The Big Valley

[Snarky Oracle!]

I've made this creaky point before, but it's funny how the damsel-in-distress episodes work so well in BIG VALLEY (and not so well in DYNASTY). I usually don't like damsel-in-distress scenarios as a rule, finding them tiresome, but they were some of the better BV episodes, perhaps because of the casting (Evans and Stanwyck) and the series' neo-noir tone for those episodes.

And does anybody notice in the "In Silent Battle" episode above that Batman blows up Monument Valley in the prologue -- as opposed to The Big San Joaquin Valley ??

I loved that theme song. Its a shame they don't do that anymore. The opening theme music was memorable and the best part of the series.

And yet the Season 2 and Season 4 versions of the theme are lost to time, removed from those episodes in most venues.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

The opening theme music was memorable and the best part of the series.

Yeah, it was indeed pretty much the best part of the series... Unfortunately, despite the potential of BIG VALLEY -- a well-cast show with some pretty good episodes, most of the show was pretty by-rote and pedestrian. And, despite the title, a program that felt largely interior (the exterior scenes filmed someplace bland and non-cinematic like Thousand Oaks, southern California). And while they had to, for budget reasons, shoot locally around Los Angeles in areas which were (then) undeveloped, there are almost no establishing shots of the San Joaquin Valley that they could have used within the body of the episodes -- only existing in the opening theme (and only in Seasons 3 and 4, really).

Probably weirdly complicated by Stanwyck's contract clause that demanded that all her close-ups had to be shot indoors (even for scenes filmed outside for the master shots) under controlled studio lighting conditions. And then the other actors' close-ups had to match.

And there seemed to be only one new musical score per season, the cues from that score repeated endlessly through that particular season. (Common in '60s TV).

There were two vibes for the four-year-long series: a mood of decay and loss for the first two seasons, and a more grand guignol (mildly "mod") tone for the last two seasons. In keeping with the quickly shifting zeitgeist of the last-half of that decade.. (All of that description sounds slightly exaggerated, as it really only applies to the better episodes -- and the color neo-noir installments were really the only ones that worked).

The rest of them could be so danged boring...!

I also view the series' title as a bit of a 1960s metaphor -- as I've always envisioned the decade as being, literally, a large valley, gradually rising upward during the last-half of the '60s... Just as the early-'60s was a funereal, end-of-the-world twilight zone (like that show).

Silly subjectivity -- or objective profundity? We never found out...

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

View attachment 55026

Papa Southworth, can you hear me...?​

I didn't realize it was literally the same painting --- who the hell was it??

 

[Seaviewer]

I didn't realize it was literally the same painting --- who the hell was it??

Google image search claims it's Andrew Carnegie but it looks nothing like him to me.

 

[Willie Oleson]

A shirtless wrestling match between Nick and Heath Barkley reveals a curious architectural failure.

Assuming that this is Nick and not a stunt-double.

Episode 8 of series 1 has a psycho rapist - the son of a respected rancher and friend of the Barkleys - which is always good fodder for a melodramatic western like The Big Valley. I hope there's going to be more of these schlocky episodes.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Episode 8 of series 1 has a psycho rapist - the son of a respected rancher and friend of the Barkleys - which is always good fodder for a melodramatic western like The Big Valley. I hope there's going to be more of these schlocky episodes.

Ooooh, Robert Walker, Jr., not to be confused with his father who sex-stalks Farley Granger throughout STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

 

[Willie Oleson]

The series continues with an earthquake episode guest-starring Charles Bronson as a former Barkley ranch hand who was fired because of his alcohol problem.
Oddly enough, that part of the story doesn't go anywhere and I thought the episode ended abruptly.
The next episode is a murder trial story in which Jarrod Barkley decides to defend a member of a violent and trashy family. Jarrod doesn't agree with the town's and his family's bias and it certainly shouldn't be the reason to convict someone. It turns out that the ne'er-do-well was the murderer after all, but Jarrod's family forgives him (Jarrod, not the killer).
That's like totally missing the point!! If it's been agreed on that everyone deserves a proper trial then it doesn't matter how bad it looks.
It's not Jarrod's job to believe his client, he only needs to defend him. I was very disappointed in Linda Evans in this episode.

The character-stories usually rotate but the last two episodes on disc 4 of my fabulous, German-exclusive complete box set are Nick Barkley stories.
The Big Valley kicks up the schmaltz big time in these episodes, complete with awkward speeches and the forced laughter just before the end credits. And I'm loving it.
College boy Eugene Barkley saves the day in the cow disease story (I think of him as the Western equivalent to Batman's Dick/Robin) but it's mostly about the trust between Nick and a rags-to-riches Mexican.

Night Of The Wolf is my favourite. Nick, the manliest character in this series, gets bitten by a rabid wolf and then he sort of becomes a werewolf. You know, the angry outbursts, the screaming and grunting and crawling over the floor.
Via via he ends up in the care of an unmarried mother, and when Nick offers compensation she asks him to marry her before he dies, just to give her son an official name.
If it had happened that way then she'd become a Barkley widow with the right to claim Nick's part of the Barkley fortune, but the story ignores this cynical point of view.
Ironically, he marries her in the story's final act because she's dying. Actually it's not an official marriage, it's faked to set her dying mind at ease, but that also made it easier to ship the cute kid off to Massachusetts or Ohio (both places are mentioned) so perhaps the writers had considered the ramifications of a legal marriage.
Anyway, I'm glad that manly Nick is safe and single again.

How convenient that this leather sofa was installed in the haberdashery.