While visiting Boonesborough, Gabe (Rosey Grier) sees an emigrant family carrying dolls made by his mother (Ethel Waters), from whom he was separated by slavery for years. He and Daniel embark on a trip into Virginia to find her and bring her back to Kentucky.
The hour breaks the conventions of 1960's network TV to present - as best it can - a powerful episode on the costs and trauma of American slavery. One of Fess Parker's (due credit for staying the whole hour while centering his castmates) contributions to the Western genre was to introduce more diverse stories and casting, and good intent meets its moment here.
Ethel Waters put together a show business career worthy of admiration in any decade, in a time when the barriers to African-American women were more than formidable. Starting in vaudeville and nightclub singing in the 20's and 30's, she had broken into movies by the 40's and accumulated a fair amount of TV credits by the 60's. This was her penultimate film role, and her age and experience serve her role as a wearied but spiritual matriarch well. Grier is allowed to expand his repertoire beyond physicality and comedy well, and steps up well.
Requisite to an on-the-road hour, Dan and Gabe run into insensitive locals given ample opportunity to demonstrate the era's prejudices, and as always people in the dramatic arts get in some telling blows on hypocritical clergy. Gabe would like to take some revenge, but is circumscribed by the mission of transporting his infirm mother by wagon.
The storyline is simple enough that its really not worth harping on the historical fine points, but its worth noting that the origin point of Williamsvillle, Va. Is in the high country west of the Shenandoah Valley, not really plantation country. The idea of Kentucky as a refuge for free blacks in the late 18th century has little grounding in reality, and the device of an infirm person making a cross-country journey in a bed borne by a wagon - trotted out often on "Wagon Train" - is not overly believable. However, the far shots of Dan and Gabe leading the wagon and Waters along ridgelines are iconic to the series.
Also useful context is that the real Boone was a slave owner and not a proto-abolitionist. But this hour delivers in showing a fictional Boone unable to fix the larger world of his times, but able to find an ethical path through it regardless. One of the better Season 6 offerings.
The hour breaks the conventions of 1960's network TV to present - as best it can - a powerful episode on the costs and trauma of American slavery. One of Fess Parker's (due credit for staying the whole hour while centering his castmates) contributions to the Western genre was to introduce more diverse stories and casting, and good intent meets its moment here.
Ethel Waters put together a show business career worthy of admiration in any decade, in a time when the barriers to African-American women were more than formidable. Starting in vaudeville and nightclub singing in the 20's and 30's, she had broken into movies by the 40's and accumulated a fair amount of TV credits by the 60's. This was her penultimate film role, and her age and experience serve her role as a wearied but spiritual matriarch well. Grier is allowed to expand his repertoire beyond physicality and comedy well, and steps up well.
Requisite to an on-the-road hour, Dan and Gabe run into insensitive locals given ample opportunity to demonstrate the era's prejudices, and as always people in the dramatic arts get in some telling blows on hypocritical clergy. Gabe would like to take some revenge, but is circumscribed by the mission of transporting his infirm mother by wagon.
The storyline is simple enough that its really not worth harping on the historical fine points, but its worth noting that the origin point of Williamsvillle, Va. Is in the high country west of the Shenandoah Valley, not really plantation country. The idea of Kentucky as a refuge for free blacks in the late 18th century has little grounding in reality, and the device of an infirm person making a cross-country journey in a bed borne by a wagon - trotted out often on "Wagon Train" - is not overly believable. However, the far shots of Dan and Gabe leading the wagon and Waters along ridgelines are iconic to the series.
Also useful context is that the real Boone was a slave owner and not a proto-abolitionist. But this hour delivers in showing a fictional Boone unable to fix the larger world of his times, but able to find an ethical path through it regardless. One of the better Season 6 offerings.
