Favorite TV Episode Blogathon: Stagecoach West, “The Remounts”

Stagecoach West was a lesser-known Western show that ran for only one season, 1960-1961. It centered around a stage line run by Simon Kane (Robert Bray), with his adolescent son Davey (Richard Eyer) and sidekick Luke Perry (Wayne Rogers) along for the ride. (Not sure I’ve ever heard of an entire stage line operated by just a couple of people who did all the driving themselves, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.) I’ve only seen a few episodes so far, but have found them all enjoyable. With an interesting premise, likable series regulars, and a typically solid guest cast booking passage on the stagecoach each week, it’s a bit surprising the show didn’t last longer. Perhaps the series leads didn’t have enough star power, or perhaps the pleasantly understated characters they played didn’t have the swagger to compete with other, flashier TV Western headliners.

“The Remounts,” the show’s twenty-third episode, opens with a couple of young cowboys, Clete Henry (James Beck) and Hutch Barnett (Don Burnett) driving a herd of horses down from the hills to sell them to the U.S. Army. A couple of the temporary drovers they’ve hired (James Griffith and Mort Mills) make an attempt at stealing the herd, but Clete and Hutch manage to foil their attempt and kick them out. The foiled badmen promptly join forces with another pair of outlaws even more vicious (Richard Devon and Chris Alcaide), and find another way to profit off the horses—ambushing the Army horse buyers at a nearby stage station and stealing the price of the herd. Not content with that, they decide to have another go at stealing the horses and re-selling them for even more money.

So when the coach carrying our series regulars rolls into the station, the gang holds them up and holds young Davey as a hostage, to force Simon and Luke to help them steal the horse herd and to keep them from giving the alarm until the stolen horses are sold. But once they’ve reached the horse herders’ camp, Simon and Luke manage to turn the tables on their captors, and then join forces with Clete and Hutch to figure out a way to rescue Davey from the rest of the gang back at the stage station.

(The one notable plot hole is the lack of bullet holes in those several-times-hand-me-down cavalry uniforms.)

You might say it’s a pretty standard plot for a Western episode. But what lifted this one a notch above the ordinary for me was the characters of the two horse herders, whose good-natured banter throughout steals the show. It’s really the first time I’ve seen a TV show pull off cowboy characters whose personality and attitude actually remind me of characters written by real Western old-timers. I’m not sure your average 20th-century screenwriter knew just how much a wry, low-key but gleeful sense of humor was part of cowboy character. Mid-century writers tended to favor the stern silent type for both their white hats and black hats, but one gets quite a different picture from reading older literature: it’s rare to meet a humorless cowboy within the pages of Rhodes, Bower, Knibbs, Spearman, or any other pre-1920s writer who knew their subjects well (or at least to find a group of characters without plenty of humor to go around among them). Though most TV Westerns featured a comic episode or several at some point, it usually involved a specific form of comedy (spoof, farce, slapstick, or so forth) being imposed upon the show’s characters for a day instead of developing a sense of humor organic to the characters. (Bonanza’s almost schizophrenic swings between over-earnest melodrama and broad slapstick are a prime example.) But here, whether intentionally or not, “The Remounts” screenwriters D.D. Beauchamp and Mary M. Beauchamp seem to have caught a more authentic tone.

The show’s leads are likable and the villains suitably snarly, but it’s really the two cowboys who make the episode. Burnett is perhaps a little too polished and not as sure of himself on a horse to be completely convincing as a Westerner, but Beck is so much the perfect screen cowboy, with his Texas drawl, laid-back mannerisms and easy horsemanship that he’s a joy to watch. (Maybe my favorite moment in the episode is Clete’s line in the opening scene: “Just remember that I’m a gentleman.”)

The cowboys’ conduct at the climax of the episode is another note well struck. Few Western film or TV scripts emphasize how much coming unhesitatingly to the aid of a friend (or stranger) in need was a part of frontier culture—you’ll see a lot more telegraphing that This is Heroic and Self-Sacrificing Behavior than you will depiction of this as a matter of course. The carefree cowboys in “The Remounts” taking it as a matter of course rings truer to life. When Simon and Luke express wonder at their willingness to help out, it feels like for a minute they become the mouthpiece of the 20th-century viewer, reacting to a couple of denizens of the 19th-century West who have somehow found their way into a 1960s TV episode.

At present a very blurry and low-quality video of “The Remounts” can be seen here. The complete season of Stagecoach West has been released on DVD, but seems to be out of print based on the scarcity and price of copies online.

This is my entry for the 7th annual Favorite TV Show Episode Blogathon, hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts. Click here to read the other entries in the blogathon!