A Touch of Charity

Troubadour Jimmy McGill (John Davidson) arrives in Boonesborough with a deed from the Daniel Boone Land Company, only to find its nonexistent. A remorseful Daniel sets him up with a farm on the installment plan, but complications ensue when Jimmy sets his eye toward his clergyman neighbor's daughter Charity Brown (Shelley Fabares)

After a rousing previous outing last week, we are back in the "Tales of Boonesborough" rut. The intent here is to showcase Davidson, a 1960's-70's singer and talk show host marketed as another clean-cut Pat Booneish alternative to the rock scene, and he does dutiful service in being youthfully unoffensive to the Glenn Miller crowd. Teen queen Fabares, later to have a successful run on the 80's sitcom "Coach" is the more convincing of the pair as a frontier lass. Villain specialist Dick Peabody (Private Littlejohn in 1962-67's "Combat" is the large ominous threat to the lovebirds that Charity's father is attempting to marry her off too. Fess Parker has again found good reasons to be working on his side hustles for most of the hour.

The pack train-slow pace of the minimal plot makes this another DB episode ideal to listen to over the shoulder while churning butter, and there is not much here that would not have been better suited to a "Waltons" episode. No action worth speaking of, though Davidson being decked by Peabody might be satisfying to anyone who gets tired of younger people who spend their youth trying to conform to seniors' ideas of what younger people should be like.

The history component this week is minimal in the extreme, though the Rev. Brown correctly notes that frontier life rapidly aged and killed women who came west, hence the desire to marry daughters into established families of means. Whiskey plays a major role in the story, offering a tantalizing opportunity to bring in the Whiskey Rebellion of George Washington's administration, but the thread is never taken up. Its worth noting the real Daniel Boone was beset throughout his life by legal and financial problems resulting from land speculation, but NBC would never portray him as anything other than an upright businessman.

One gets the impression that Parker at this point was simply producing filler episodes to finish out his contract as rapidly as possible; the series' gems are getting fewer and farther between.

As a little girl, I thought John Davidson was cool. And, he was. However this role is pretty poor.

Here he is, already in a bad situation with his neighbor the uptight daddy. But, he's already "in love" with the dude's daughter. She is also very uptight because daddy makes it so. Instead of respecting her, John Davidson says, "Take that bonnet off." She says, "No." So then he pulls it off like it is his right. Then he kisses "Miss Charity Brown" on the cheek.

In our time, "no, means no." And in her time, this was a very disrespectful move on his part.

Along comes daddy's chosen suiter and he punches Davidson in the face, as he should. Davidson was wrong. But we think big dude suiter is "wrong." Cause he is ugly. And lets be honest, he is ugly. I've never seen a person whose shoulders are at the same level as his chin.

On the other hand, he is greedy because he is asking for a dowry, including some jewels or what not "so that daughter has them when she has children to give them to."

Daniel likes the nice looking young man, and he and Rebecca decide to sell him the land they have on the hill next to girl's dad's land. Cause, John had been ripped off by someone somewhere that sold him land that didn't exist. That is very kind of Daniel and Rebecca because he is a very good lookin man.

We get some nice breaks of listening to John Davidson sing because that is really what they are selling (the producers).

Then Davidson gets the great idea to build a still cause Cincinatis can't get no booze delivered due to some new law. Oh, good on this intrapreneur. That's going to make potential girlfriend's religious daddy very happy!!

Its been delivered to Cincinatis and he takes it to Daniel and they are IN LOVE with the whisky. Man is he amazing.

Then Davidson spy's on Charity at night and asks her for a kiss. And only going to tell her that she won't marry ugly Samuel Stone on Sunday because then he will be rich.

And so, on the day of her wedding, when she has no ability to no marry Mr. Ugly, they are in the middle of the ceremony...when Daniel and some odd ball guy come in and announce that John Davidson has sold a patent for using Indian corn for whisky, for zillions of dollars and now dad reads it and suddenly decides that John is a "god fearing man" and will allow such a wedding to take place. Isn't that special? Why, John isn't selling whisky, he has a patent so he is clear and god fearing.

She says to ugly guy, "Sorry, truly I am" and marches right back and grabs arms with John Davidson to be betrothed.

Such sincerity. Such honesty. Why, I just can't get over how happy I am.

I kept expecting John Davidson to say That's Incredible (those younger may not know the reference unless you look at Davidson's titles. Pretty standard fare for DB. Interesting that Boone was accused of land shenanigans in real life making this one of the few ep's that had a real touch of reality.