As best as my poor middle-aged memory can remember it, it seems to me most girls were more Bobby Sherman fans back in the day. That said, I think I might have had a "45" of his recording of the theme song. But that's exactly what I was remembering, Joshua and Jeremy being the romantic leads (with Jeremy going steady with Candy Pruitt), but what the heck was the matter with Jason?
Exactly. They might have wanted to keep him free to romance the occasional guest star -- like Capt. James Kirk, for example -- (wait, I actually meant, so Jason could romance female guest stars the way Capt. Kirk did, then realized it could be read the other way and started to change it, then remembered I'm on BetterMost and decided to leave it free to be read either way). Anyway, if that was the plan it looks like they sort of dropped it. I think there were sparks with a comely woman doctor, and an Annie Oakley type sort of tried to hit on him, but that's about all I remember going on with him that first season.
Oi, how is that I remember so much about this show?
Try watching it! You'll find yourself reciting the lines along with the cast, I'll bet.
I do remember Candy and Lottie the saloon proprietor (Joan Blondell) being what I guess you could call "strong characters," and also Miss Essie, the schoolteacher.
The romance between Miss Essie and Big Swede was sweet. It was probably the second-most-explored relationship after Candy and Jeremy.
You know, I think that was another problem with the show. They had a great concept with the potential for all kinds of interesting plots based on the interactions of the lumberjacks and the "brides." Imagine a show today, as complex as
The Wire or, heck, even
Dallas, but using this setting and situation. It could be great.
Instead, what they did was bring in some guest star every week to stir up complications of one kind or another, often someone from out of town who would be gone the following week. You didn't get to know any of the brides except Candy and her best friend (blanking on her name and too lazy to look it up), and you didn't get to know the lumberjacks except for the Bolts and Big Swede. Sometimes the story would focus on a particular family, but after that week the family was never seen again. I guess that's just how they did TV back then.
And here I think we could almost spin off into another thread: How do you define a "strong" female character in a TV show--especially a show from 40 years ago--and were there more "strong" female characters "back then" than we tend to remember?
Yes, there were plenty of strong women back then, because strong women are more dynamic characters and make for more interesting dynamic plots. There have been strong women going back at least to Cleopatra. As for the early days of the entertainment industry, yes, plenty. Scarlett O'Hara was strong. Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and ... well, you get the idea.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more strong women then than now. Think of all the male-oriented "bro" movies we have now -- gangster, buddy, action, comic book, etc. -- and how much more prevalent a lot of those genres are than they were in the days before, oh, Star Wars. A suspicious type might say it reveals some subconscious fears stirred by the women's movement. But I actually think it has more to do with the way Hollywood likes to make money, through gigantic blockbusters ("tentpoles" they call them now) where stuff blows up and you don't need much language to understand and makes tons of money around the world.
I've heard good things about Deadwood (if nothing else it had Timothy Olyphant, at least for a while ), and I don't doubt for a minute the prevalence of prostitutes in a place like that, but after watching three seasons of Hell on Wheels, I've also developed a sneaking suspicion that producers of Westerns these days may, in the interests of "realism," be bending over backward a tad more than necessary in making things "messy," as if they're overcompensating for the "sanitized" Westerns of the past.
It has Timothy Olyphant the whole time, so there's that, but actually he's almost the Jeremy Bolt of the show because his character (though not at all like Jeremy -- he's a stern sheriff) is less interesting than Ian McShane's, who's like a more nuanced and malevolent Jason Bolt. "Candy" would be this wealthy widow who's addicted to laudanum. And there's another strong woman who's a prostitute and another, an ex-prostitute who becomes a madam, and, well, a bunch other interesting characters. Oh, and Calamity Jane! She's a great, great character. Did I mention it's based on the history of the actual town of Deadwood?
BTW, if you're a Timothy Olyphant fan I hope you watch
Justified, in which he has a great lead role. It's a great show for many other reasons, too.