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The Wild Wild West: "The Night of the Steel Assassin"

The villain's last name in this episode would be Torres, wouldn't it? And yet when I first saw this episode as a teenager, I thought nothing of that fact. I was more impressed by the fact that he seemed to be somebody's idea of a nineteenth century version of the bionic man -- only he was created long before anyone had heard of bionic men. Then again, The Wild Wild West was dealing with steampunk-style stories long before anyone ever heard of steampunk so I should not have been surprised.

In any event, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by stories featuring characters that were far more stronger and tougher than myself. I suspect most kids are -- hence the popularity of such benign heroes as Superman, the Six Million Dollar Man and the various animated incarnations of Popeye and Hercules. Of course, I suspect the popularity of vampire movies like the 1972 made-for-TV movie The Night Stalker are also based on such fascination. And of course, it is no accident that popular action movies like the James Bond films regularly feature the hero triumphing over villains who are bigger and stronger than him.

Anyway, Torres was out to seek revenge against President U.S. Grant and agent James West had to stop him. Did he succeed? Well, the name of the show was obviously not The Wild Wild Torres so what do you think?

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The Wild Wild West: “The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth”

This was the first episode with everyone's favorite half-“Hispanic” villain Dr. Miguelito Loveless (played by the unimitable Michael Dunn). Of course, as played by Mr. Dunn, Dr. Loveless came across as being about as Hispanic as James Joyce but he still made for a compelling villain. And it didn't hurt that he had Richard Kiel playing his tall, childlike henchman Voltaire. (It said something about the subtlety of the show's humor that a big bad henchman like Voltaire had the same name as a famous French intellectual despite being anything but intellectual.) Rounding out the trio was Dr. Loveless's sister Antoinette, a normal-sized woman played by Phoebe Dorin who constantly demonstrated Loveless's human side by singing with him almost every other time we saw her.

Dr. Loveless would prove to be a recurring character on The Wild, Wild West, basically playing yin to James West's yang in a number of episodes. Granted, the character itself -- a short man trying to act big -- had cliché written all over it, but it's a tribute to Mr. Dunn that the role nevertheless came across in a memorable fashion. James West faced other villains in other episodes, of course, but Dr. Loveless, I suspect, was always his most popular foe. He obviously seemed quite popular with the writers.

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The Wild Wild West: "The Night of the Assassin"

U.S. Secret Service agent James West rescues Mexican president Benito Juárez from an assassin who was dressed like a priest. Considering President Juárez's real-life attitude toward the Catholic Church, there's some dramatic irony there -- though whether it was intentional or not is something only the writers know.

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The Wild Wild West: “The Night of the Inferno”

The Wild Wild West used to be one of my favorite shows in high school thanks to syndicated black-and-white reruns that used to be broadcast every weekend on a late night program called Night Moves. (And yes, that program used the Bob Seger song of the same name as its theme.) Eventually I got the chance to watch the series all the way through and my enthusiasm diminished but I still have fond memories of the show's earliest episodes.

However, this episode -- the first of the series -- was not one of those episodes.

The episode begins with U.S. Secret Service agent James West (played by Robert Conrad) getting arrested on a charge of desertion, only to find out that it was a setup ordered by President Ulysses S. Grant himself. His mission: travel to the American Southwest in order to track down a dangerous Mexican revolutionary named Juan Manolo. Along the way, he runs into his partner Artemus Gordon (played by Ross Martin) as well as King Tut (aka Victor Buono) and Bob Newhart's wife (aka Suzanne Pleshette).

This episode is shamelessly politically incorrect by today's standards but it is difficult to think of any spy show this side of the Atlantic that was not. Besides, it is not likely that even the most liberal writers of the era would have found a way to make a Mexican revolutionary sympathetic to a predominantly Anglo-American audience -- though after seeing West comment on the size of a Chinese individual, one has to wonder just how ignorant of other ethnic groups this episode's writers presumed its white viewers to be to think that they would find this unusual.

Oh, well. At the very least, the episode gives today's viewers an interesting look at the way TV writers thought back in 1965 (the date of this episode's initial airing). And hope that today's TV writers might have learned better since then.

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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.

Actually The Cisco Kid Was Not A Friend of Mine

Neither was his friend Pancho.

Some of my older cousins on my father's side sometimes watched their show but I never really got into it.

Oddly enough, the one Western hero I bothered to watch on a regular basis when I was a kid was The Lone Ranger. And given the type of reputation the Texas Rangers often had in the Mexican-American community, I can't help but find that ironic.