Episode 11: The Root of It All
Oct. 1st, 2025 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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aliassmithjonesThis is a lovely jaunty episode, full of twists and turns and funny moments. The ASJ book says it’s one of the few where the writing didn’t have to be done in a rush, and it shows.
We open with a stagecoach, pelting along through dramatic landscape at a murderous pace. Heyes and the Kid are sharing the coach with a rather creepy man named Rosewood, who wears his dead wife’s tooth on a chain around his neck (did the writers have a bet that they couldn’t open an episode with the line “Pardon me for staring, sir, but is that a human tooth”?) and who has what even my English ears can detect is a fake Southern accent. More excitingly, there are THREE named women aboard! One of them is Leslie O’Hara, played by Judy Carne in a wig that does her no favours at all; the second is (her cousin? Friend? Sister by a different father?) Margaret Chapman; and the third is their elderly chaperone, Prudence Palmer, who looks like a dried twig. She’s not a very good chaperone as she completely fails to notice Margaret making eyes at the Kid, who enthusiastically makes eyes back. Margaret is just his type, young, virginal and a total drip. Perhaps Prudence is too busy being disgusted by Rosewood’s tale of how he hacked the tooth out of his dead wife’s jaw. Prudence and I are on the same wavelength.
They all get chatting and the Kid regales the ladies with the exciting tale of how he and Joshua were recently on a stage that got held up. Miss Drip asks drippily if that “could also happen to us?” It could happen to you, says Heyes, who as a poker player has a good grasp of statistics, but not to us, not twice in three weeks. Cue immediate sounds of gunfire as the stage is held up and everyone is robbed. The chief robber is Big Mac McCreedy’s sycophant from The McCreedy Bust, who has evidently decided that sycophanting isn’t lucrative enough and branched out. He keeps staring at the Kid, doubtless trying to remember why this guy’s face keeps reminding him of that time he got his gun belt shot off.
The robbers take off with the money and the mail bag. Leslie O’Hara gets very worked up and demands that Smith and Jones go and retrieve it like “real men”. Asked why she cares about the mail bag, she says there’s a letter in it that she mailed to herself. This seems rather pointless if she was going to be riding in the same coach with it. Why not just keep it in her pocket? Oh well, as poorly plugged plot holes go, this is a relatively minor offence. After some humorous haggling, Leslie hits on the amount of money needed to persuade the boys to go and retrieve the letter, which they do with great efficiency. The Kid has to remind Heyes to take the money as well – Heyes is so much less susceptible to the siren call of a heap of dollars than he was even a few weeks ago. Or perhaps his mind is just on other things. He’s worried that the chief robber has recognised the Kid. “Nah,” says the Kid, who wouldn’t recognise a steep learning curve if it jumped up and bit him, “couldn’t happen twice in three weeks.” Sure enough, the chief robber finally breaks down the amnesia imposed by the trauma of having his gun belt shot off and realises who the Kid is, “so that other feller must be Hannibal Heyes.” It’s just as well Heyes isn’t there to hear that.
Arriving at their destination, Heyes and Curry return the money to the bank and claim their reward. The manager says technically the money was stolen while in the custody of the US mail and refers them to the government for the reward, which from the boys’ reaction is code for “good luck with that”. They then return Rosewood’s money to him – I guess they’re all staying at the same hotel – and once again get sweet Fanny Adams for their pains. It seems virtue isn’t its own reward after all, at least not when dealing with the institutions of capitalism.
They then go to the suite Leslie and co. are staying in to deliver the letter. Heyes won’t hand it over until he sees the colour of her money, whereupon Leslie admits she hasn’t got any. She will have soon, though, if they give her the letter. Margaret Chapman tries, drippily, to stop Leslie from explaining what’s so important about the letter, so naturally the boys are all ears, but they lose interest again when Leslie says it’s directions to where a Civil War army payroll is hidden. Heyes is sure the money must be Confederate and therefore worthless. Leslie offers them a salary (with her ring as collateral since she hasn’t actually got any money yet) and either $500 or 10% of the stake. Heyes calculates that 10% of nothing is nothing and opts for the $500. Statistics, it will transpire, are really letting him down this week.
That night, creepy, tooth-wearing Rosewood creeps creepily into the women’s suite and searches it. Da-da-da-DAH! No, that’s not the real soundtrack, which in this episode is the most intrusive one I've ever heard. Normally I don’t notice soundtracks at all but this one keeps forcing itself on my attention with its weird noises and inappropriate volume.
The next day, Leslie and co. ride out to find the money but are interrupted by a sheriff’s posse, who the chief robber has set on them. Leslie says Joshua and Thaddeus can’t possibly be Heyes and Curry or they wouldn’t have returned the money from the coach robbery. Deputy Treadwelll says he’s heard a rumour that Heyes and Curry are going straight. See, Heyes, THIS is why you don’t go around blabbing about your amnesty to people!
Heyes and the Kid are thrown in jail. That night, Leslie inveigles herself in by making shameless use of the crush Deputy Treadwell has developed on Prudence, and Heyes tells her that the only way he’ll give her her letter back is if she springs them from jail. He’s confident that she can do it, if there’s a profit at stake. Then the Kid sleeps while Heyes paces. Insomniac Heyes! Yay! But he needn’t have worried, his faith in Leslie was entirely justified. She returns with a gun and after some humorous shenanigans they all ride out of town. The others, unused to midnight flits, sleep by the campfire while Heyes and Leslie stay awake talking. Leslie turns the conversation to the subject of whether Joshua Smith is actually Hannibal Heyes, so Heyes kisses her to, as he so romantically puts it, shut her mouth. It doesn’t work and he has to do it again. Neither of them seems that thrilled by the experience – they certainly never try it again, and I get the impression that they both prefer to stay in the frenemies zone. I actually really like the relationship between them, the vibes are so much more squabbling siblings than potential romantic partners. They understand each other really well - and why wouldn’t they? They’re both larcenous liars with a tremendous zest for life – and both kind of like each other without actually caring very much.
Presumably thanks to the writers actually having had time to work on it, this episode has a shedload of plot. I’m going to skip over most of it and say that when Leslie and co finally find the money (it’s US currency, once again Heyes has lost his bet with probability), they’re being trailed by both the sheriff’s posse AND the stagecoach robbers. The robbers get there first and take the money, but Leslie manages to break away, leaps athletically on a horse and gallops off. The chief robber lets her go, because “What harm can she do?” Never underestimate a girl who was raised like a boy, is all I can say.
The robbers take everyone else’s horses and the dispirited little party sets off on foot. It’s a very long way back. Meanwhile, Leslie rides hell-for-leather through the countryside. We aren’t shown this, but she must be trailing the gang. Deputy Treadwell’s horse goes lame, OR SO HE SAYS, and he has to drop out of the posse, who are now chasing the robbers. The robbers, realising the posse is about to catch up with them, stash their cash under some rocks, then ride off. Leslie immediately pops up from behind those very rocks to reclaim her loot. We aren’t shown this either, but Deputy Treadwell is hiding somewhere behind Leslie and sees it all.
Leslie rides off again at the same cracking pace, but her horse suffers a spectacular fall (it lost a shoe, there are no unplugged plotholes in THIS episode, thank you very much!) and then runs off. Since lugging two bags of money through the heat is very tiring, she hides them in a water tower beside the railway line, then happens to run into the rest of her party, who have not only also found the railway line but are riding on a handcar. They all drive back to town on it, Leslie doing as much pumping as the boys.
The next shot is at the station, where Prudence announces she’s not coming back to Philadelphia with Leslie and Margaret because she’s going to marry Deputy Treadwell. Miss Drip wangles a kiss with the Kid and tries to get him to come with her. Fat chance, darling, even the Kid can see what a total bore that would be. He tells her he’d like too, but he just can’t. Margaret takes this to mean he can’t because he’s really Kid Curry, but I suspect the Kid has been reading Captain Awkward and means “I can’t because I’m washing my hair”. While they are thus distracted, Rosewood (remember him? Human tooth guy) sneaks onto the train. Leslie and Heyes don’t bother to kiss, they’re way past that phase of their relationship. Heyes isn’t too happy, though. He finds it deeply suspicious that Leslie was willing to leave town without the money.
Back on the train, Leslie says she’s changed her mind about going home and asks Margaret if she would mind making the journey alone. Margaret is now down TWO chaperones but clearly believes that locking lips with a notorious outlaw has turned her into a fully fledged grown-up, so she gives Leslie her blessing. Leslie hops off the train, closely followed by Rosewood, and rides back to her water tower. She's just pulled out the money bags, when who should pop up but Heyes, who has acquired a fringe since the previous scene and whose hair keeps flopping into his eyes in a very distracting fashion. He, the Kid and Leslie are arguing over who is entitled to what share of the money when Rosewood interrupts with a gun and explains that he’s a US treasury agent, so he’ll take charge of the cash, thank you very much. Heyes optimistically suggests that they must at least be entitled to a reward, but when the bags are opened they prove to be full of twigs and stuff, plus a letter from Prudence explaining that Deputy Treadwell saw Leslie hide the money, so she and he have absconded with it to finance their married life. Well done, show! It isn’t often that overlooked and undervalued little old ladies end up with both the loot and the love of a deputy sheriff.
Rosewood departs and Leslie tries to persuade the boys to help her go after Prudence. They refuse, saying they’re going to Denver instead. Leslie blackmails them into letting her tag along by threatening to reveal their true identities. The boys submit with ill grace, but as she goes off to get her horse, Heyes tosses a coin. Is this supposed to be for who gets off with her? Because if so, EW! Bad show! I presume from Heyes’s face that the Kid loses, but Heyes wasn’t even interested in a goodbye kiss at the station, so does that mean he considers “getting” Leslie to be the short straw?? What a shame that such an entertaining episode - and the first one to properly pass the Bechdel test, too - has such a yuck ending.
We open with a stagecoach, pelting along through dramatic landscape at a murderous pace. Heyes and the Kid are sharing the coach with a rather creepy man named Rosewood, who wears his dead wife’s tooth on a chain around his neck (did the writers have a bet that they couldn’t open an episode with the line “Pardon me for staring, sir, but is that a human tooth”?) and who has what even my English ears can detect is a fake Southern accent. More excitingly, there are THREE named women aboard! One of them is Leslie O’Hara, played by Judy Carne in a wig that does her no favours at all; the second is (her cousin? Friend? Sister by a different father?) Margaret Chapman; and the third is their elderly chaperone, Prudence Palmer, who looks like a dried twig. She’s not a very good chaperone as she completely fails to notice Margaret making eyes at the Kid, who enthusiastically makes eyes back. Margaret is just his type, young, virginal and a total drip. Perhaps Prudence is too busy being disgusted by Rosewood’s tale of how he hacked the tooth out of his dead wife’s jaw. Prudence and I are on the same wavelength.
They all get chatting and the Kid regales the ladies with the exciting tale of how he and Joshua were recently on a stage that got held up. Miss Drip asks drippily if that “could also happen to us?” It could happen to you, says Heyes, who as a poker player has a good grasp of statistics, but not to us, not twice in three weeks. Cue immediate sounds of gunfire as the stage is held up and everyone is robbed. The chief robber is Big Mac McCreedy’s sycophant from The McCreedy Bust, who has evidently decided that sycophanting isn’t lucrative enough and branched out. He keeps staring at the Kid, doubtless trying to remember why this guy’s face keeps reminding him of that time he got his gun belt shot off.
The robbers take off with the money and the mail bag. Leslie O’Hara gets very worked up and demands that Smith and Jones go and retrieve it like “real men”. Asked why she cares about the mail bag, she says there’s a letter in it that she mailed to herself. This seems rather pointless if she was going to be riding in the same coach with it. Why not just keep it in her pocket? Oh well, as poorly plugged plot holes go, this is a relatively minor offence. After some humorous haggling, Leslie hits on the amount of money needed to persuade the boys to go and retrieve the letter, which they do with great efficiency. The Kid has to remind Heyes to take the money as well – Heyes is so much less susceptible to the siren call of a heap of dollars than he was even a few weeks ago. Or perhaps his mind is just on other things. He’s worried that the chief robber has recognised the Kid. “Nah,” says the Kid, who wouldn’t recognise a steep learning curve if it jumped up and bit him, “couldn’t happen twice in three weeks.” Sure enough, the chief robber finally breaks down the amnesia imposed by the trauma of having his gun belt shot off and realises who the Kid is, “so that other feller must be Hannibal Heyes.” It’s just as well Heyes isn’t there to hear that.
Arriving at their destination, Heyes and Curry return the money to the bank and claim their reward. The manager says technically the money was stolen while in the custody of the US mail and refers them to the government for the reward, which from the boys’ reaction is code for “good luck with that”. They then return Rosewood’s money to him – I guess they’re all staying at the same hotel – and once again get sweet Fanny Adams for their pains. It seems virtue isn’t its own reward after all, at least not when dealing with the institutions of capitalism.
They then go to the suite Leslie and co. are staying in to deliver the letter. Heyes won’t hand it over until he sees the colour of her money, whereupon Leslie admits she hasn’t got any. She will have soon, though, if they give her the letter. Margaret Chapman tries, drippily, to stop Leslie from explaining what’s so important about the letter, so naturally the boys are all ears, but they lose interest again when Leslie says it’s directions to where a Civil War army payroll is hidden. Heyes is sure the money must be Confederate and therefore worthless. Leslie offers them a salary (with her ring as collateral since she hasn’t actually got any money yet) and either $500 or 10% of the stake. Heyes calculates that 10% of nothing is nothing and opts for the $500. Statistics, it will transpire, are really letting him down this week.
That night, creepy, tooth-wearing Rosewood creeps creepily into the women’s suite and searches it. Da-da-da-DAH! No, that’s not the real soundtrack, which in this episode is the most intrusive one I've ever heard. Normally I don’t notice soundtracks at all but this one keeps forcing itself on my attention with its weird noises and inappropriate volume.
The next day, Leslie and co. ride out to find the money but are interrupted by a sheriff’s posse, who the chief robber has set on them. Leslie says Joshua and Thaddeus can’t possibly be Heyes and Curry or they wouldn’t have returned the money from the coach robbery. Deputy Treadwelll says he’s heard a rumour that Heyes and Curry are going straight. See, Heyes, THIS is why you don’t go around blabbing about your amnesty to people!
Heyes and the Kid are thrown in jail. That night, Leslie inveigles herself in by making shameless use of the crush Deputy Treadwell has developed on Prudence, and Heyes tells her that the only way he’ll give her her letter back is if she springs them from jail. He’s confident that she can do it, if there’s a profit at stake. Then the Kid sleeps while Heyes paces. Insomniac Heyes! Yay! But he needn’t have worried, his faith in Leslie was entirely justified. She returns with a gun and after some humorous shenanigans they all ride out of town. The others, unused to midnight flits, sleep by the campfire while Heyes and Leslie stay awake talking. Leslie turns the conversation to the subject of whether Joshua Smith is actually Hannibal Heyes, so Heyes kisses her to, as he so romantically puts it, shut her mouth. It doesn’t work and he has to do it again. Neither of them seems that thrilled by the experience – they certainly never try it again, and I get the impression that they both prefer to stay in the frenemies zone. I actually really like the relationship between them, the vibes are so much more squabbling siblings than potential romantic partners. They understand each other really well - and why wouldn’t they? They’re both larcenous liars with a tremendous zest for life – and both kind of like each other without actually caring very much.
Presumably thanks to the writers actually having had time to work on it, this episode has a shedload of plot. I’m going to skip over most of it and say that when Leslie and co finally find the money (it’s US currency, once again Heyes has lost his bet with probability), they’re being trailed by both the sheriff’s posse AND the stagecoach robbers. The robbers get there first and take the money, but Leslie manages to break away, leaps athletically on a horse and gallops off. The chief robber lets her go, because “What harm can she do?” Never underestimate a girl who was raised like a boy, is all I can say.
The robbers take everyone else’s horses and the dispirited little party sets off on foot. It’s a very long way back. Meanwhile, Leslie rides hell-for-leather through the countryside. We aren’t shown this, but she must be trailing the gang. Deputy Treadwell’s horse goes lame, OR SO HE SAYS, and he has to drop out of the posse, who are now chasing the robbers. The robbers, realising the posse is about to catch up with them, stash their cash under some rocks, then ride off. Leslie immediately pops up from behind those very rocks to reclaim her loot. We aren’t shown this either, but Deputy Treadwell is hiding somewhere behind Leslie and sees it all.
Leslie rides off again at the same cracking pace, but her horse suffers a spectacular fall (it lost a shoe, there are no unplugged plotholes in THIS episode, thank you very much!) and then runs off. Since lugging two bags of money through the heat is very tiring, she hides them in a water tower beside the railway line, then happens to run into the rest of her party, who have not only also found the railway line but are riding on a handcar. They all drive back to town on it, Leslie doing as much pumping as the boys.
The next shot is at the station, where Prudence announces she’s not coming back to Philadelphia with Leslie and Margaret because she’s going to marry Deputy Treadwell. Miss Drip wangles a kiss with the Kid and tries to get him to come with her. Fat chance, darling, even the Kid can see what a total bore that would be. He tells her he’d like too, but he just can’t. Margaret takes this to mean he can’t because he’s really Kid Curry, but I suspect the Kid has been reading Captain Awkward and means “I can’t because I’m washing my hair”. While they are thus distracted, Rosewood (remember him? Human tooth guy) sneaks onto the train. Leslie and Heyes don’t bother to kiss, they’re way past that phase of their relationship. Heyes isn’t too happy, though. He finds it deeply suspicious that Leslie was willing to leave town without the money.
Back on the train, Leslie says she’s changed her mind about going home and asks Margaret if she would mind making the journey alone. Margaret is now down TWO chaperones but clearly believes that locking lips with a notorious outlaw has turned her into a fully fledged grown-up, so she gives Leslie her blessing. Leslie hops off the train, closely followed by Rosewood, and rides back to her water tower. She's just pulled out the money bags, when who should pop up but Heyes, who has acquired a fringe since the previous scene and whose hair keeps flopping into his eyes in a very distracting fashion. He, the Kid and Leslie are arguing over who is entitled to what share of the money when Rosewood interrupts with a gun and explains that he’s a US treasury agent, so he’ll take charge of the cash, thank you very much. Heyes optimistically suggests that they must at least be entitled to a reward, but when the bags are opened they prove to be full of twigs and stuff, plus a letter from Prudence explaining that Deputy Treadwell saw Leslie hide the money, so she and he have absconded with it to finance their married life. Well done, show! It isn’t often that overlooked and undervalued little old ladies end up with both the loot and the love of a deputy sheriff.
Rosewood departs and Leslie tries to persuade the boys to help her go after Prudence. They refuse, saying they’re going to Denver instead. Leslie blackmails them into letting her tag along by threatening to reveal their true identities. The boys submit with ill grace, but as she goes off to get her horse, Heyes tosses a coin. Is this supposed to be for who gets off with her? Because if so, EW! Bad show! I presume from Heyes’s face that the Kid loses, but Heyes wasn’t even interested in a goodbye kiss at the station, so does that mean he considers “getting” Leslie to be the short straw?? What a shame that such an entertaining episode - and the first one to properly pass the Bechdel test, too - has such a yuck ending.
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Date: 2025-10-01 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 07:00 pm (UTC)I actually like Leslie, but I wish they'd given her different hair.