I saw this film on Encore Westerns at 7:10 a.m. yesterday morning, and its plot was: Maggie Sergeant (Joanna Pettet) is chronicling in her diary the hardships that she, her husband John (William Shatner) and their 2 children (Helen Hunt and Russell Baer) faced, starting with their move to Nebraska in March of 1867 (March 10, in fact) to settle on land that John had bought there, only to find on arriving there in late April that the area had been settled 7 years ago. In the argument between John and the people already settled there, Maggie suffers a miscarriage, which forces John to relinquish the property rights and ask Maggie if she wants to go to Wyoming and settle there instead. They arrive at a parcel of land next to a ranch owned by Robert Douglas (David Janssen), just outside the town of Big Pines, and settle there, planting wheat and vegetables. One day, John is returned to Maggie and the children by Mr. Douglas, who found him dead after he drowned in a flash flood while returning home from filing their settlement claim. Maggie takes on caring for her family, even banding together with her neighbors to save all that everyone owned from a prairie fire. While in town the following day, Maggie runs into Mr. Douglas, who asks her if she's heading back east with her kids. She says no, that that they're staying, and the story ends with her August 21, 1867 diary entry in which she says that she's sending for a teacher to establish a school for the children of the Pines Ridge community, and a minister to attend to the religious needs of all the families there, adding that she doesn't feel like an outsider anymore. I found this to be one of Ms. Pettet's best roles in her acting career since she was portraying a character determined to overcome the challenges presented to her. I even wept several times over the film's course. I'd really like to find this film on DVD, so I can view it again and again. Spoiler Alert: This wasn't Ms. Pettet's only appearance alongside David Janssen. She appeared in an episode of The Fugitive 7 years prior to this film, and in 3 episodes of Harry-O after this film aired on CBS.
Review of Pioneer Woman
