MovieChat Forums > Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993) Discussion > My 8 least favorite episodes on "Dr Quin...

My 8 least favorite episodes on "Dr Quinn".

posted 7 years ago by furienna
7 replies | jump to latest

Right... My mother and I adore this show, and we're now watching it for the third time. And I have to say that most of the episodes are good, if not very good. But here is my list of eight episodes (or really, it is seven episodes and two longer storylines), which I nevertheless personally don't like. I won't say that they are badly written per se, or that any actor did a bad job. But I just didn't like these episodes/storylines, and I also will try my best to explain why.

When you read the list, you will see that my entries usually come from two different extremes:
1: Episodes which are so stupid and silly in my opinion, that I can't help feeling like they are waste of my time.
2: Episodes which are so depressing in my opinion, that I have to wonder why the writers had to go there.

Right, so here it goes...

8: "The cattle drive" (season 3, episodes 3 and 4)
Yeah, there were some nice moment here and there. And it became touching when Brian got stung by that scorpion. But as for most of this double parter, my thought was "Did we really need two episodes about them driving a herd of cattle across the wilderness? Boring..."

7: "The Circus" (season 2, episode 14)
Okay, I have to say that some of the moments between Michaela and Heart were good. But I guess that I'm just not a circus fan, because I found most of this episode to be boring. Not to mention that I found it too unbelievable that Michaela, Sully, Matthew and Colleen all suddenly were professional circus performers. Ridiculous...

6: "Traveling All-Stars" (season 4, episode 2)
Yeah, it was cute to see the regulars work together. And it was cool when Cloud Dancing suddenly joined the game. But I care as little about baseball as I do about circus tricks, so I got nothing but boredom out of most of this episode. And yet again, I don't buy that Michaela and Colleen became that good in such a short time. So yeah...

5: Myra gets a new career and leaves Horace.
Here comes a case, when I don't want to talk about just one episode. Because this was rather a process, that took pretty much a while season to happen. I guess that we were supposed to chear on Myra, when she just refused to be a stay-at-home-mom anymore. But my heart was breaking for Horace, who had been such a loving husband and still got the wrong end of the stick.

4: "Season of Miracles" (Season 5, episode 13)
Wow, this must be the most depressing Christmas episode ever! It seemed to be about nothing but the reverend losing more and more of his eye-sight, and about all the townsfolks praying for him. And yes, that is what I'm sure that people wanted to see for Christmas. 

3: "The Dam" (Season 5, episodes 14)
And then, we had to get this downer right after the previous one. I simply don't like how Sully accomplished nothing except getting a jail sentence, or how bitchy Matthew was in this episode. And I can only hope that the real criminals were caught somehow off screen, because it was like Matthew refused to hunt them down. Because it somehow was more important for him to be an ass towards Sully. 

2: "Washeeta, part 2" (season 3, episode 25)
Oh my god... They had just talked about massacres before, and that was plenty of enough for me. I had no need to see that on screen, or to see Cloud Dancing lose his wife. And it was heart-breaking to see Michaela almost destroy the barn. But it was sweet to see how Grace came to love the orphaned Cheyenne baby, and I believe that that part saved it from totally sucking in my opinion.

1: "Brother's Keeper" (Season 4, episode 4)
Ugh... Yes, I know that many people died from different diseases during the six years long run of the show. But this one took it to a new level, that I just find unnecessary. And I guess that I will never understand why they had to kill Ingrid off in the first place...

Intelligence and purity.

[–] wendycscott9 7 years ago

Well, when you consider there were 149 episodes, 6 ain't so bad. I'm kinda with you on the last two, Washïta coming so close to the wedding put a damper on the wedding because I was still upset over Washïta. And then having Brother's Keeper come so soon after their wedding was a real downer. Well, you never know what Beth was thinking, except both of these were based on what actually happened back then, and I suppose they wanted to show at least some of what life (and death) was like. In the rest of the series, they often sugar-coated the medical stuff, from what I understand, or you'd have way too many deaths and amputations to make the show watchable.

The Circus wasn't one of my favorites either and was one of the least favorites of the actors, from what I heard. But Traveling All-Stars was one of their favorites, and I thought it was very funny. I'm not a baseball fan either although I used to be, and some of the history was interesting to me. I'm with you on Season of Miracles. A fan a few years ago on the DQ board said she thought it was her favorite episode. I was like, WHAT??? My reaction after it played was Well, Merry Christmas to you, too! I wasn't all that thrilled with the Myra story either. It just made Horace look so pathetic, it would have been better if they had done something else with their relationship, imho.

But, as I said, 6 out of 150 hours of shows is not too bad of an average. No one bats a thousand. 😉

—
"How was the war, sir?"
"As any war, ma'am, a waste of good men." (Poldark)

[–] drummergirl-93025 7 years ago

The only reasons I can think of for the Ingrid and Myra situations was that, for whatever reason, those actresses decided they wanted to leave the show. So they basically had two options: kill the character off or have them "go away" with some sort of an explanation. They chose one option for Ingrid and the other for Myra. I agree that Ingrid suddenly dying right before she and Matthew got married was horribly sad and depressing! But as the above poster said, it also accurately represented what life was like back then. Unfortunately, things like that happened all too often. As for Myra, they probably never originally intended for her and Horace to split up. Especially since she had been a regular since the beginning. But it was her decision to leave the show and they couldn't stop her so....

[–] wendycscott9 7 years ago

I never heard it was either of their decisions to leave. It was the decision of Beth Sullivan. She couldn't have Ingrid and Matthew getting married so soon after Michaela and Sully's wedding, so they decided to write her out of the show in that way. Same with Myra. It was just a decision of the writers. There were some people who decided to leave, like the actress who played Olive. She had adopted a child and wanted to spend more time as a mother; thus, there was the Cattle Drive episode. But I don't think that was the case for Jennifer Youngs and Helene Udy.

—
"How was the war, sir?"
"As any war, ma'am, a waste of good men." (Poldark)

[–] drummergirl-93025 7 years ago

I don't know about Jennifer Youngs, but I could have sworn I remember reading somewhere that Helene Udy wanted to leave. I don't recall the reason, something about her not liking the way her character had developed. Or maybe she just got tired of playing that part. I could be wrong, though. But if that's true about Jennifer, then that's a pretty crappy reason to kill her off in my opinion! They could have just come up with an excuse to postpone their wedding a little longer. Or they could have shaken things up a bit and had her and Matthew elope! So many other things they could have done. And why would they get rid of Myra if the actress wanted to stay? Doesn't seem to be any reason for it, especially after they had built up the romance between her and Horace for so long

[–] wendycscott9 7 years ago

Well, at this point, there's nothing we can do to change whatever did happen. It is what it is. Most of the fans who were up on what happened back then have moved on. If DQMW had any sort of basic flaw, I think it did have too much pathos. I remember feeling like I was crying all the way through it, especially in the fifth and sixth seasons. I still loved it, but it got awfully sad at times.

—
"How was the war, sir?"
"As any war, ma'am, a waste of good men." (Poldark)

[–] CastlePI 7 years ago

I haven't seen the S5 episodes

Disagree on the baseball one but then I like baseball and think it's a funny light hearted episode. The part with Cloud Dancing stealing bases had me lol

Top 2 I %100 agree. Both heart wrenching and painful to watch. Will never watch them again

[–] furienna 7 years ago

Hello! Thanks to all of you, who left a comment on this thread.

I updated my list a moment ago to add an 8th entry, that I forgot to mention before.

Intelligence and purity.