Question: With the loss of some of my favorite shows over the past few seasons, I have a new favorite HBO's Big Love. What are your thoughts, now that the first season has ended?
Answer: I'll reprise the line I used in my initial review of the series: "It's more of a curiosity than a necessity." For my analysis of the season finale, check out my Dispatch. From the start, I've not been entirely sold on this premise being enough to carry an entire series, no matter how excellent the acting and production values. A miniseries, yes, and some of the domestic subplots have been quite intriguing as members of this extravagantly blended family try to keep the details of their lives secret from neighbors, coworkers, friends' parents and so on. Some of the material back in the compound is wildly entertaining, with those hilarious performances by Grace Zabriskie and Bruce Dern, and while I tend to zone out during the Bill-Roman conflicts, I'm always happy to see Harry Dean Stanton chewing the
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Question: I vaguely remember a show in the '60s in which Jack Lord played a rodeo cowboy and, if I'm not mistaken, Bruce Dern played the sidekick/friend. I believe it was called Stoney Burke. Can you confirm? Thanks!
Answer: That I can, Martha. Lord, who later went on to enjoy a two-decade-plus career as Det. Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-O, did indeed star as rodeo rider Burke on the ABC series, but he only did it for one season — from October 1962 to September 1963. And Dern was along for the ride, as were Warren Oates, Bill Hart and Robert Dowdell.
Lord, never one to underplay anything he did in his life, called the series "the most successful failure in television" in a 1969 TV Guide interview. The actor claimed to have raked in $200,000 a year making personal appearances as Stoney, showing up in cowboy boots an
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