Gordon Jarrett (Lee J. Lambert) attempts to assassinate Daniel with a crossbow, fails, and is hung for his trouble. But he is only part of a larger revenge plot by crippled patriarch Adam (Will Geer), plus sons Robert (Ron Soble) and Nathan (Kurt Russell).
The previous streak of engaging Season 6 episodes ends here with a "family unit endangered by malevolent outsiders" storyline all too familiar to viewers of "Bonanza," "The Big Valley," and "The Virginian." Geer, permanently ensconced in popular memory as Grandpa on "The Waltons," at least gets to stretch his range as a vengeful Bible-spouting oldster, and Kurt Russell in his fifth DB appearance moves a short distance out of his Disney kid persona, but he's used sparingly.
But, this a very misbegotten attempt to import what wouid become the teen-horror genre into the series, and it simply doesn't mesh well. Lambert's menacing physical presence is used fast and discarded, and we have seen too much of Geer and Russell in good-guy roles to accept them in retrospective as villains. Rebecca and Israel are placed, relative to other episodes, in real danger (Israel almost loses a leg), but we know early on the audience is just being milked for cheap scares. And in unconvincing daylight settings to boot.
Nobody is bothering much with history this week; the Jarrett's problem with Daniel stem from a Mississippi riverboat accident, and such service did not start up until 1811.
Boone's cabin residence is moved off the usual interior set this week to an exterior SoCal ranch location we have seen often before, most recently in "A Pinch of Salt."
The hour stumbles - literally - in the dark to an unsatisfying conclusion, and fortunately a more interesting Emergency Alert System test intervened. No matter, we were probably not going to get any righteous thrill from seeing Grandpa Walton smacked with a rifle butt anyway. This one might as well have been retitled "Fespar Productions Contractual Fulfillment."
The previous streak of engaging Season 6 episodes ends here with a "family unit endangered by malevolent outsiders" storyline all too familiar to viewers of "Bonanza," "The Big Valley," and "The Virginian." Geer, permanently ensconced in popular memory as Grandpa on "The Waltons," at least gets to stretch his range as a vengeful Bible-spouting oldster, and Kurt Russell in his fifth DB appearance moves a short distance out of his Disney kid persona, but he's used sparingly.
But, this a very misbegotten attempt to import what wouid become the teen-horror genre into the series, and it simply doesn't mesh well. Lambert's menacing physical presence is used fast and discarded, and we have seen too much of Geer and Russell in good-guy roles to accept them in retrospective as villains. Rebecca and Israel are placed, relative to other episodes, in real danger (Israel almost loses a leg), but we know early on the audience is just being milked for cheap scares. And in unconvincing daylight settings to boot.
Nobody is bothering much with history this week; the Jarrett's problem with Daniel stem from a Mississippi riverboat accident, and such service did not start up until 1811.
Boone's cabin residence is moved off the usual interior set this week to an exterior SoCal ranch location we have seen often before, most recently in "A Pinch of Salt."
The hour stumbles - literally - in the dark to an unsatisfying conclusion, and fortunately a more interesting Emergency Alert System test intervened. No matter, we were probably not going to get any righteous thrill from seeing Grandpa Walton smacked with a rifle butt anyway. This one might as well have been retitled "Fespar Productions Contractual Fulfillment."
