Bonanza (TV Series) The Truckee Strip (1959) User Reviews

This land is my land

[mitchrmp · 8/10 · 8 January 2014]

In this episode, Luther Bishop has a bad foreman that he doesn't know about. This foreman is trying to start something between Bishop and Ben Cartwright, and he almost succeeds!

Mr. Bishop has a daughter. When Joe meets her, he of course falls in love with her. They don't really understand all the fighting their fathers are doing over the land and wish it would stop. Unfortunately, things get worse when Jessup learns they are seeing each other.

This is an ending that sticks with me. In fact, today I had to leave the room so I wouldn't have to see the look on Joe's face when he discovers what had happened during the fight. Though they were planning to marry (with Ben's blessing), the marriage of course would never happen.

4 dead (only one deserving)

The curse about falling in love with a Cartwright begins in this episode.

[kfo9494 · 7/10 · 14 March 2014]

If you ever have watched many of the Bonanza episodes you will know that falling in love with a Cartwright always ends up poor for the guest star. And in this episode we have the beginning of the curse when little Joe falls in love with a neighboring girl named Amy Bishop. But there is a wrench thrown into the mix because the Cartwrights and the Bishops are in dispute over a tract of land called the Truckee Strip.

Even though the feud between the families is history, it begins anew when a rich man thinks of a way to try to get the timber that is on the Bishop's property. He gets his roughs, led by James Coburn who just happens to be working at the Bishop's farm, to renew the feud and hopefully get Mr Bishop to sell the property so that he can get the lumber that he so much is seeking.

The feud is interesting but the main part of the story is the feeling that Joe and Amy have for each other. In fact Joe believes that this is the woman that he wants to marry and even goes as far as to seek approval of his father and Amy's father. But things will not go as planned when a fight gets out of control which will break the heart of many.

Having seen many shows in the series this was a routine script with predictable results. However if we were to revert back to 1959 and watch the first-run of this episode, I feel sure this would have been tugging at heartstrings and an enjoyable show. So I am giving this offering a good rating all in the name of not knowing the predictable results awaiting.

This episode is NOT the beginning.....

[hpringnitz · 8/10 · 3 February 2022]

....of the famous Cartwright curse. That was in episode 3 (The Newcomers) when Hoss' love died from TB. But there were many, many reoccurrences over the years. Those Cartwright boys just never could catch a break in the woman department!

The first of many

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 29 October 2014]

Carl Benton Reid who is another rancher/tycoon and Lorne Greene are having a dispute over a strip of timberland. At one time they had a feud going, but things have settled down. But Reid's foreman James Coburn has his own reasons for getting the feud on high heat again.

In the meantime Michael Landon has run across Reid's daughter and she and he become an item. That doesn't sit well with Reid once the feud heats up. And it really doesn't sit well with Coburn who has his own ideas about the daughter Adrienne Hayes.

In only the 11th Bonanza episode Hayes becomes the first of many who run into the fatal curse of falling in love with a Cartwright. In this West Side Story of the plains its Juliet who has the fatal encounter while Romeo gets to romance many more women as long as Bonanza had its series run.