A woman veteran of the Revolution, Sgt. Molly Malone (Barbara Bel Geddes) arrives in Boonesborough to take up a land grant; Daniel assists her, but her people skills are a real barrier to her community acceptance.
DB heads to the shark tanks and opens the throttle to jump it in this rather embarrassing offering. Bel Geddes was an accomplished Broadway actor who later achieved notable TV success as Ewing matriarch Miss Ellie in "Dallas." Hopefully she fired the agent who booked her into this sorry Calamity Jane imitation; she yells, struts, laughs inappropriately, and proves generally annoying while decked out in a Continental Army uniform. On the Fess Parker watch, he is compelled to be within earshot of her for the full hour - fitting punishment for his earlier hooky-playing in Season 5.
Might as well move straight to the complete discarding of historical accuracy. The Continental Army (one can never go wrong these days restating the glaringly obvious) did not recruit, deploy, retire and pension women soldiers, and its hard to envision any 18th-century American community, let alone a frontier one, that would tolerate an act like Malone's for more than a few minutes.
Delving a bit further, if the writers had been slightly less concerned with leaving early to beat the 1969 SoCal traffic, a wealth of real stories on women and the Revolution beckoned. Women did go into battle in emergency or unusual situations - see Margaret Corbin serving her husband's gun at Fort Washington and Deborah Sampson concealing her sex to fight at Yorktown, plus the real Boonesborough wives and daughters manning the walls during the fort's wartime siege. On a larger scale, women following husbands and beaus essentially provided the medical, sanitary, and commissary corps for Washington's army - which might well have collapsed from disease and poor nutrition had they not.
Add on that Malone claims to be a Continental artillerist, though she is wearing a Massachusetts Continental buff-and-blue coat, and claims to have been at the late war battle of Cowpens - and the only Continental troops there were Marylanders, wearing red and blue.
Comic relief specialist Jack Kruschen is the former Hessian who is sweet on Malone, and strives manfully to provide the hour's only believable acting. But, unfortunately John Banner (a real German and Sgt. Schultz on " Hogan's Heroes") was not recruited to at least provide some comedy and nostalgia for future viewers.
Ongoing evidence for why the marathon 26-episode seasons of the 1960's were perhaps overly-ambitious, and an hour deservingly consigned to Season 5's cellar.
DB heads to the shark tanks and opens the throttle to jump it in this rather embarrassing offering. Bel Geddes was an accomplished Broadway actor who later achieved notable TV success as Ewing matriarch Miss Ellie in "Dallas." Hopefully she fired the agent who booked her into this sorry Calamity Jane imitation; she yells, struts, laughs inappropriately, and proves generally annoying while decked out in a Continental Army uniform. On the Fess Parker watch, he is compelled to be within earshot of her for the full hour - fitting punishment for his earlier hooky-playing in Season 5.
Might as well move straight to the complete discarding of historical accuracy. The Continental Army (one can never go wrong these days restating the glaringly obvious) did not recruit, deploy, retire and pension women soldiers, and its hard to envision any 18th-century American community, let alone a frontier one, that would tolerate an act like Malone's for more than a few minutes.
Delving a bit further, if the writers had been slightly less concerned with leaving early to beat the 1969 SoCal traffic, a wealth of real stories on women and the Revolution beckoned. Women did go into battle in emergency or unusual situations - see Margaret Corbin serving her husband's gun at Fort Washington and Deborah Sampson concealing her sex to fight at Yorktown, plus the real Boonesborough wives and daughters manning the walls during the fort's wartime siege. On a larger scale, women following husbands and beaus essentially provided the medical, sanitary, and commissary corps for Washington's army - which might well have collapsed from disease and poor nutrition had they not.
Add on that Malone claims to be a Continental artillerist, though she is wearing a Massachusetts Continental buff-and-blue coat, and claims to have been at the late war battle of Cowpens - and the only Continental troops there were Marylanders, wearing red and blue.
Comic relief specialist Jack Kruschen is the former Hessian who is sweet on Malone, and strives manfully to provide the hour's only believable acting. But, unfortunately John Banner (a real German and Sgt. Schultz on " Hogan's Heroes") was not recruited to at least provide some comedy and nostalgia for future viewers.
Ongoing evidence for why the marathon 26-episode seasons of the 1960's were perhaps overly-ambitious, and an hour deservingly consigned to Season 5's cellar.
