Episode Guide - The Spitfire
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Title The Spitfire
Episode No: 49 Season: 2
Summary: A bunch of hill-billies appear to make trouble for the Cartwrights.
You’ll like this if: You like Joe vulnerable, impulsive, playing with girls' hair and yet in control. And if you like maimed Adam, you're in for a real treat!
Synopsis: With his remarkable talent for discovering trouble, Joe finds a hill-billy and his daughter setting fire to the grasslands. Joe is forced to shoot the father to keep alive and then takes the daughter back to the ranch with him. Well, of course he does. A damsel in distress and all that. Our boy is nothing if not chivalrous. The rest of the hill-billy family are following along behind and when the matriarch – Grandma Hoad – hears of her son’s death, she vows revenge!
Clothes: Joe is still wearing his black hat and blue jacket, which means his trouser legs are long enough, even if the fit around the butt isn’t quite as perfect as in later seasons. But all in all, he looks rather cute, it has to be admitted. Adam is wearing his usual black, and the custard-coloured coat makes another appearance, while later on he sports a natty set of stripy pyjamas, which are ironed within an inch of their life. Hoss has on his usual tan vest and Ben has his grey hat.
JPM: No real classic JPM in this episode (boo! hiss!). Ben looks concerned when he sees a soot-streaked Joe come home after the grass-fire, complete with hysterical female in tow. You can understand what he must be feeling! Obviously, he is pretty concerned when he learns Joe had to kill her father, but since Joe is meant to be only 18 at this point, you can see why he’s anxious. I just bet he’s panicking about a young girl being alone in the house with four red-blooded men!
Adam: can be seen reading on horseback, which any rider will tell you is an incredibly foolish thing to do, even if you don’t live on the Ponderosa. However, in this case, the book is a useful little plot device, turning the bullet so that Adam is only hit in the leg, and not in somewhere more vital. Peculiar that the bullet is deflected by the book rather than being lodged in the pages, but there you are. This is Bonanza after all.
Hoss: proves to be very useful as a hairdresser, telling Joe that he does all the plaiting of manes and tails on the ranch. I don’t doubt his veracity – as we all know, Cartwrights only lie to their enemies – but I’ve never seen a single horse on the Ponderosa with plaits in! But he does a very nice job with Willow’s hair, plus rigging up a handy device to keep her trapped in the bath-tub.
Joe: is incredibly cute throughout this episode - no change there then! He is his usual impulsive self when fighting the fire single-handedly, and managing to not only contain it, but extinguish it completely while fighting for his life against the mad father, who is armed with two huge blunderbusses, while his crazy daughter fights with a hay hook and axe! Joe is cool, calm and collected while facing down the Hoads.
Ben: for some reason, Ben is extraordinarily nice to Grandma Hoad, who looks as though she has never seen a bath tub, let alone knows how to use it! He even goes so far as to offer her some land. But we’ve always said he was a jolly nice man! However, at the rate he gives land away willy-nilly, the Ponderosa will be shrinking before our very eyes.
Token Female Interest: Willow, the daughter, is not only possessed of an appalling name, but is lumbered with the most unattractive kin in the world. Only her cousin Bud appears to be half-way human (but not exactly over-endowed with brains). She does scrub up rather nicely though.
A handy female friend of the Cartwrights pops up, but only for this episode and is never seen or heard of again. Shaughnessy is a big, grim-faced, raw-boned woman and Joe seems rather in awe of her. You can understand why, given her rough and ready approach to life. She bathes Willow in a manner normally only used by hill farmers at sheep-dipping time. Given her own uncompromising appearance, wisely has nothing to do with the primping that takes place later, firmly delegating this to Joe and Hoss.
Grandma Hoad has to be one of the nastiest villainesses out. She certainly looks the part and the way she wields that whip – would you argue with her? No, nor me!
Marvellous Medicine: Adam’s leg injury doesn’t appear to need to be tended by the doctor, and clearly wasn’t reported to the sheriff as the law required, so presumably just TLC was used.
Where am I? Willow appears to be in Joe’s room once more, which is referred to as the east bedroom. Where is poor darling Joe kipping this time?
Adam’s room appears to also be on a similar alignment, as the door is against the wall facing the camera. Adam fans have the heady delights of a rare glimpse into his sanctum sanctorum. It’s rather dark, with copious amounts of panelling, and a large array of what look to be rolled up plans stacked up in the corner. Shame on him! Surely every architect or engineer worth his salt would have these stored flat in a plans chest? The wash-stand and mirror are very low – so poor Adam must have to bend over at a most peculiar angle to shave – maybe this, allied with his bad back is why he’s so often seen sporting a heavy beard growth? Plus he really doesn’t seem to have enough pillows for someone confined to bed.
Continuity; what continuity?: In the final scene, that wonderful moving wall behind the front door makes an appearance several times. One moment its there, the next, it’s gone again. And then it comes back again – just like magic. Watch it and you will be mesmerised. Of all the many gaffes continuity made, this is one of the most obvious and the funniest too.
One of the red leather chairs from the bottom of the stairs is sitting against the moving wall, instead of the blue one that’s seen in First Born. The horrible murky daub on the wall hasn’t changed – you still can’t see what it’s meant to be!
Watch the long shot of Joe riding – there he is in the lovely mushroom-coloured jacket, yet just moments later, he’s back in his blue jacket! We always said he was a fast mover, but this is ridiculous!
Have you been following the plot? Why does Ben want to give some land to this tribe of nasty people? They’ve just shot Adam and are vowing to kill Joe, yet Ben is asking them to stay. Was he still suffering from the curse that the dread Tirza put on him? And am I the only person who found the change of heart completely unbelievable? Any normal person would want the Hoads as fat away as possible, as quickly as possible.
Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Another appearance by the villainous looking Jack Elam as Dodie Hoad. He’s also in A Bullet for a Bride and Honest John.
You can Quote Me On That!:
“There’s one law fer you’uns an’ another law fer we’uns” Grandma Hoad, intermittently all the way through.
“It were a pretty little fella that shot Jeb.” The surprisingly perceptive Dodie Hoad, referring to darling Joe.
“They’ll kill ya’ll!” Willow, endlessly and repetitively at the beginning.
The Crucial questions no-one asks: If the Hoads had been at their camping place only since the night before, there must have been an awful lot of deadfall there, or they spent the whole night chopping down trees to build their barricade!
Why was Adam reading while riding? Wasn't he actually supposed to be working?