A Fine and Very Human Series...Until it Went Soap Opera
Of all the many western series produced for television since the late 1940's, many have been sheer garbage (Steve Donovan: Western Marshal, as an example), gimmicky (Hotel De Paree or, much as I enjoyed it, The Rifleman), never seemed to find their way (The High Chaparral could never decide if it was a western, a comedy or a family drama...fortunately, it did the first two well, the third...not so much), or were pure soap suds (The Big Valley and Empire come most readily to mind). How The West Was Won was, possibly, the best of the traditional westerns...until soap opera elements began creeping into it in its final season.
The characters started out as very believable, very human characters. Zeb Macahan was never shown as being a superhero or a saint, but rather a man with vast experience on the frontier, who now was head of his family. Luke was VERY believable as a man falsely accused of crimes (happened more in those days of extremely variable, and often corrupt, law enforcement than we might expect), until the producers were pressed to make him a "bad boy" again after his troubles were cleared up...Molly was the ideal tenderfoot woman who had to learn FAST how to survive on the plains. Native American characters were never shown as symbols of good or of saintliness (something which would never happen in today's PC environment), nor were they always villains. Native Americans were shown honestly as people trying to live their lives...some adapting to the changes coming, others fighting for a centuries-old way of life...some not able to adapt at all, but never being depicted tragically, just sadly, with sorrow shown for losing what they had to offer the world.
The second season began to take on soap opera elements (multiple storylines, as opposed to sub-plots), cliched characters, preposterous situations...a very well-done series which attempted realism and quality was destroyed by being compelled to compete with Rich Man, Poor Man, Dallas and the other late-1970's dreck. I honestly believe that if ABC's programmers had given John Mantley and the writers of HTWWW a chance to keep doing a realistic and human series, it may have gone on for a few more years. The sad thing is that never happened...an epic telling of the settlement of the western part of this nation, told from a human point of view, with truly heroic characters (and yes, even the common homesteader or the average Native American at that time has heroic stature...one trying to carve a new life out of a very harsh and demanding environment, the other trying to save a way of life that had existed since before anyone could remember) who could actually be related to by an audience. By trivializing the characters and creating situations which were unlikely or just plain ludicrous, ABC denied their viewers an experience which could have earned the network some respect, instead of the ridicule it so rightly deserved for clogging the airwaves with jiggle TV shows, insipid sitcoms and vapid prime-time soap operas.
I just hope some producer has the courage to try to develop another western with the honesty of HTWWW...but as PC as our times are, I fear what would result would be another politically correct piece of garbage like Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, where the soldiers are all evil, the mountain men are Fabio, and the plots are a mix of diabetes-inducing sweet and Harlequin Romance repulsive. The story of the American west deserves much better than that. How The West Was Won, for at least one season, was on the way to being what the West deserved and deserves.
"It's a hard country, kid."