Episode Analysis - S1 E01 Black November

Black November (7 Oct. 1960)

Writer: Stirling Silliphant
Director: Philip Leacock
Director of Photography: Ernesto Caparrós
(Details from http://www.imdb.com - click on the episode title above for more cast and crew)


Episode analysis sounds too stuffy, but I can't think of another name. Really it's a mix of screencaps, observations, insights, and criticisms. And fangirl love, too.

Screencaps are from the Shout Factory edition of Route 66, and reflect the quality of that episode's print in that version. I don't know how the Infinity or any bootleg versions compare.

I can almost see the cogs turning in the director’s head at the start of this first ever episode. ‘We see a road, see, and the Corvette comes into the view. The symbol of the whole series – the road, the moving car. We track the car along the road, see the luggage piled on the luggage rack. Focus tight on a wheel, always rolling. Pan up to reveal our heroes. And – we’re in.’ It’s good, and I don’t want to pick holes in the majesty that is Route 66, but like all first episodes, it has its flaws. The main flaw in Black November, I would say, is sticking too close to cliché to draw an audience. But then if they hadn’t done this, the series might not have continued. Get the stupid people on board and then go crazy with creativity.

Our first glimpse of the car and the open road, setting the scene of the whole series.

The turning wheel, moving ever on. I feel that Tod drives less cautiously early on. Perhaps having a whole Corvette to himself made him all overexcited.

First time we see The Boys, panning up from that turning wheel.

Ah, the first ever title screencap. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s all in lowercase, in rather jazzy letters (like a forerunner to Northern Exposure). It tells you this is going to be hip and fun, not static and square.

I’m sorry about there being so many caps. This is all about the car. But the car is pretty. The opening of the show is all about the car. We don’t know the two guys in the car yet – just the romance of the soft-top and the open road.

Starring Martin Milner (cute, freckly, determined, a little baby-faced, with his collar turned up like a detective.)

George Maharis (dark, symbolic shadow across his eyes, path-finder.)
We’d almost expect Buz to drive while Tod sat back. He looks like he has a ton of dynamite somewhere inside. But it's Tod's car. Even after being dispossessed of almost everything, he still has more than Buz, he's still one of the privileged. Tod driving evens out their power. Buz is the raw, instinctive type who acts on impulse, Tod is the thoughtful Yale graduate. But Tod has however-many-horsepower of Corvette under his hands, while Buz sits back and does the map-reading. And he's a pretty deep thinker, too. His thoughts are brewed inside him, rather than spun from education.

‘How do we get off US 66, Buz?’ Tod asks. I quite like that. The series may be called Route 66, but the thrust of the series is about getting off the beaten track, doing something other than what’s expected. Of course, it was going to be called The Searchers, which I suppose fits the physical and spiritual wandering angle very well.

There’s a whole conversation here where Buz does an impression of the local accent and Tod is duly amused. He sounds like an English person who’s just come over into Wales and is befuddled by the place names. You tend to forget all the different influences in the US, all the accents and sub-cultures. This doesn’t necessarily seem the best tack to start up with on your first ever episode, though – mocking the Mississippians and their accents and placenames and strange insular strangeness. Maybe they didn’t expect the Mississippians to be watching (perhaps they didn’t have tv there yet? ;-)), and thought everyone else would just laugh along.

Also it strikes me that Tod and Buz seem to shout more in the car than they do in later episodes. Perhaps the microphones weren’t rigged up so well yet?

This scene establishes that Tod and Buz are outsiders, observing local culture and new places, and that there’s time-before-the-episode-beginning, because they obviously stopped to ask directions (I thought men didn’t do that). We’ve learnt that Buz is good at doing comic impression of accents. Perhaps Tod took him along because of his ability to amuse, among other things. Also, we’ve learnt now that Buz is called Buz, but we don’t yet know the name of his freckled travelling buddy.

So, we move from the humorous banter in the car to the brooding, strangely threatening view of the raft making its way across the river. You get the sense that these aren’t the kind of people who would take kindly to these two upstart city boys in their fast car coming down and making fun of their accents and their place names. The music moves from one of those staccato, comic pieces as we leave Tod and Buz into something drifting and melancholy and befitting of the small raft moving slowly across the wide, desolate river.

With the thin faced, slowly chewing skipper and the guy dressed like a lumberjack from Monty Python, the slow-moving raft and the looks of suspicious interest on their faces, you know that pretty soon there’s going to be a culture clash between the people of the river and the sprightly young pair in their driving machine.

I’m sorry. We’re only two minutes in, and I’ve already taken ten screencaps. This doesn’t bode well. My excuse is that it’s the first ever episode, and takes a deeper analysis.

‘You see what I see, Libby?’ the lumberjack asks in a decidedly rural accent. Both of them are staring at the shoreline in the same way that my – ahem – someone of my acquaintance – does every time a car comes down the road outside their house. That ‘what you doin’ on my land?’ look.

I find it hard to take the name ‘Libby’ seriously. I mean, no matter how insular and suspicious you are, when you’re a full-grown man who’s named after an Australian girl from Neighbours, it’s hard to be taken seriously.

‘Nobody comes down that road,’ the lumberjack says. ‘Nobody but Mr Garth and me and the sawdust crew.’ (That tends to disprove the ‘nobody’ bit.)

I’m sorry, but Tod is driving like an idiot. Really he is. He’s in a massively high-powered sports car with ridiculous understeer, and he’s bashing down a dirt track as if he’s out on a straight and level metalled road. If this is the sole remnant of his father’s estate, I don’t think he’s treating it very well. He’s acting like a 25-year-old lad who’s out with his best buddy on his first ever road trip.

Oh, hang on…

Testosterone always wins the day in these early episodes. Buz is all fists and instinct and Tod drives like a crazy fool. Ah well. They’ll grow up a little once they’ve been exposed to Garth and their ways…

So Tod takes a plank bridge far too fast, and it shatters beneath them. Their concern is all for the car, not for the locals whose bridge they’ve just destroyed by way of dangerous driving.

And they slew to a halt. I know this is needed in order to further the plot – to break the car so as to get them into Garth. But I wish they’d thought of a better way to do it than by having Tod be such an idiot.

Tod thinks the steering’s gone – tipped off by the fact that the steering wheel doesn’t move the wheels any more. Buz should be shouting at him for being an idiot and breaking the car when they’re in the middle of nowhere and have no money, but instead he’s very supportive and concerned, and crouches down to help him investigate.

‘This here’s private property. How come you here, bwoy?’ the lumberjack asks aggressively. Don’t talk to Buz like that. He won’t like it.

Surprisingly Buz is remarkably sanguine at first about this aggression. But then he gets riled.

‘We had the accident, not you. It’s not our fault your bridge didn’t hold.’

Sorry, Buz, but I think it was. I mean, if Tod hadn’t been driving like an idiot…

Tod ups the ante. ‘We don’t need a lesson. We need a garage.’ Tough talk.

When Buz asks if it’s Garth over there the lumberjack says, ‘Forget that name, bwoy.’ (That’s how he pronounces ‘boy’. He makes Buz sound positively well spoken.) ‘Just forget it.’ Which is like a cue to instantly get interested in the place. How often is a whole town a taboo word?

‘What time you got?’ the suspicious lumberjack asks. And we get to see Buz wearing his watch on the underside of his wrist for the first time.

‘Now you get that and both your tails outta here, the same way you come in, ’fore I gets back,’ the lumberjack threatens them. Now how does he expect them to do that? I suppose he doesn’t care. The accent and dialect just seems a bit over the top. Perhaps it’s perfectly accurate. I don’t know.

Mmm, title cap. Everything is brooding. Tod and Buz are intrigued and suspicious in a way that they wouldn’t be if the guy had just offered to tow them to another garage, or something. Outright hostility isn’t the best way to keep secrets. 

As far as I can tell, we still haven’t heard Tod’s name at this point.

So our boys appeal to Libby the ferry captain for help.

‘Don’t let the new car go to your head,’ Buz says when Tod asks how much the ferry costs. ‘We’re poor. P-O-U-R. Po-ur.’

I’ve heard that this is a sign of Buz being uneducated. I think it’s him having a dig at the local accents, listening to how he says it, ‘po-wuh.’ If he were such a bad speller, I don’t think he’d draw attention to it in this way.

‘I know what’s going on. Jesse James is holed over there with his gang,’ Buz suggests at the ferryman’s reluctance to take them to the town. He’s hit the nail on the head. It’s obvious from the locals’ behaviour that there’s some secret. Better to just take the car across and fix it, not be too friendly, but not make a fuss and send them on their way.

But here we find out that the town and everything around it is owned by Mr Garth. Sounds like a nice piece of mediaeval feudalism. The implication is that everyone’s afraid of him, everyone does what they’re told. They’re all owned by him – even Thad Skinner, the lumberjack guy. Tod is hopeful, while Buz is disdainful of Garth’s reach. Tod probably thinks he’ll be able to cajole help out of Skinner, and if that doesn’t work, Buz knows he’ll be able to beat it out of him. Libby says they’d change a mule’s mind more easily.

This guy looks all too happy at sawing things asunder.

Oxen at work. How often would you see that now? Route 66 is a wonderful record bang in the middle of a period of change in American history that started with WWI and the dust bowl and carried on until the 80s, with big business and computing really taking a firm hold.

Buz obviously wants to confront Mr Skinner straight off, but Tod knows him too well, and puts an arm out to stop him. Diplomacy first. Then fists. 

‘I already told you, bwoy. Just hike on out the way you comed in and get yourself a lift from somebody on the main road,’ Skinner responds to Tod’s repeated request for help. His colloquialisms sound a bit forced to me.

Buz is thinking, No one talks to Tod that way. He’s gauging just when will be the best point for launching in, fists raised.

Actually it’s Tod who provokes the fight, by grasping at Skinner’s shoulder as he turns away. I mean, it’s not a direct call to violence, but it was the first physical touch. Skinner tells him he needs a lesson in manners and punches him, and Buz is quick to get headbutted in the stomach when he goes to Tod’s rescue. His surprised ‘oof’ is quite comical.

‘Stay out of it, Buz,’ Tod tells him. He must want to prove his manhood. This is his fight, mano a mano.

Of course, Buz can’t keep out of it. Tod’s getting trounced, and they’re in a sawmill. If Buz doesn’t help someone’s going to get sawn. Buz-sawn. (sorry)

Buz’s two-handed punch eventually settles it. Buz is used to the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen and he’s not going to let some Mississippi oddball put him down.

This whole fight is a little odd. It’s overlong and choreographed with pauses while people stagger back to their feet, and it’s actually a bit boring. Coupled with the wham, bam, fifties style music it just comes over as a rather self-conscious effort.

‘Now. Why don’t you go and talk to the skipper?’ Buz suggests. I’d imagine the guy could just say no. Tod and Buz aren’t going to lay into him without provocation. But there’s an age old rule of testosterone that says that Buz is now boss. (Tod gets to reassert his masculinity by pushing the guy over as they leave the sawmill.)

And now we come to the epic pose – the one we all know. I wish the film quality were as good as the still promo shots.

And there it is again. How beautiful. This could be a calendar with scantily clad girls draped over the car, but instead we get to see Tod and Buz doing it. Interesting that Buz is up front and Tod is bending over in a much more calendar-girl pose.

But I think this first episode gets a bit caught up on self-conscious, ponderous shots. It is very aware of its own art. Later episodes still have this beauty with far less effort.

That’s a big hill to get a broken car up. I suppose the engine still works, which is a bonus, but it must have been a pain.

The ferryman isn’t a bad sort, and perhaps has some extra respect for them for beating up Mr Skinner, so he helps them guide the car up the hill.

Some more rather ponderous shots as Tod and Buz look at the town and the empty town stares back with vacant eyes. We’re aware by now of the menace of the place.

‘What’s with this place?’ Buz asks, quite reasonably. He was already clued up to the fact that it might be a bit odd, but it looks like a ghost town. You get the feeling that it’s on an island. I assume it isn’t, but you feel that it’s surrounded by water on all sides.

‘Folks in Garth just like to stay close to home. That’s all,’ the skipper says.

There’s a welcome moment of levity as the skipper refuses payment for the ride, since seeing Mr Skinner get his comeuppance was payment enough. He actually laughs. This is where we learn that Buz is a ‘survivor’ of Hell’s Kitchen, and he’s the muscle of the outfit. As Tod tells Libby about this you feel that he’s rather proud of having scooped himself a real rough and ready boy of the streets as his travelling companion.

There’s a curiously domestic feeling as Buz hands Tod the car key back and says in a chastened tone, ‘Sorry about this morning, Tod.’ I almost expect him to follow up with the excuse of PMT.  

‘Can I help it if I got a lousy navigator for a buddy?’ Tod asks. 

This is a bit strange. For a start, Buz was apologising, but Tod’s acting jokily defensive. And secondly – really, Buz? You suggested the shortcut, but you didn’t tell Tod to drive down that dirt track as if it were the Indianapolis brickyard.

This might be the first time we’ve heard Tod’s name. I’m not sure, but it’s the first time I noticed it.

These two stills are from one of those shots that Route 66 is so good at – the innocent child walking across a precarious plank in the silent town, only to be snatched inside by his mother. But it would have been better without so many previous omens of strangeness.

Tod’s look of fearful horror as the mother snatches her child back inside is priceless!

And another reaction as they see – dun dun dun – a man with a sack! 

But the man with the sack is so shocked that the contents start pouring out onto the ground as he backs away. This place is strange.

More freakiness – a ghostly looking woman at the window of a dilapidated, gothic-type house.

And here we have the more dynamic threat – four young men looking like they’re waiting to audition for Rebel Without a Cause. They look much more suited to being our heroes’ rivals this week.

Oh, nice. I feel like this should be a scene of crime photo. There should be a blood stained sheet covering a body on the ground, just the feet sticking out of the bottom. I get the feeling that they’re all half-brothers and cousins and uncles to each other, simultaneously.

‘Maybe it’s the way we dress,’ Buz says.

No, Buz. It’s the fact you have only twenty fingers between you and you’re not called Bubba and Cleetus. Poor Tod looks absolutely terrified. This is probably a bit different to the socialites he met at New York soirees.

Tod feels ‘something in the air.’ Buz looks a bit incredulous, but probably because he was tipped off that this place was weird by the fact that every goddamn soul they have met so far has acted like something out of the Twilight Zone. (this may be an anachronistic reference. Did the Twilight Zone exist then? According to IMDB it did, just about.) 

So what’s in the air? ‘Us,’ Buz says sensibly. It’s their presence that’s making the place seem weird. And he’s probably right. I mean, the locals can’t act like this all the time. Their hearts wouldn’t be able to stand the stress.

Again, Tod shows he’s the diplomatic part of the dynamic when he asks the mechanic politely if he can speak to him. The guy just starts banging harder. I wonder if they have drills on how to behave if strangers come to town?

Buz is already impatient to act. He’s tapping his fingers on the car. When Tod moves back Buz grabs the cardboard the mechanic is on and yanks him out from underneath.

‘I heard all about you two,’ the mechanic says. ‘Almost killed Thad Skinner up at the mill.’ 

Where did he hear about them from? Did Skinner phone up to pass round the news of his beating? Did he call Mr Garth so he could brief the town before they arrived? This is a bit strange.

They’re bemused again as the mechanic walks off to get the sheriff. (Tod really does do a fine line in bemused.) Buz quips that they probably made the sheriff’s badge out of pinewood up at the mill. Tod and Buz are probably wondering why they didn’t just do as they guy said at the start, and hike back to the road.

They go into the store, and there’s Patty McCormack looking cute and innocent. The music changes to cute, innocent country music, instead of threatening Deliverance-suggestive music. She’s probably never seen a man who isn’t related to her in her life.

Buz is still looking royally freaked out, but Tod looks like he’s just come across a baby deer in a woodland glen. Or a fairy, perhaps. It’s a mixture of ‘awww’ and ‘well, I never expected that!’ that’s in his stare. She’s staring too, but it’s because she’s never seen a jacket like his before. She says something like it ‘looks like it feels of May butter.’

Buz makes cute jokes about coming to buy the store, ‘well, maybe just a dollar’s worth.’ Tod’s probably trying to work out if she’s legal or not.

Just as everything’s going swimmingly, her father comes out to hustle her away. Poor girl. She was like a flower pushed up through the crack in the concrete in a vast wasteland. Her father’s actually surprisingly normal too. He’s at least enough of a medium between the outsiders and the townspeople to be able to tell Tod and Buz how strange their presence is here. I suppose this is the role of a shopkeeper – to act as a go-between.

Oh, this looks healthy. He’s supposedly the sheriff, but he just looks like some crazed gunman. Remind me again why everyone has to have guns in America?

I wonder if this is what the stores looked like in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s era. Tod and Buz aren’t wondering this. The crazed Silent-Hill-type sheriff has just told them to come with him. They’re probably expecting something like the end of Reservoir Dogs, or would be if they had time-travelled and seen that film.

The girl actually has the nerve to stand up to the sheriff. ‘He ain’t no real sheriff,’ she tells them. They have no real sheriff. I wonder what is real about this town?

Buz is softly threatening. He speaks in a velvet voice. ‘Why don’t you go away?’ he asks. (Off camera perhaps he would have said something stronger?) ‘While you’re still ahead.’

Buz obviously has a lot of nerve. I wouldn’t quibble with a guy who looked like that, holding a shotgun, whose next line is to say, ‘Don’t crowd me, bwoy.’

Tod is worried, but also preternaturally attuned to Buz’s intentions.

‘Got a message,’ Buz says, and Tod understands this to mean, ‘Please barge that display of tins over between me and my would-be assailant.’ 

Buz is bloody lucky that the guy hesitates and then shoots at Tod rather than just pulling the trigger on instinct while it’s still pointed at Buz. Otherwise this series could have been short lived.

Bam! Buz is lucky the guy turned on Tod. Tod is lucky he ducked in time.

So Buz gives the pseudo-sheriff a Buz-special and beats him up and then tosses him through the window. Nothing like a bit of defenestration in the morning.

And then Buz smashes pseudo-sheriff’s shotgun (he does this in A Skill For Hunting too) and our boys head out to see Garth himself. Lord Garth, maybe? No, that’s Star Trek. But obviously Garth is the name for men who are power-crazed. 

Buz is doing well on the homicidal maniac stakes in this first episode. He calms down a bit later on.

Garth is outside his home swinging an axe at a tree, but I think the close up of his son’s face is much more interesting. Paul Garth is an interesting character. He almost seems mentally disabled by his father’s past.

Buz has his sarcasm gun out, and I think Tod’s afraid. (Sarcasm gun? Looking back at this I have no memory of writing this phrase, but I like it.)

‘A place like Garth – pure paradise,’ Buz says. ‘Where else do you find people going out of their way to make life cosy for you, doing all sorts of nice little things like – giving you a free ride on a buzz saw?’

Garth slaps Buz, and I think he really does slap him, because his cheek distorts.

Buz is really riled when he finds out that the lad Garth hit was his own son.

‘Well, that’s one way to make him look up to you,’ he says. Buz has parent/child issues, having no parents of his own. He wants all parents to be perfect.

Tod steps between them when Buz suggests that Garth try the axe, and I don’t know if it’s to protect Buz or Garth. It’s sweet, though, the way he steps between them and gives Buz his handkerchief to wipe the blood from his mouth. (My slash klaxon goes off at this moment. Shhh)

‘My father gave me that car, mister,’ Tod tells Garth when Garth doubts their story of needing to work for money. 

Somehow Tod’s tale of his father gets through to Garth in a way other things don’t, because he arranges for the mechanic to make them a new part. Maybe he has some regard for the father-son relationship considering what happened to his own son. I imagine he’s a man of great morals, if greatly distorted ones.

‘How’s your lip?’ Tod asks.

‘I’ve been hit harder by dames,’ Buz replies, because Buz is a tough New Yorker, and obviously gets hit a lot by men and women alike.

Paul is outside, sobbing in a very obviously loud way so that Jenny Slade, the shop girl, hears him and comes out. He’s an odd character. He really does seem psychologically or developmentally disturbed. I’d guess the former, considering what he witnessed as a child. He says he tried to talk to himself about things, but ‘it always tightens in my throat, Jenny, and ties my tongue. It always stays right down here.’

So Paul is a representative of the whole town, damaged and tongue-tied by his father’s actions.

Our boys are in the garage/blacksmith – I suppose a blacksmith is a natural forerunner to a garage. As has been observed by TopHatBlue on livejournal, Tod is eating some kind of wrapped food whereas Buz scoops right out of the tin. I don’t know if this is a demonstration of class difference, or just coincidence, but it’s fun to watch them eat.

Oh dear, the lads are threatening Tod and Buz’s masculinity again, joking about whether the car is a mare or a stallion, and deciding on mare because she’s ‘wearing a skirt.’ Really this only makes them look like idiots, but they don’t realise it. Buz knows that Tod is sensitive about the car and puts himself forward.

They ask if Buz does all Tod’s talking.

‘Oh no. You see, er, we cut it up pretty even,’ Buz says, in that voice he’s been using a lot in this episode – the push me and I’ll rip you a new one voice. ‘Tod here’s been to college. Me, I only got to the As in manual arts – the first As – so, er, we cut it up like this. Tod here, he takes on the better elements, you know. Me – I take on the slobs. Guys like you.’

When they threaten to fix his wagon Buz tells them the man inside’s doing that. That seems to confuse them so much that they leave.

It’s an interesting relationship from the start between Tod and Buz. Tod looks up to Buz as the tough, streetwise fighter. Buz seems to look up to Tod as the educated college graduate. Presumably Buz was Tod’s boss on the barge, but then Tod was the boss’s son. It’s a very complex relationship they have where they share dominance and submission in different areas.

As the lads go Buz actually winks at Tod in that kind of, ‘See, it’s okay, I saw them off,’ way. There are many things I could say about this, probably mostly about the father-son/son-father relationship they have, but my brain’s just going sxxfgrere”£%fddfgggg and such at the epic cuteness.

While Buz resumes shovelling food out of his can in the background, Jenny turns up to pick up the picnic basket she brought and to ask Tod to ‘walk on out a way and talk,’ because he and Buz are the only strangers she’s ever seen. It’s all so sweet and innocent, and such a contrast to Buz’s mannerless eating through the doorway.

Jenny tells Tod how odd it gets in Garth every November. Well, it’s a relief to know that it isn’t always this weird. Tod is incredulous that the church is shut and there is no minister. I suppose that’s a sign of the times. 1960, and Tod can’t conceive of a godless town.

Yes, there is something extremely flirty in the way Buz stands watching the mechanic thrusting his iron into the fire. ‘Suits ya?’ the mechanic asks, and Buz says sexily, ‘I like the way you work.’

A gay porn scene ensues… (Sorry, that’s only in my imagination, and the mechanic would have to be a good deal more attractive.)

‘Who are you fellas?’ the guy asks as soon as Buz says that, as if his gaydar is sounding at twenty decibels.

‘Who are we supposed to be?’ Buz asks.

‘I don’t know what you’re looking for, but you shouldn’ta come to Garth to find it,’ the mechanic tells him. Get out, you strange New Yorker with your strange flirty eyes watching me work.

Then Buz utters one of those classic Route 66 speeches.

 ‘Looking? Who’s looking? Like I say, you live it the way you feel it. When it moves, you go with it. Tod says I got unrest. So what’s wrong with unrest? It’s as good as anything. Besides, we’re all stuck with it. You got it. Sure. I see it in your hammer. 

‘I been looking ever since I can remember. Did you ever hear of Saint Francis’ Home For Foundlings in New York? That’s what I remember. That and a job I had with Tod’s dad on a barge in the East River.

‘Now, Tod, he’s looking too. He had it made. Yale, prep school, and then just like that his dad drops dead. So I say, who needs New York? Only the buildings got roots there and they don’t go too deep. Sure. We’re looking. Tod says if we keep moving we’ll find a place to plant roots and stick. With me, it’s fine just – moving.’

The ‘Tod says’ in this speech just reinforces the feeling the Buz looks up to Tod in a way – maybe as an echo of his father. But Buz also wants to go his own way, and I get the feeling that it’s him guiding Tod through this journey rather than the other way round. 

And then there’s a lovely sense of the scriptwriter’s awareness of the metaphysical thrust to this speech as the mechanic says in bewilderment, ‘You don’t make sense, boy.’

No. People who think like that never will make sense to most people. I can see why America felt so threatened by the disaffected, wanderlusting generation that was springing up at this time.

After this cosy forge-side philosophical monologue everything changes. Jenny runs in to tell Buz that they’ve got Tod. So philosopher-Buz rips off his clothing and turns into action-Buz again.

Action-Buz!! Yes, I’m lifting ideas from tophatblue.livejournal.com, but I can’t help it. I like action-Buz! Buz away!

Not only is he action-Buz, but he’s also quite happy to threaten to rip someone’s arm off at the shoulder if Tod is in danger. This fight scene is powerful, but rather over-egged with the 1950s style excitable music.

‘When I come back, what you did to him, I do to you,’ Buz threatens the guy. Wow, I hope there wasn’t gang rape involved…

Buz looks so happy to be on a horse and cart. /sarcasm/

Buz looks suitably impatient and disinterested as Jenny tells him that they used to keep German prisoners at the place they’re at, during the war. Nice bit of acting, really. Jenny needs to say this to tell us, but Buz really doesn’t give a sh*t.

Buz is rushing around screaming for Tod, but the horses just care about grass. This looks like it would be a fun place to explore (in the light :O)

Times like this I really wish I could see a better quality print of this. Buz and Jenny are up on the edge, picked out by strong lighting, and then we see the figure of Paul kneeling down below the tree, with flowers before him. It works really well in black and white, and I think it would work even better if I didn’t feel I was watching through a muslin curtain.

Aww, love. Ahem, I mean, a quite proper concern on Buz’s part as Tod wanders out pressing a handkerchief to his cheek and complaining that they scared Paul away. He’s been watching Paul put flowers on two unmarked graves beneath the tree and talking to someone below the ground.

Another shot that you want the film to be better for. I fixed it for contrast a bit.

Tod is understandably freaked out by what’s just happened, and Buz is too. Jenny tells them that the tree, which towers over the others, is their ‘wolf tree,’ older than the others and so big it cuts out the light from all the others. ‘They can never grow much when they’re near a wolf tree.’ A metaphor, then, for Mr Garth and his son and his stunted town.

Freaky pseudo-sheriff has been watching and reports back the Garth. Oh dear. Garth instructs him to rally the town at the church house, which ties in to the theme of this being a godless place. The church is a shut up place and used as a rallying point for violence and evil.

Garth intends to use Jenny, saying that Tod and Buz raped her. Jenny’s father, Mr Slade, shows some backbone at this point in refusing to believe it unless he hears it from Jenny’s lips. Mr Slade is clutching a book – you have to wonder if it’s a Bible. It has that look to it, and would be another symbol of the town’s godlessness against more upright people like Mr Slade. 

On the one side is the Bible, on the other is his box of ‘tell Mr Garth to go to hell money’ a pitifully small amount with which he hopes to use to pay off his debts and leave the town. It took him ten years to save $200, but he owes $2000.

When Jenny walks in, we see what both men are really made of. Garth rips Jenny’s clothing and loosens her hair to make it look like she’s been attacked, while Mr Slade looks on in fear and does nothing. When it comes down to it, he crouches on the floor to gather up his spilt money rather than helping his daughter.

‘Oh pa, pa, get off your knees,’ Jenny wails as Garth drags her away. The whole town needs to get off its knees. I feel that these kind of points are made more subtly or more eloquently later in the series, though.

Another glimpse of the interesting dynamic between Tod and Buz. After his beating, Tod says, ‘I think I like this nose better,’ to which Buz replies, ‘Well, just stick with me,’ implying, I assume, that when you’re around Buz you get your face rearranged a lot. Tod gets nostalgic. ‘That’s what dad used to say. He put me on your barge every summer, didn’t he?’

You get the feeling from this conversation that Tod looks up to Buz in a way as an authority figure – but both of them are equally bewildered by the way Mr Stiles’ business collapsed so quickly. For all of his Yale business studies, I don’t feel that Tod knew much about this business. And they way they’re seated, with Buz looking up at Tod, you get a different sense of their dynamic. They look up to each other, for different reasons. This is why they work so well together.

Mr Slade at least has the guts to warn Tod and Buz about what’s about to happen. ‘Mr Garth took Jenny to the church. I couldn’t stop him!’ (couldn’t/wouldn’t?)

I wonder if towns like this have an emergency depot with torches ready for burning? First hint that a lynch mob is needed, and they crack open the crates marked ‘torches’ and ‘nooses’. Or do they get them from Target? Or Mob Weapons R Us?

Tod and Buz are ready to run, but with crazy lynch mob at their front and crazy pseudo-sheriff with shotgun at their back, there ain’t nowhere to go. They give it their best shot, but even Buz can’t outpunch an entire mob of riled up villagers.

Mr Slade won’t raise his voice to stop them. Jenny looks as if her image of her father has been completely obliterated. This is a tale of failed fathers – Tod’s father who died and left nothing, Mr Slade who fails to protect his child or stand up for the greater good, Mr Garth who fails his own son and the entire town that he controls.

Oh-so-blurry image of Buz being dragged off by the mob. I’d do Tod too, but he isn’t as pretty.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t get off on hanging. Generally beating up and tying, yes, imminent danger of having one’s neck broken, no. But still, I can get off on scared Buz and Tod.

The rather heavy-handed religion theme comes in again as Tod asks, ‘No prayers?’ Mr Garth, being godless, thinks that Libby will do to make a prayer for them. The irony is that they’re standing on top of the only man in the community who could have said prayers for them.

In the end, the only person with enough backbone to stand up to Mr Garth is his beaten-down son, Paul Garth. Fifteen years of fear and resentment come to the fore, and suddenly he is a force to be reckoned with. Suddenly the whole story is unravelled. Paul’s elder brother was killed in the war. Torn up by bitterness and hatred Mr Garth used his axe to kill a German prisoner of war who had escaped from the stockade, and also to kill the priest who stepped in front of him.

‘How could you do it all over again?’ Paul cries out to the crowd. Paul dug down to the murdered German to find out that he was Ludwig Schmit, aged 19. What a horrifying thought. We enter a flashback, in which Paul looks to be about ten. Imagine digging into the ground to find the body of a 19 year old killed by an axe, at ten years old.

Suddenly the stagnation of the whole town makes sense. They are caught in a loop which will only be ended now, if they manage to break out of the cycle of secrecy and violence that Garth’s bitterness has locked them into.

Little-Paul-Garth is a sweet looking child, and makes the horrible events seem all the more chilling.

Mr Garth obviously stopped aging when he killed the German boy, in some kind of Portrait of Dorian Grey-esque or Faustian bargain.

The only trouble with poor Ludwig Schmit is that he does look a bit like a character from a British comedy. He makes me think of Pike from Dad’s Army.

In all seriousness, though, Garth forces his son to watch the German and the priest being killed with an axe. The German was a stranger, but the priest, I assume, was a man that all the town knew. No wonder Paul grew up screwed up.

Paul is going to take up an axe now for the first time since that night, and fell the wolf tree – which is a metaphor, of course, for Mr Garth. Even Jenny’s father is inspired to stand up to Garth after Paul’s display of defiance.

The next morning, and suddenly the town looks like a scene from My Fair Lady – you know, in the morning when all of the workers start walking across the set and stop in poses. Even the music reflects this. Again, I take the point, but it’s a bit in-your-face. Later on these things are more subtle.

In the background you can still hear the sound of Paul chopping down the wolf tree.

Morning has broken, the sky is clear, and unaffected by the near-lynching the mechanic has finished working on the car. The part will keep turning as long as the world keeps turning. Now that’s a nice premise for the series to continue on. At the heart of the car is a part that will last as long as the world. They thank the mechanic, and he thanks them for setting the town free. And we listen to the blows of the axe, and see a reaction shot of every person in the whole goddamn town, as Paul chops and after the tree falls. It’s like the reaction shots in the extended edition of Star Trek The Motion Picture, that never, never end.

Happy to see the adorable Buz-smile, though :-)

…and the stirring and noble Tod-gaze.

Only Jenny shows a frisson of wistful regret, for she will have to say goodbye to Tod, who she has known for one night of blissful, chaste passion.

There’s a hint of some indefinable loss in Buz’s voice as he says goodbye to the mechanic whose forge skills he admired so deeply. Oh, Buz, you will see strong men who work with fire again, I am sure.

‘Come on in, hmm?’ Tod says to Buz outside the general store.

‘No, this is your goodbye, not mine,’ Buz says coyly. He’s already said goodbye to that brawny mechanic. What use has he for Jenny?

‘How do you spell Biloxi?’ Buz asks laughingly as Tod goes in through the door. I’m not sure if he’s poking fun at Tod or at himself. I am amazed, however, that Word spellchecker has no problem with Biloxi as a word, but won’t take Llanbedr. Did someone feed it an atlas of America?

Tod’s goodbye to Jenny is as tenderly fitting as it can be for a twenty-four hour romance in which Tod spent most of the time being beaten up and almost lynched.

‘I’d give you an address,’ he says, ‘in case you ever felt like writing, but after Biloxi – you know Buz. Swinging on a star.’

It’s all Buz’s fault. He offers to write to her but she doesn’t know if she’ll be there. They’re obviously destined to never meet again. 

‘We’ll try to get back,’ Tod says, but I don’t fancy their chances. 

He doesn’t kiss her or even give her a hug as he leaves. This really is chaste. It’s probably best, though. She’s only 15, and Tod is terrified enough of being arrested when he encounters the same actress later, in ‘Sleep on Four Pillows.’

‘She cry?’ Buz asks teasingly.

Oh, Buz, you’re mean. I’m not even going to say anything about jealousy and the slash potential of that casual arm behind Tod’s shoulders… And Jenny is about five feet away, watching through the broken window. I don’t think they know this. Even Buz isn’t that rude.

‘Why don’t you shut up?’ Tod says, understandably.

‘Cos I’ve got no manners,’ Buz retorts. He certainly is more of the rough and ready street urchin in this first episode. ‘Hey, why so serious?’ he asks.

‘She’s a nice kid.’

‘They’re all nice kids,’ philosopher-Buz says wisely.

Again, I’m not going to say anything about the slash potential of Buz’s gaze in this shot. Really I’m not. But they’re all nice kids, but Buz is a real man, and he’s driving away with Tod.

Sexy-ass car. We’ve come full circle.

I will give Stirling Silliphant (and Herbert B. Leonard) 1 for effort but a C grade overall this time, I think. They needs to work on plausibility and subtlety.

See you in Biloxi, guys! Actually Grand Isle, but they don't know that yet.

If you want a far more witty insight into the early Route 66 episodes, head over to tophatblue.livejournal.com for some great episode recaps.