TNT

Turner Network Television, Channel #37

The reason I got cable again was to watch Babylon 5 on this station. It was worth it and I even enjoyed their spin-off Crusade.

Along with current original shows like The Closer, Hawthorne, and others they are heavy on movies. If you want to watch Braveheart wait 12 hours and it's likely this station is repeating it.

They have quality shows and great movies but with so many other things I watch I never get around to the stuff on this station.

They did have a great mini-series called Into the West one of the best pieces of Americana in a long time.

Into The West: Ep 6

Back to non-Clay TV. This was the final episode of Into The West a six-part twelve hour mini-series from executive producer Steven Spielberg. It tells of an epic journey of to familes over nearly a century. The Wheelers a kind family of european decent and a band of Lakota tribes people.
In this episode we start in 1889 the reservations given to the Indians is being split up and settled by whites. Clara is still teaching at an Indian school outside of the reservation. Abe Wheeler who played a big part in the last two episodes is not seen or heard of, I thought he may have died during Custer's Last Stand along with his brother but what really happened to him is unknown. But during Jacob Jr.'s funeral he may have made peace with his family.
When Jacob Wheeler arrives at Clara and Robert Wheelers home he tells them that there are Wheelers scattered all over the west. He only seems concerned about finding his daughter Margaret Light Shines.
George/Voices That Carry is grown up and finds his brother who spent time playing an Indian in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.
A Piaute called Wovoka/Jack Wilson spreads the word of the Ghost Dance, a spiritual dance that will lead to the end of white rule and unite all Native tribes.
Margaret Light Shines eventually finds her parents and gets a camera by trading a "Ghost Shirt" to a reporter. She starts taking pictures of the reservation through her eyes.
White officials panic and order up 1,000 troops to contain the ghost dancers. After some small conflicts with the troops that lead do the death of Sitting Bull many of the Indians hide out in the Badlands. After some time a truce is declared with the troops and they are escorted to Wounded Knee. While turning over their guns an argument between the Indians and the overzealous troops lead to a complete massacre of the Indians at Wounded Knee. There was no need for troops to kill women and children yet they did. The reporter who saw this started crying while viewing the corpses left on the fields. Margaret Light Shines uses her camera to take pictures of the horror and mass graves. During the burials Loved By The Buffalo is taking lockets of hair while a white guy is selling the bodies for two dollars apiece.
Years later we see Clara newly pregnant and Jacob Wheeler telling the story of the two families to the next generation, at the same time Loved By The Buffalo is doing the same to his people.
Fade to black.
A DVD will be available on October 4, 2005 and the book of the same name authored by Max McCoy is available through the Peguin Group, probably many other places too.

Into The West: Episode 5

This is the second to last episode of the TNT channel six-part mini-series Into The West. If you have been following so far it follows the lives of two families over several generations. The Wheelers and one particular Lakota tribe.
At this time several Indian tribes were sent to the Black Hills and given the land in a treaty because it was sacred to them. As the whites move in they start taking the land because it is fertile, with support from the army they start pushing the natives even further off. It is clear the settlers only want death for the tribes people. While trampling over "the wheel", a sacred almost church like place, the soldiers find gold. The Black Hills legally given to the tribe is now the battle ground for the white man gold fever and the Native Americans trying to survive.
Gen. Custer was to meet with the Lakota to drive them off the land but his arrogant ways led him into a trap by the Lakota and the rest was history. Angry by the attack there came a renewed effort to eliminate the Indian way of life. The government could not find Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull and all Indians were declared prisoners of war.
To eliminate the Indian way of life they started schools under the guise to teach the tribes the white mans world, instead it was to break the Indian spirit and eliminate everything they believed in. Clara Wheeler and her husband go to the school to teach but their good ways clash with the military objectives and eventually leave. While at the school a young Lakota renamed George fights the establishment but with a few words of encouragement from the Wheelers he learns he must fight from within.
Margaret Light Shines also becomes a teacher but to the tribes children in the camps. She teaches both ways of life in an effort to continue the legacy.
With one more episode next week things do not look good for the remaining Lakota.

Into The West

Loved By The Buffalo is out surveying the lands and finds only remnants of tribes and no people. He sees that the white man's slaughter is still going on despite a peace treaty. Clara Wheeler(Rachael Leigh Cook) met up with long lost relatives who rudely welcomed her after she announced she's now an orphan. She has grown tougher but slowly gets her dream boutique up and running. The rest of the family sinks into pimping and general meanness over money.
Meanwhile photographer Ethan Biggs, played by Daniel Gillies real life husband of Rachael Leigh Cook( aka lucky guy), and his wife Margret Light Shines are confronted with the ugly hatred of the Indians after the restless army comes into town. After the Cheyenne attack their carriage he is saved by his magical photoshop abilities and they become "guests" of the tribe. The army breaks a promise to not make war with the Cheyenne and soon kills most of them including Biggs, they even shoot a tot crying over his moms' corpse. Light Shines then goes with the remain Cheyenne and leaves the Lakota and white nations behind.
Abe Wheeler meets up with some Chinese rail workers and start dynamiting mountains away.
Jacob Wheeler Jr. meets up with and frees his sister,Light Shines, from a military prison and they realize that the railroad and the Natives can not co-exist.
The whites call for the extermination of "the savages" as the transcontinental railroad is spiked finished.
Two more episodes of Into The West as Custer and Wounded Knee loom ahead.

Into The West "Gold Rush"

You won't be seeing Keri Russell anymore but Rachel Leigh Cook and Tyler Christopher. The Wheelers continue having children and dying. Thunder Heart Woman and her second husband made a nice life until someone struck gold. The gold bug bit her husband and soon the house was in disarray, another Wheeler cousin shows up and bad goes to worse. Eventually the two Wheelers strike a the mother lode but as gold fever often does they get paranoid and die stupidly. Thunder Heart Woman now no longer a bigamist gets a surprise as her daughter brings home Jacob Wheeler and they live happily for the next ten years. The Wheelers who had stayed back in the east are not fairing well. After Lincoln gets in office the people are picking sides and the Wheelers are the unpopular minority. Since you can't get through an episode without massive deaths the Wheelers and many Native Americans get wiped out by old fashioned racist.
All of Loved by the Bufflao's predictions are coming true and with a civil war pending there will be even more death awaiting this next generation.


Next week July 1^st they will be having NASCAR so no Into The West they return on July 8. A good show so far they are still going through twenty years every week. All the original actors have been replaced with older actors.

Into The West

Episode 2 of Into The West was even better than last week's Keri Russell stars in this episode as the young-rasict wife who will embrace the native American ways, in a way. The Wheelers are back together under one roof but Jacob Wheeler and his wife Thunder Heart Woman are not as welcomed as the other family members. They soon decide to head for California. They take his brother and their cousins along for the 3 year ride. Along the way they go with Stephen Hoxie a level-headed wagon leader played by Beau Bridges. Before you get to attached to any of these wagoneers they all die. The only reason the Wheelers survive is that they luckily got the deadly cholera and had to be left behind. The Cheyenne slaughtered the wagoneers for the same fear of cholera. When they came to attack those left behind Jacob was seriously wounded and had to be left even further behind again. We skip ahead five years and the Jacob's wife is married to his brother, Jacob after going mad living alone is now in the military and America has grown by leaps and bounds. Naomi Wheeler(Russell) survives the attack and gets abducted by her attackers, she stops the chief's assualt on her body by chanting nursey rhymes, if I ever go to prison I'll see if that works. Eventually she grows to like the chief, have his baby and not seem to hate non-whites.
The whole episode moved extremely fast, I believe ten years may have passed. There were no slow moments unlike last week and the sense of doom for the Lakotas is getting heavier with the introduction of alcohol.

Raised on the history taught in school you get a brief look into the pioneers and the troubles that they face. Watching this series you get the fact that this is an adventure instead it was a struggle that would cost lives if not years. The average lifespan of early Americans was only about 40 years and these wagoneers would spend 1/4 of that travelling.

Also knowing that not all native American tribes got along with each other and they treated women like property was not something that public schools ever taught me. These people still had honor as did the white-men but you can't judge them on what we consider right. That is why the western genre in movies and TV has died out. The Missing was the last big hit western and it relied more on one family and still fell into a bit of the old only the main characters are good and the women have lots of power. Although it may have been true in some cases the majority of women in the west were less gunslingers and more housekeepers, this was true for natives and newcomers.

Cowboys vs. Indians vs. Time

Into The West a 6 week mini-series aired tonight, twice, and will repeat every few hours until you see it on TNT. It starts in 1825 Virginia with the Wheeler family building wheels. Meanwhile young White Feather a Lakota boy is getting a glimpse of the futture, and it's not good. Jacob Wheeler sees nothing but wheel making in his future so takes a midnight trip to the west. Wheeler takes an outward journey and grows into an honorable man. The young Lakota becomes a holy man and gets renamed Loved By The Buffalo his journey is inward and he's not even half way finished. Wheeler through chance marries into this Lakota tribe and feels his destiny is intertwined with theirs.
The story moves slow yet you have to keep your eye out for the actors because they are gone in a flash. Gary Busey lasted all but five minutes on screen. This Spielberg production is full of foreshadowing and omens it is told through narrative by Wheeler. The native landscape is grand yet gritty, the use of special effects is few but effective. One of the better scenes is when Josh Brolin's character is fighting a bear we see his scalp getting ripped off but not getting sewn back up.
To make it a more realistic view of the west they did not sugar coat everything. So far most of the bad deeds that happens on screen have been done by the Indians, the killing of animals is shown and the mistreatment of women and minorities overlooked. Many modern westerns fall into the honorable-Indians and evil-dirty-white-man roles, Into The West strikes a balance between that showing all sides did mostly what they believed was good and right but occasionly failing and doing the wrong thing.
Everyone has a sense of something big, bad and everlasting is coming but the side that it comes from is not clear.
Episode two airs June 17