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The Rifleman

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E-Z:
Now that a reboot of my all-time favorite western TV series "The Rifleman" will be a new regular TV series soon, I find myself waiting with mixed feelings of joyful anticipation and dread.  Anticipation because I loved the original series, and dread because, if recent history is any indication, TV reboots seldom equal the original in terms of mood or quality.

Take Hawaii Five-O, for example.  The reboot is certainly exciting and has lots of action.  Grace Park (the new Kona) alone means that I will keep watching, and I admit that the one continuing star is the State of Hawaii. 

But having grown up with the orginal, it is virtually impossible for me to take those new guys as the real Steve McGarrett and Dan-O; they don't look right, and more importantly, they don't act right.  The way I know them, McGarrett came out of Navy intelligence (not the SEALs) and was a tough, but sharp and very classy guy.  He ran Five-O with an iron fist, and you didn't mess with Five-O if you didn't want to end up dead or in prison.  Still, the original show was more detective work than explosions and car chases; more a mental chess game than a pyrotechnic show for kiddies.  I admit it was freaky to see Jack Lord running around as McGarrett on a beach in a suit and tie, but that WAS Steve McGarrett; the only guy who could stand in the rotor wash of a Bell JetRanger and never even get his hair mussed.  But he usually caught the bad guys more through good detective work and cunning than through mass explosions and car chases.  I've had a hard time making the adjustment to the new one.  The location is the same and the music is the same, but somehow the new show isn't quite the same for me. 

The Steve Mcgarrett and Danny Williams I knew were actually capable of shaving, they dressed well and weren't tatt'ed up.  The seemed like professional detectives.  Yeah, I know they had to make the new one acceptable for a new "younger" audience.  But I think they'd have done better to create a new cast of Five-O characters and have the new characters manning the Five-O desk rather than to try to recreate the original characters with totally different personalities.  And in the end, who could replace Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett?

Which brings me back to this new TV series about "The Rifleman."

For those too young to remember, "The Rifleman" was a western TV adventure series set in New Mexico Territory in the 1880s that followed the adventures of a small-time rancher, Civil War vet, and widower, Lucas McCain, and his young son, Mark.  The show was really a morality play in many ways, focusing on right and wrong, courage and weakness, and a recurring theme of redemption.  The father-and-son relationship and how Mark learned life lessons, not to mention the weekly use of Lucas' Winchester to put and end to many, many bad guys, were the real draws of the show.  In fact, I read somewhere that Lucas gunned down something like 250 bad guys over the course of 168 episodes (which is way more than Hickock and Hardin combined ever shot). 

CBS has announced that a new Rifleman series has been given the go-ahead, which is the latest of the new surge of westerns coming to TV.

Obviously, the one immediate difference is that the new series will be in color.  I don't think most of the characters will be hard to cast except the main one.  For me, and many others of my generation, Chuck Connors was The Rifleman as much as Jack Lord was Steve McGarrett.  I am wondering if I will be able to stay open-minded enough to accept a new Lucas McCain. 

Chuck Connors was a big guy, a former professonal athlete and one hell of a nice guy, but he had a uniquely rugged face and build that, with the way he moved and acted, "sold" you on the fact that Lucas McCain was a straight-up good guy and not the sodbuster you wanted to mess with while passing through North Fork.  So, how do you find an actor to play Chuck Connors' part and make it sell?  He has to be big enough to flip-cock that Winchester carbine and rugged enough to be believeable.  And he has to have the acting ability to morph from tough and violent to soft and gentle and back again in mere seconds and still remain believeable.  It will be very hard to replace Chuck Connors in this role.

The traditional themes of the show, the good-versus-evil, the power of redemption, the father-and son relationship, and the morality of action that so defined the original are not considered politically correct these days.  In an age of gray versus black-and-white, where modern young audiences focus more on doing what they want rather than doing what is right, how well will the old themes play today? 

The Rifleman's signature style was dark and brooding lighting and a similar distinctive musical score, with utterly serious issues for Lucas and Mark to face, and they usually ended with Lucas--much as when Popeye says "That's all I can stand, I can't stands no more"--takes up his Winchester and guns a bunch of bad guys down who...really...truly need killing.  Yeah, Lucas was one violent SOB when you pushed him too far.  But every single time he was violent, it was morally jusified; a kill-or-be-killed situation. 

It was a unique series in that unlike Bonanza or the later Big Valley or High Chaparral, Lucas was not a rich rancher but a poor, hard-working one.  He had no hands to help him, and no money to speak of.  He was very religious.  He was a former Union sharpshooter.  He was stern and yet loving.  He was not a lawman, but more of a common--yet uncommon--common man.  He was courageous and friendly, yet stern and uncompromising.  He was not perfect by any means, but you always knew where he stood.  And he didn't take crap off bad guys.

I am encouraged that the new production is being managed by the 101-year-old Arthur Gardner, who along with Jules Levy and Arnold Laven, produced the original series in 1958.  And LGL Productions has assured me that they are well aware of the legion of Rifleman fans that are out there who demand that the original themes be adhered to.  But I can only wonder if they can stick to their guns and do the show right once again, especially in the face of modern TV executives and the suit-and-tie lawyers that run CBS these days.

I don't want to see Lucas talk bad guys down or send them to prison.  The Rifleman needs to have gun fights, and people need to die in them.  It always needs to be right and morally justified, but they need to happen.  It's what made the series exciting.  What I fear is some PC do-good producer trying to make it politically correct and taking the violence and good versus evil morality play out of the format, or injecting modern ideas and attitudes into an 1880s show where such attitudes never existed.  He might think that makes it more acceptable to a modern audience, but he'd be dead wrong.  The whole reason westerns are coming back to TV is that people are tired of gray and need more black-and-white in their entertainment lives; they're tired of the reality TV rubbish and want some decent entertainment for a change.  The way to succeed in that is to not change the Rifleman formulas after having sold the show as it was in syndication for nearly sixty years and then suddenly changing it.

If they do it well, I'll love it.  My fear is they'll mess it up.  But I sit here with both hope and fear, which, as any writer knows, is the whole basis of drama.  It will be nice to see Lucas and Mark McCain again after them having been gone from TV (originally ABC) since 1963.  Can I accept a new actor as Lucas McCain?  Maybe.  Can I accept a PC Rifleman?  Never.  Here's to a hopefully wonderful remake of the old TV series.  LGL assures me its an extension of, not a replacement for, the original.

But I will wait and see before I decide.

Hock:
Randon notes...
I know some Hawaiian SWAT guys and they do security for the show. It was interesting to note that the 5-OH stars are...skinny. I don't mean just skinny. I mean SICKLY skinny. I mean die-any-second-skinny. They take bets on who will pass out first. TV puts 15 pounds on folks and think about that when you look at them. And they are S.K.I.N.N.Y....But Jack Lord is irreplacable. Young McGarret is BORING. (Did you know they offered the original McGarret role to Hawaiian Richard Boone, who was tired of working and real boozer at the time.)

Skinny? I love Justifed but Rylan needs to drink a few mild shakes. The boy is THIN. Thin. Rapier thin. Not good.

I heard about the Rifleman comeback, but first as a movie, not  a TV show. I wonder what they will do with it? 30 minutes? One hour?
http://screenrant.com/the-rifleman-cbs-chris-columbus-yman-139361/

Watched it avidly as a kid. Tried to get a Rifleman toy rifle one christmas but our apartment building burned down and it too was burned. (I will wait a second for everyone to get a kleenex...ok? ready?) But I did hear multiple times that Chuck Conners was ONE WEIRD, STRANGE man.  Nowadays that sort of gossip has just disappeared and all reports of him are glowing. I once saw an interview with a grown Johnny Crawford though and he admitted Chuck was weird person. He used the word "creepy." Then of course now we read that Conners was like a second dad to him.

Casting the new Lucas McCann? They will probably pick some prissy, smooth, puss-boy, or in search of a real man, have to pick a Brit or an Australian.

In a world where grown men wear capri pants? And no one thinks that's fucked up? I have little hope.

Hock

Hepcat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sHcE4-g0wg

Hock:
THAT is the rifle I didn't get!
I want that!

Hock
(That clip was great)

Hepcat:
I thought of you and remembered seeing it.

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