Thursday, September 6, 2012

Fun With Vintage TV

A few years ago, the original episodes of the TV show "The Wild Wild West" came out on DVD, and Christopher and I gave them to one of my sisters for a series of Christmas and birthday gifts.

The shows themselves ran in the mid-late 1960s, but my sister (and I) mostly watched them when they were late-night TV shows which our dad would let us stay up to watch from time to time - I'm guessing this was in the mid-late 70s. She's three years older than me, so she saw a lot more of them than I did.

They ran again on Saturday afternoons when I was in high school, and I remember watching some of the episodes then and getting hooked on them.

If you haven't seen them... they're... well... they're kind of campy. They are, at the base, Westerns focused on the life of Secret Service agent James West and his partner (usually, but not always) Artemis Gordon.

West and Gordon are best friends, womanizers, and gadget-hounds. They're a cross between James Bond (the campy era), and something Western - not exactly "Little House on the Prairie", not John Wayne, not "Petticoat Junction", but somewhere in the middle of all of that in the same rarified air as "Maverick."

They have a private railway train (two cars and an engine), lots of guns, explosives, a telegraph, a laboratory, horses, fun clothes, good hair, a pool table, and adventures - which always wrapped up in under an hour with time left over for some dining and... umm... we'll say "dancing"... at the end.

And, best of all, they've started airing the shows - in order beginning with the pilot which co-starred Suzanne Pleschette - on one of our off-brand local stations.

So now, late at night when Christopher is either working in the office or off to bed (since he does get up almost 2 hours before me), I'm watching reruns of "The Wild Wild West," while re-running oh-so-many memories at the same time.

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