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Episode # (aired): 72 (December 29, 1967) Episode # (filmed): 72 (I said the same thing about TNOT Running Death, but I do believe this is right) Apparent J/A intimacy: ****** Yes, they are in comfortable married mode here, especially in the jailhouse scene. Compelling plot holes to be spackled or fixed: Hmmmm. Well, there's that typical WWW mix of incredibly diabolical villains assisted by incredibly stooge-like minions, but that's par for the WWW course. Reason to spackle the episode anyway: The horrible slatterns that turn up in the tag! Noooooooooooo!!! Shirtlessness: There are some shirtless boxers at the start, and Oconee the halfbreed has a bare chest, but these foreign man-nipples are wildly underwhelming. Physical contact: * None? (On screen anyways.) H/c potential: None. Angst potential: None. Jim beauty: ****** What else can be said? (Although he has some bad hat-hair during one standing-beside-a-horse scene). Artie beauty: Artie-qua-Artie? ***** Artie-as-Ashley-Wilkes-suh! **** (this characterization is growing on me). Artie-as-dead-Indian * Artie-as-Grizzly Old Varmint: none, or maybe NEGATIVE 2 or 3 stars. General bizarreness of episode/bad scriptwriting: I doubt Artie's rising-from-the-grave thing would fool anybody, but, other than that, okay. Importance of having this on a pimping tape: *** One extremely nice scene, but you might have to be in the know already. Apparent relationship status: Married (yet inexplicably obligated to have sex with a couple of doughy starlets at the butt-end of the ep). Plot recap: At a calvary-intensive fort, there's a boxing match (it's there to raise the nipple-quota, I guess). But Amy, the daughter of the fort's commanding office, lures Jim outside for some steamy canoodling. (Jim just wants to stay and watch the fights: hey, it's nipples, isn't it!) Another calvary officer comes out and claims Amy for his own, and then the Sioux Indians attack. The calvary officer dies, and Amy apparently shoots a Sioux. Credits. I have to admit I rather like Amy. Under the sappiness and the makeup, she has very alluring features, with an especially humid and peachlike mouth. She also knows how to use the power she has as commander's daughter (although her father's accent is completely different from her *Southern* one). Amy wants Jim. She wants him bad. She wants him wicked bad. Here comes U.S. Grant. Oh, I am so sure he was *that* lucid. He tells Jim and Artie that Amy's father A) wants to be president but B) if he succeeds, he'll kill all the Indians. Seems like Jim and Artie will have to effect a treaty with the Sioux so Amy's father won't have an excuse to massacre the Indians and thus be elected president because of his blood-thirstiness. Back to the fort: Amy decides to take Jim on a picnic, but he wants to go see the Sioux. Then Artie turns up as a blond ex-Confederate calvary officer and he and Amy have a total Southern Legally-Blond- off; Artie wins the first round. He shoos Amy away (probably a double motive there) by saying, "Git along theah, gal." Artie's southern accent is all wrong, but it's supposed to be wrong, so it's charming. (He says he's from Alabama: yay!!!) I particularly like the way Artie shouts "thangs wouldn't be like thiyus if General Lee was still in commain" - he sounds just like B.B. King!!! Hey, remember on the gayfansofrobertconrad list when "Mozartemus" had that big fantasy about Indians dancing as they slowly sliced Jim's clothes? I wonder if he was inspired by this scene, which shows some incredibly lethargic native Americans slicing at Amy's clothes and actually managing to tear her . . . sleeves. Jim saves her merely by going and getting her, and they ride back to the fort. Amy, hot little Amy, makes a number of overt sexual overtures to Jim; they're riding the same horse and her pink knees are clutching his hips in invitation. But then her daddy-general finds them and arrests Jim for molesting Amy. AS IF! Meanwhile, Artie, still in his calvary mode, breaks into the general's office and finds . . . Sioux drag. He smells a rat. In order to tell Jim about this(who's in jail, right?), Artie fakes being totally drunk and Southern, so they toss him in the jail too. Into a different cell, alas, but Jim and Artie still clutch the bars and radiate massive love-beams towards each other. Here's the good scene: In order to escape and go see the Sioux, Jim blows up the bars to his cell while Artie teases him about being burnt at the stake (very funny, Artie). They're very intimate here. But, before Jim goes out the window, he says, "Artie, how are you breaking out?" Artie sits back. "Guile," he says. "Cunning," he says and then opens his thighs in an unmistakable sexual invitation. "The usual," he says. Jim gives him a hot sweet smile; he's all Artie-you're-going-to-get- so-much-dick-when-this-mission-is-over!!! Jim then escapes to see Sioux, but he only finds the corpse of their leader, Strong Bear. Amy comes prowling for Jim in jail, but calvary-disguised Artie tells her to get lost. He is so fey here. Then, after she leaves and using guile and cunning and the usual, Artie puts on his most repulsive disguise to date, that of Grizzly Ol' Varmint (even gargling Bad Breath Juice) and persuades a calvary goon to free him by pretending he doesn't want to be free. Lotta plot now: when Jim finds Strong Bear's body, he is accused by Oconee (the half-breed) of killing Strong Bear. The other Indians put Jim in a sort of boiling-pit thing and, when he tries to escape, Amy turns up and stomps on his hands! She is not a dumb blonde at all, but completely guilty! After a while, Artie turns up too and Jim fills him in. The next thing we know we're at Strong Bear's funeral where Oconee is speaking Sioux to the Sioux, obviously dogging the white man something fierce. However, Artie has substituted himself for Strong Bear's corpse and he pretends to rise from the dead and tells everybody to chill. Brains vs. Brawn alert! The bad calvary attack Jim who whips their ass. Meanwhile, Artie dukes it out with . . . Amy . . . who escapes! No matter: no place for her to hide, so our side wins. Tag: Two sluts chosen completely at random litter up the parlor of the Wanderer. Some sort of signal happens, so Artie escorts them out the scene. (Amusing flub-note: the back door won't stay shut.) Then President Grant, again a-historically lucid, enters and wraps up the plot. He leaves and the girls come back out. I hate this tag, but still I watched it carefully. Artie is the aggressor with that one little vanilla cupcake, but Jim hangs back and just lets his sex-partner do all the work. Dammit, Artie, he is just not content with this kind of woman anymore, now that he knows where Paradise lies! Kiss kiss, and the end. |