Paramount TV Series "1883" (The Bad Old Days of the West)

 

The Paramount TV series “1883” is worth a look if you like realistic westerns. It’s supposed to be a prequel of the contemporary western series “Yellowstone.” I don’t see how that fits yet but maybe that’s because I’ve only watched Episode 1. 

I mentioned realism and that comes to mind early in the segment when a band of Indians attacks a wagon carrying a family and its supplies heading for available and fertile lands in Oregon.  I certainly appreciate the contribution that Native Americans have made to our great country, and I certainly appreciate the fact they came here first.  What I do not appreciate is the often repeated meme of the ‘noble savage.’ European whites were cruel in their treatment of the first peoples but Indians were often more merciless to their captives from other tribes and groups. 

The opening scene in 1883 finds you watching arrows penetrating a helpless women would-be settler.  Another warrior rides down on another fallen woman to take her hair which he triumphantly holds up for his colleagues to see.  This kind of thing needs balance, of course. Later on in the episode we see a public bazaar situation in which a vendor is advertising his wares including Indian scalps from various tribes.

Underlying this film is the basic cruelty and harshness of the environment, the rapacity of some of its citizens, an entire feeling of disorder and mayhem.  A pickpocket gets hung on a public street, no law enforcement involved.  Bandits freely roam the country.  A drunken fat man tries to rape a teenager.  Good guys Shea Brennan and Thomas, played respectively and realistically by Sam Elliot and LaMonica Garrett don’t shrink from casting out a husband and wife team afflicted with smallpox.  It’s on the moral edge — the Sam Elliot character lost both his wife and daughter to the disease, leaving him crouched in the dirt with the barrel of his six-gun pointed up into his head.

He decides against it.  He and Thomas find a life of sorts, guiding a group of feckless European  immigrants to their dreamland in the west. Yeah, I could watch some more of that, especially if it sustains the impact and tension of the first episode.