The Virginian (TV Series) An Echo of Thunder (1966) User Reviews

Looking up an old friend

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 1 October 2020]

This Virginian episode has Doug McClure looking up an old friend and arriving in town in time for his funeral. McClure spends some time with his friend's sister Indus Arthur and her husband the sheriff Jason Evers.

Who seems to be moving most slowly in investigating the murder. In fact Trampas finds out more with some general questions and his best sources are saloon girl Barbara Werle and a kid Mark Miranda.

What Evers has is gunfighter John Anderson on the payroll as a deputy. Anderson has a gunfighter wannabe Brendan Boone as a friend. It all has a bad aroma to it.

The standout performance is Boone here. He is truly a hateful soul and in taking Anderson's advice this punk almost causes a real tragedy.

Good episode with a few non-historical flourishes.

goofy writing

[gs20 · 5/10 · 5 May 2011]

While my wife and I enjoy this series very much, I thought I might make a comment or two about the goofy nature of some of the writing in reference to actual facts........in the interest of fairness, while the story line itself is fine and demonstrates that sometimes the lawmen of that time ranged from diligent to slightly shady to outright criminal depending on the circumstances, this particular episode shows the screenwriter playing fast and loose with the facts or rather just making it up as he went along.

I found it interesting that evidence for the first murder hinged on a revolver called a "Foster Special" which was supposed to be rare.......it must be because as far as we could discover, no such firearm ever existed........it is a made up name.

As well, I found it quite comical when the sheriff actually gives a "Miranda Warning" to the punk wannabe for the second attempted murder........actually I laughed out loud, never having heard that in a western ever before........at least a western supposedly set in 1875-1885..........what with "Miranda" not being an issue until the 1960's.

While Don Ingalls was an apparently successful writer and producer, I've discovered over time that he had a bad habit of playing fast and loose with historical facts and technical specifics in many of his creations.......and actually often seemed to inject his own fractured views of history, procedures and technology as fact.