunities to see it on TV during its first run. I just chose not to see it because it didn't seem like something that would appeal to me. Perhaps I was fed up with mediocre Indiana Jones imitations and thought that this would be just another one of those. Or maybe I thought the title was just too gimmicky to describe a TV show that was worth watching.

Whatever was the problem, I'm certainly over it now. Bruce Campbell has long been one of my favorite actors and this is definitely one of his better TV series. Add in a sci-fi gimmick that is actually intriguing and supporting characters that are genuinely memorable and I could just kick myself for not discovering this show earlier.

The whole show revolves around the title character, the Harvard-educated son of a Western marshal who is hired to capture the twelve criminals who murdered his father on his last mission. Along the way, he tangles with a rival bounty hunter named Lord Bowler and a sexy entertainer named Dixie Cousins. His would-be sidekick is a lawyer named Socrates Poole and he also finds time to run into a mad scientist and his beautiful daughter.

As you might guess, he doesn't catch all the criminals on his first outing but he does bring a few wrongdoers to justice, and he also comes across a mysterious golden orb that has been discovered by Chinese railroad workers. At the end of the episode, the mysterious orb is being washed away in a river but rest assured that it will return.

If only the same could be said of this series.