Season One (Black and White): Very Violent Indeed (But in a Good Way)

(aka ecarle.)

"The Wild Wild West" was a childhood favorite of mine. I guess it was determined that along with the fellow Bond-influenced spy show "The Man from UNCLE," these violent, life and death weekly adventures with real sexy women for the heroes to romance had the biggest fans -- among young boys, pre-teens and under. I guess moms and dads found the writing a little too "basic" to fully enjoy. Either that or, as with Indy Jones and other franchises today, "men became boys" watching it. In any event, those women WERE sexy, the kissing scenes were sexy...boys could see what might be ahead of them in a few years.

I've been looking at "The Wild Wild West" again, starting with the first season black-and-white episodes and...boy, they ARE violent.

"The Wild Wild West" ran for four seasons and was kicked off the CBS schedule among other reasons because Congressional hearings(under one particular Senator, John Pastore) targeted "violent TV entertainment" and TWWW was high on the list as such.

Funny thing: I watched the entire series in its first run, and the violence really got rather weightless and juvenile in the final two seasons, as star Robert Conrad got jumped by four guys(the SAME four guys, every week, often in hoods) practically every time he walked through a door. It became a bit silly.

Not so, Season One. From what I've watched so far. First of all , I don't think those four guys(or ALL of those four guys) had been hired yet, so West fights different male foes each week with different faces show to show, more realism. The fights are somewhat harder edged -- not only with the stunt men , but with weekly "guest villains" like (Peter) Mark Richman, Robert Loggia, and even Jeff Corey(great as a blind river pirate.)

I was taken, moreover, by how often death is on the menu. One episode opened with a representative of the US Attorney General presenting himself to a crime king (John Dehner) and being shot dead on the spot, his body to be returned to the President as a message. Another episode opened with a pretty young woman, playing a royal, revealing that she is an imposter -- and getting a knife thrown right into her stomach from "somewhere out there." This was funny in two ways: (1) a knife into the STOMACH(not the heart) kills her immediately and (2) there is no blood from the wound.

A key to all the killings on The Wild Wild West Season One, indeed, is that no blood is shed, as far as I can see. Bullets hit, knifes are thrown, axes are swung -- but nobody bleeds.

Meanwhile, the villains are pretty villainous. The famous dwarf-villain Michael Dunn as Dr. Miguelitoi Loveless (cast as a semi-regular perhaps to give the short Conrad someone to look down at) isn't a funny guy at all. He's out to kill 5,000 people an hour via hidden bombs in his debut episode, and when West won't give in to the blackmail, Loveless snarls "Then the blood of 5,000 people will be on your hands...and you will suffer a long time before you die!" Nasty stuff.

If one backs up a few years from the 1965 debut of The Wild Wild West, equally violent black-and-white shows can be found with "Peter Gunn" and "The Untouchables." Methinks that the American TV audience of the late 50s and 60s were trained to be a more bloodthirsty lot(after all, the adults had seen WWII and Korea, in some cases) and episodes that began with the killings of innocents and ended with the killings of the bad guys(with some brutal fistfights in between) were simply par for the course. This was the era in which we were told that American kids and adults witnessed "1,000 murders a week"(or some such number) on TV.

I guess Senator Pastore and Congress succeeded a bit when they hounded The Wild Wild West off the air. I don't seem to remember as much murder -- of good guys or bad guys -- on 70's cop shows(which replaced 60's spy shows.) Villains were arrested rather than killed, or wounded in the arm rather than shot dead. Fist fights(and martial arts fights) decreased as a staple of episodes.

So I guess I'll watch me a few more episodes of The Wild Wild West...particularly this black and white early season(TV color got so GARISH in the 60's, b/w feels more pure.) And I'll marvel at how violent TV once was, as a matter of course.