I watched this episode last night, and had so many thoughts I decided to ramble it all into a thread...  So this is a tough, very heavy episode, about an old friend of Ben's who has a psychotic break related to war-time PTSD.  I'd remembered that basic premise from previous viewings but I'd forgotten some of the details.

 

First, it really struck me how disturbing it is when Rowan has his initial break and starts randomly shooting at people on the street (including hitting Ben).  It's quite a violent moment and shocking in its suddenness and randomness.  Including a woman and her child on the street (who I don't think are shot - we don't see them again) adds an additional layer.  I actually wonder if this moment feels more unsettling now than it did in 1966, after so many years of mass shootings in the news - because that was very much what this evoked for me.  I looked up the timing and this episode aired just five months after the Texas Tower Sniper incident - considering Rowan holes up in a high place and continues shooting, I wonder if that was part of the inspiration for the episode.

 

I appreciated Ben's compassion for his mentally ill friend, but I wish the episode had given him an actual plan for trying to deal with the situation.  They paint the character who wants to burn Rowan out as brutal and violent, but...Rowan is deeply delusional, heavily armed, and shooting anyone he sees.  They have to do something, and Ben's only plan of "wait and give him time" is not actually a plan or solution.  He seems to be arguing that there's no harm in waiting, but then, sure enough, two more people get shot, including Rowan's young son.

 

I had not remembered the boy being shot either, and that really struck me as a sign of where we are in the series.  I'm almost certain this was the first time a child was shot (though it was...relatively minor, which is a strange thing to say about a bullet wound!!)  I feel like in an earlier season it wouldn't have happened, and in the final couple of seasons the boy would have died.  Right here in Season 8 we're still in the middle of those two ends.

 

It also was interesting that Ben and the doctor spoke very candidly about the terrible conditions in most mental hospitals of the time, something I also feel like an earlier season would have brushed past.  I appreciated the reference to the real-life Dorothea Dix and her reform efforts - nice to see a heroic historical woman mentioned.

 

And final thing, somewhat on the other side, I couldn't help comparing this episode to the Season 8 opener, involving the mentally unwell Laurie.  It was striking that when the man has a psychotic break, it's rooted in war-time violence and comes out in violence and anger, with heavy military connections.  When the woman has a psychotic break, she does become violent in some ways, but it's rooted in trauma related to her parents, her acting out is very much connected to sexuality (flirting with men, then accusing them of assaulting her), and her demeanor is very child-like in some ways (clutching the portrait of her mother, some of the ways she speaks to her father).  And in the final scene of each episode...  Rowan is shown as mentally clear again, nicely dressed in a suit, and actively, personally choosing to travel to a hospital to seek help - very much in control and having agency for seeking his own healing.  Laurie isn't even in the final scene of her episode - the implication is that she's upstairs in bed, while a room of men speak hopefully about her healing.  We don't get anything from her about what's happening.  Oh, Bonanza - you really tried, but sometimes your 1960s-ness was showing!!

 

I do appreciate that they tackled a complex subject like PTSD with compassion and nuance.  A very rich episode with a lot to explore!!

I like the contrasts you point out between the two episodes. They are quite stark when you think about the agency given each of the mentally ill characters.

 

I think Laurie and her episode suffers from several issues, not just related to the 1960s but also the 19th century. Child psychology and how it related to adult behavior was, I believe, in its very infancy at the time. Bonanza might have been at the forefront of even discussing that on television, but any earnest attempts at the portrayal of Laurie would've been majorly undercut by how little research had gone in to such things at the time. Awareness and understanding of it by the general public was that much worse. Even in the 80s and early 90s, child psychology and the ability of a child to even have PTSD in the first place was hotly debated. From the 19th century perspective-- Laurie had no legal standing to decide her own fate if she was mentally unbalanced. It would've been the men in her life (fathers, brothers, uncles, husband) who elected what was to be done with her for treatment.

 

The contrast you mention is also interesting because it puts a certain spin on the types of PTSD. One is childish, and tied to ideas of female hysteria (very stereotypical, very in-line with 19th century ideologies of women and emotional issues) and the other is heroic. Rowan is unbalanced because of patriotic duty in war time. The way you describe him at the end of the episode signals dignity, like one might give a solider or hero, not repulsion or contempt as you would someone that's simply 'hysterical.' We're very much dismissing emotional problems of women and championing compassion for veterans. The compassion angle makes sense given the Vietnam era and the social climate surrounding the war itself and returning soldiers.

 

But Laurie? She's post Feminine Mystique and early Second Wave Feminism era and you can easily read her a damaged, unnatural woman--an argument readily lobbed against feminists. Was that the intent of the writers? Unlikely. I don't think they got that deep with her character. But nothing exists in a vacuum and placing her within the social context, and in comparison to Rowan, it's pretty damning. 

@CareBear I love that you explored the issue I raised with far more nuance and context than I was able to bring to it. Thanks for so many great insights! There’s definitely a (probably unintentional) framing in how mental instability differs between genders. Very interesting to explore.

 

It also struck me that Laurie (for most of the episode) is dangerous by luring men into compromising positions, equating her sexuality with a weapon - while Rowan picks up a gun to be dangerous. It’s interesting next to the depiction of Hoss’ love interest Regan, whose sexuality is also branded as dangerous. Probably none of this was consciously intended by the writers, but it still sends some definite messages.

@Tavia42 Yes, that's such a great point about Laurie! And it's not liking boys that makes her sexuality dangerous--it's how uncontrolled and unladylike it is. She's the one in pursuit; good girls don't do that (insert major eye roll here). Because she steps out of what is proper, due to being mentally unwell, she's a danger to every "good" man around her.

 

I see some parallels with that to the protests of "not all men!" in response to women's well-founded fears of male predators. Laurie turns that idea on its head, in a way, because she really does believe all men are a threat, but she is part of the process of turning them into that threat. A weird concoction of the "asked for it" fallacy + the downplaying of actual threat with the "not all men!" + her dangerous sexual appetite. I may have stopped making sense now, but I swear in my head I'm going someplace with seeing these connections 

 

Also for Laurie and Reagan: "Good" women weren't supposed to like sex in the 19th century. Sex was a marital duty and part of procreation, not believed to have been intended for women's enjoyment. Those that did enjoy it, and openly acknowledged that fact, were unnatural (and whores). That's why women like Reagan and Laurie are dangerous-- women from good families who have gone horribly wrong.

I'm actually surprised @Tavia42 that they didn't end up having to pushback the airing of The Unseen Wound, given how recent the Texas Tower Sniper incident occurred. Five months is not much time for such a shocking event. Today, that would be an automatic response, to shelve it for a later date, after a mass shooting. I wonder if they thought it was such an aberration from normal that it might be ok? However the decision was reached, I have to imagine execs at NBC and Chevy were sweating somethin' fierce over it. What are your thoughts on that?

What an interesting discussion this has been! I can't really add to it as you two have covered it wonderfully in depth. 

 

In the Unseen Enemy - I saw most things you did @Tavia42 - Ben with his 'give him time to calm down' plan and the other man 'let's burn him out to stop him' plan. I didn't see the shootings in light of all the mass shootings (way to many) of today, but I did see it as the PTSD of war. The Civil War was so bloody and it's a wonder all surviving soldiers didn't have PTSD from it. 

 

While reading this thread, I recalled The Patchwork Man at the end of Season 6. I never got into watching it because it was just after PR left and it made me sad he wasn't it in (although he was mentioned), but I finally watched it earlier this year. Hoss, in his gentle way, finds a way to connect with Patch, a quiet recluse living in a ghost town. It turns out that Patch has some PTSD from a violent incident concerning guns as a teenager. He's terrified of gunfire and even touching one, even if it's to save Ben's life in a crossfire gunfight with some illegal hydraulic 'miners' on the Ponderosa. This all leads to a full revelation of Patch's past and his eventual outcome. 

 

I'd be curious to hear other thoughts on this episode. 

 

On a curious note (I had rewatch the episode to note some things here) Ben and Hoss were discussing the missing title to a piece of Ponderosa land that's caught in the mining squabble. Hoss is going to Genoa to see if some missing records could be there as the citizens tried to make Genoa the county seat over Virginia City. Hoss mentions Genoa as a ghost town, along with others, and it occurred to me Genoa is where he rode to to get the medicine for Joe in My Brother's Keeper. The town sure didn't last long did it. 

 

Wow, good catch on Genoa @AC1830. Sure didn't last very long at all. Likely a continuity error there rather than intentional, do you think? 

 

Hmm, Patchwork Man. Aired 1965, the draft started in 1964. Patch is depicted as very cowardly for much of the episode, only Hoss is truly compassionate of his PTSD. Perhaps some subtext on draft dodgers is at play in the initial depiction of Patch? It might be there, but I personally think it's a bit of a stretch.

 

I'd almost look at it more through the lens of juvenile delinquency debates. The rise of Teen Culture and all it's potential fallout--not that that creates PTSD by any means, but Patch has PTSD because of experiences he had as a troubled youth. Think of it like another variation of Napoleon's Child, if that makes sense. The trauma Patch had was because he fell in with the wrong crowd, so parents, watch out! Napoleon created chaos and gave trauma because he was unsupervised--again, parents, watch out! Control your kids!

@CareBear Great insights on Laurie’s sexuality also! I don’t know enough about the TV schedule or norms to fully comment on the timing choice with this one. Would they have had the script before the incident? Possibly it was considered as a response to what happened? I did notice they clarified that no one was killed (only wounded) by Rowan, which may have been an attempt to soften what was happening (and keep him a sympathetic figure, obviously).

 

@AC1830 Great additions to the discussion! Now that you point it out, Patch and Rowan are almost opposites - both traumatized by violence, but one is terrified of guns while the other turns to them in his crisis. The “solutions” are almost opposite too - Patch has to step up to defend himself, while Rowan has to put down his gun and access the love of his family.

 

Very interesting contrasts, and while the show was sympathetic to both, I feel like they were actually more sympathetic to the dangerous Rowan - I recall Hoss being surprisingly judgmental of Patch, at least until learning his history. Possibly because Rowan, while obviously taking things to a twisted level, is still acting within some kind of masculine ideal of courage and power.

2 minutes ago, CareBear said:

Wow, good catch on Genoa @AC1830. Sure didn't last very long at all. Likely a continuity error there rather than intentional, do you think? 

 

Hmm, Patchwork Man. Aired 1965, the draft started in 1964. Patch is depicted as very cowardly for much of the episode, only Hoss is truly compassionate of his PTSD. Perhaps some subtext on draft dodgers is at play in the initial depiction of Patch? It might be there, but I personally think it's a bit of a stretch.

 

I'd almost look at it more through the lens of juvenile delinquency debates. The rise of Teen Culture and all it's potential fallout--not that that creates PTSD by any means, but Patch has PTSD because of experiences he had as a troubled youth. Think of it like another variation of Napoleon's Child, if that makes sense. The trauma Patch had was because he fell in with the wrong crowd, so parents, watch out! Napoleon created chaos and gave trauma because he was unsupervised--again, parents, watch out! Control your kids!

Excellent point about the wrong friends during childhood. Plus Patch lost his brother. That's true trauma there. The townspeople, or whoever were 'laying in wait', are greatly to blame too. Too bad they couldn't have 'caught' the young boys in a more peaceful way like Roy did in No Less a Man.

 

RE: Genoa - can't imagine where they (the writers) thought it was a ghost town as were others that Hoss mentioned. Genoa has a long proud history from the time it was known as "Mormon Station" in 1851. The part in the episode about fighting to be a county seat in not accurate either. When Nevada became a Territory Genoa became the county seat of Douglas County. There were many 'firsts' with Genoa - Territory's first newspaper (Territorial Enterprise - 1858), site of first cattle ranch in Nevada, a stop along the Pony Express - 1860, first hot springs and spa - 1862, and home to Nevada's oldest bar (est. 1853). 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoa,_Nevada

2 minutes ago, AC1830 said:

Too bad they couldn't have 'caught' the young boys in a more peaceful way like Roy did in No Less a Man.

 

Roy was the best sheriff. He understood human nature so well, and that was a wonderful episode devoted to him. Though I enjoy Clem very much, too, Roy is really special.

 

Fun fact: he had a very small part in the noir Gun Crazy, as a state border patrol. I showed that in class and for whatever reason, I had missed his presence before (looking for other things for analysis!) and saw him this time and genuinely squealed with delight. My students asked after the film was over what I was so excited about 

10 minutes ago, Tavia42 said:

Would they have had the script before the incident? Possibly it was considered as a response to what happened? I did notice they clarified that no one was killed (only wounded) by Rowan, which may have been an attempt to soften what was happening (and keep him a sympathetic figure, obviously).

 

I'm not sure! That's a great question though and feels like such an important part of the puzzle. Along with the wounding only being emphasized. I really love that you brought up these episodes for discussion. I always know when you start a topic like this, it's gonna be a thinker  It's really a pleasure to analyze things with folks here.

19 minutes ago, AC1830 said:

RE: Genoa - can't imagine where they (the writers) thought it was a ghost town as were others that Hoss mentioned.

It’s so funny that sometimes they include very specific, accurate history (like the Dorothea Dix reference) and sometimes they’re way off track. I know it’s many different writers, but it seems like there should have been some oversight. Oh well, if the Civil War can come and go, why not Genoa? 
 

10 minutes ago, CareBear said:

I always know when you start a topic like this, it's gonna be a thinker  It's really a pleasure to analyze things with folks here.

What a lovely compliment! Likewise, I know when you weigh in on a discussion, there will be wonderful

insights. I really love having somewhere to discuss all these thoughts and ideas!

2 minutes ago, Tavia42 said:

Oh well, if the Civil War can come and go, why not Genoa? 

 

Bonanza's chronology in a nutshell right there 

8 hours ago, Tavia42 said:

 

 

It also struck me that Laurie (for most of the episode) is dangerous by luring men into compromising positions, equating her sexuality with a weapon - while Rowan picks up a gun to be dangerous. It’s interesting next to the depiction of Hoss’ love interest Regan, whose sexuality is also branded as dangerous. Probably none of this was consciously intended by the writers, but it still sends some definite messages.

This is very much the Old Testament/Judaic view of women - strong, sexually powerful and, often, treacherous.  There is many a tale of a strong man brung low by the machinations of such a woman in the OT- starting with Eve.  Interestingly, according to Leviticus (unfortunately I can't give you chapter and verse) a man's inability to sexually satisfy his wife is grounds for divorce.  (It's almost impossible to imagine a world where men believed it was their duty to satisfy women rather than the other way around!). In other words, female sexuality and the power it has over men was an acknowledged fact.  It could be used as a weapon certainly but wasn't necessarily.  This was turned on its head by the early Christian Church who viewed women as either virgins or whores.  (Both are confusingly called Mary in the NT, as if to underline the fact that every virgin is only one "encounter" away from whore.) Consequently "good" women aren't sexual beings.  All female sexuality is "bad".  Ironically a branch of radical feminism has gone with this, albeit a secularised version, with its position that all sex is rape and sexual women are "pick me" girls ("bad").

 

With regard to Bonanza these two views co-exist as indeed they do in western society in general.

20 hours ago, Tavia42 said:

I had not remembered the boy being shot either, and that really struck me as a sign of where we are in the series.  I'm almost certain this was the first time a child was shot (though it was...relatively minor, which is a strange thing to say about a bullet wound!!)  I feel like in an earlier season it wouldn't have happened, and in the final couple of seasons the boy would have died.  Right here in Season 8 we're still in the middle of those two ends.

 

Of course, in the very last season's Stallion, the father accidentally shoots his kid, but he does survive.   

 

Also in the last season, the crazed maniac in The Hunter is probably suffering from PTSD, I believe.  

2 hours ago, Oxgirl said:

 

Of course, in the very last season's Stallion, the father accidentally shoots his kid, but he does survive.   

 

Also in the last season, the crazed maniac in The Hunter is probably suffering from PTSD, I believe.  

True, the boy in Stallion does survive, though the injury played as more serious. It can go either way in later seasons - I was thinking of He Was Only Seven and Don’t Cry, My Son, which both feature child deaths. So it’s on the table in those seasons, in a way it doesn’t seem to be early on.

 

Great point about The Hunter - another veteran with PTSD, although one portrayed without sympathy. He also clearly committed war crimes, which is a shift in portrayal. I have questions about Rowan’s history (mostly due to the savagery of the scene when, while believing he’s fighting Indians, he starts shouting “Kill them, kill them, kill them!”) but nothing overtly says he did anything outside of orders or wartime norms.

 

I know attitudes shifted about the Vietnam War over time, and the My Lai Massacre was in 1968, in between these two episodes. I wonder if the differing portrayal of a veteran reflects any changing attitude. Although Bonanza definitely had genocidal soldiers in early seasons too, so I may be extrapolating too far! 

1 hour ago, Tavia42 said:

True, the boy in Stallion does survive, though the injury played as more serious. It can go either way in later seasons - I was thinking of He Was Only Seven and Don’t Cry, My Son, which both feature child deaths. So it’s on the table in those seasons, in a way it doesn’t seem to be early on.

 

Great point about The Hunter - another veteran with PTSD, although one portrayed without sympathy. He also clearly committed war crimes, which is a shift in portrayal. I have questions about Rowan’s history (mostly due to the savagery of the scene when, while believing he’s fighting Indians, he starts shouting “Kill them, kill them, kill them!”) but nothing overtly says he did anything outside of orders or wartime norms.

 

I know attitudes shifted about the Vietnam War over time, and the My Lai Massacre was in 1968, in between these two episodes. I wonder if the differing portrayal of a veteran reflects any changing attitude. Although Bonanza definitely had genocidal soldiers in early seasons too, so I may be extrapolating too far! 

Interestingly He Was Only Seven, Don't Cry, My Son and The Hunter were all written by ML.

 

4 hours ago, Tavia42 said:

Great point about The Hunter - another veteran with PTSD, although one portrayed without sympathy. He also clearly committed war crimes, which is a shift in portrayal. I have questions about Rowan’s history (mostly due to the savagery of the scene when, while believing he’s fighting Indians, he starts shouting “Kill them, kill them, kill them!”) but nothing overtly says he did anything outside of orders or wartime norms.

 

I did watch The Honour of Cochise the other week and Bones, at the end, was bemoaning his treatment as he kept insisting that he was "just following order".  How true that was, though, we don't know.  There are quite a few eps about veterans who have gone crazy and massacred whole Indian tribes, I can think of 3 off the top of my head.

 

Also, some more mental health issues portrayed in The Night Virginia City Died, Frenzy, The Dark Gate and Terror at 2.00.  The Terror at 2.00 nutjob was having flashbacks to when he was 'forced' to kill his own son, which could have been a kind of PTSD.

5 hours ago, Daisy Roots said:

Interestingly He Was Only Seven, Don't Cry, My Son and The Hunter were all written by ML.

I read a book about Bonanza that claimed Landon has a reputation for writing light stories...and I don't know where they think that supposed reputation comes from!!!

 

2 hours ago, Oxgirl said:

 

 

I did watch The Honour of Cochise the other week and Bones, at the end, was bemoaning his treatment as he kept insisting that he was "just following order".  How true that was, though, we don't know.  There are quite a few eps about veterans who have gone crazy and massacred whole Indian tribes, I can think of 3 off the top of my head.

 

Also, some more mental health issues portrayed in The Night Virginia City Died, Frenzy, The Dark Gate and Terror at 2.00.  The Terror at 2.00 nutjob was having flashbacks to when he was 'forced' to kill his own son, which could have been a kind of PTSD.

Don't think I didn't notice that casual Star Trek reference in there   DeForest Kelley was so good in this one.  Most of the others you cite I haven't watched in a while so I can't comment too much - interesting they're mostly late series too.  I was also thinking of The Dark Gate with this episode though - there didn't seem to be a clear cause for Ross' mental illness, but it's interesting the attitudes around it.  The episode felt pretty compassionate towards Ross, even after he murders his wife...but it still winds up with Adam having no choice but to kill him.  Which plays interestingly next to Ben's rather reckless refusal to even consider using force against Rowan - it really is hard not to feel that this is a self-defense situation, even if Ben believes Rowan isn't fully to blame for what he's doing.

44 minutes ago, Tavia42 said:

44 minutes ago, Tavia42 said:

I read a book about Bonanza that claimed Landon has a reputation for writing light stories...and I don't know where they think that supposed reputation comes from!!!

 

 

What?????  Terror at 2:00 is another one of his.

2 hours ago, Oxgirl said:

The Terror at 2.00 nutjob was having flashbacks to when he was 'forced' to kill his own son, which could have been a kind of PTSD.

 

Granted, it's been a hot minute since I watched this one, but I read this as straight up hate and racism, not mental illness. He killed his son because his son married a Native American woman, and because he killed his son, he was going to punish every Native American (and anyone else in the way of the gatling gun) for 'making' him do that. 

This is slightly a tangent, but the discussion in Ben’s Boardroom about The Guilty reminded me…when I first saw the synopsis for that one, it described Ben feeling guilty about the death of a friend’s son, and I wondered how dark the episode would go. Of course, as it turns out, the victim is presented as boyish but around 18, so not exactly a child victim. I feel like it’s part of the trend we’ve been discussing about how the show treats child deaths. Here in Season 3, the plot needed a death so they made the “boy” an upper teenager. It really feels like the early seasons drew some lines that the later seasons were willing to cross.

20 minutes ago, Tavia42 said:

This is slightly a tangent, but the discussion in Ben’s Boardroom about The Guilty reminded me…when I first saw the synopsis for that one, it described Ben feeling guilty about the death of a friend’s son, and I wondered how dark the episode would go. Of course, as it turns out, the victim is presented as boyish but around 18, so not exactly a child victim. I feel like it’s part of the trend we’ve been discussing about how the show treats child deaths. Here in Season 3, the plot needed a death so they made the “boy” an upper teenager. It really feels like the early seasons drew some lines that the later seasons were willing to cross.

 

This is fascinating. I think you're on to something here. The more established the show was, the darker it was allowed to go thematically perhaps? Viewers could trust that the character of the show wouldn't fundamentally shift in a way they didn't like just because an episode was really heavy, maybe? That's my off the cuff contribution. I really do think you've got ahold of an interesting pattern here that you (or someone) ought to dig into!

I following all these new comments I'll add my two cents to it. 

 

Since I grew up watching the second half of the series, I remember many evenings my parents commenting that certain episodes were way too dark. And they could almost be sure that Michael Landon wrote it if it was really that dark or violent. That observation tends to follow what's been discussed here that they got darker in the later years. Thankfully not every single episode. There are some very good comedy ones and general drama ones without dealing with mental imbalance or race and violence. 

 

I definitely think Mike wrote darker stories in the later years. Perhaps the networks had relaxed some of the rules or the trend of TV by the 70s was showing more 'realistic' violence. 

My general sense is that television, both in what was popular and what was allowed, trended darker and more graphic leaving the sixties and going into the seventies.  I watched a really interesting TED talk some years ago that I dug out tonight - "The Conscience of Television." The speaker compares trends from the 1950s into the 2010s, and one of her data points is about television that is uplifting and inspiring vs. focusing on moral ambiguity.  She sees television, and the larger culture, shifting from the first into the second in the late sixties into the seventies, which I think also speaks to the kind of stories that are being told - darker ones with harder subjects like mental illness and children dying.  I think Bonanza was on long enough to move with the culture, changing from earlier seasons as the world also changed.

 

All of this said with the caveat that I didn't live through any of it, and I'd love to hear the perspective of those who did on the theory!!

 

I am (of course) tracking Dark episodes as I watch Bonanza this time around.  It's a subjective category, but I only found four Dark episodes in the first six seasons/202 episodes (The Dark Gate, The Crucible, The Quality of Mercy, and The Trap), and even those last two felt a little debatable (Quality of Mercy was for subject matter more than tone, and The Trap was mostly down to one very dark scene of Booth threatening Hallie).  Season 14, on the other hand, which I haven't gotten to yet this time but I remember well enough, has three Dark episodes (Forever Part 2, The Initiation, and The Hunter), out of only 16 episodes.  There also isn't a single comedy - I've seen The Bucket Dog cited as the lightest episode of the season, but I can't personally treat as comedic an episode that has a reference to drowning puppies in the title.  So...things shifted over the years!!