While out fishing, Israel encounters a mentally disturbed frontiersman, Tanner (Neville Brand). Tanner veers between gentle and violent moods, and after accosting Israel assaults a trapper -unknown to Israel, who attempts to befriend him.
Major effort will be required to beat this as Season 4's least entertaining episode. Brand brought unique strengths to the 1960's action genre; World War II made his acting career. He acted in Army training films, was a decorated veteran of the European Theatre, and used the GI Bill to study theatre prior to his first professional roles. Here, his physical attributes are used simply to create an out-of-control Frankenstein figure (oh, and his condition caused in part by PTSD from a Shawnee attack on his family; the tribe has a very hard time getting favorable press in this series). Darby Hinton, through no fault of his own, is compelled to be little more than a kid in danger for the hour, and the equation of mental illness and minors in peril is a very unlikable one. This is an early draft for the women-and-children-in-jeopardy formula repeated ad nauseam on the Lifetime network, and that is hardly a screenwriting accomplishment to be proud of.
Dan has little to do here other than rescue and cleanup, though its always innovative when the Boonesborough townsfolk reject the frontier superman's admonishments to stay home and strike out on their own to put things right. (One of the posse recycles the Scottish highland bonnet seen in "The Williamsburg Cannon.")
Not much of a larger lesson to discern here except perhaps to to berate 1780's Kentucky for not having a fully staffed and equipped mental health treatment system (though 2023 America has plenty of its own shortcomings in that regard). The story would have been far more fitting for a noir-tragic "Gunsmoke" episode and is ill-suited for grafting onto
"DB." The best thing a preservation specialist could do for this hour is to oversee its transfer from DVD onto flammable nitrate film.
