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aliassmithjonesWe open (after the teaser, which isn’t exactly action-packed itself) with Heyes and Curry riding into yet another small town, only to be hailed from the jail window by an old friend of theirs. Luckily, he doesn’t shout out Heyes’s name loud enough to be heard since, as we soon learn, the eyes of the whole town are upon him. It transpires that his name is Charlie O’Rourke and he’s about to be hanged for murder.
Our heroes naturally feel bad about this and come to visit him in jail, where they’re confused when the sheriff implies that they must have ulterior motives for the visit. Charlie explains that he has buried $100,000 in gold from his last robbery up in the hills near the town, and since he’s about to die, he’d like Heyes and the Kid to have it. We see now that the previous episode’s revelation that going straight has changed Heyes was no mere flash in the pan, because he turns the money down. To his way of thinking, the gold was still stolen, even if he and the Kid didn’t steal it themselves, so to take it would be dishonest. Once again the Kid objects, but not very hard this time. Charlie is disappointed – not only has that gold cost him his life, he can’t even use it to help his friends - but Heyes is resolute.
Charlie asks the boys to come to his hanging so that he at least has two friends there. This is all very sad, not least because Charlie seems genuinely likeable and I buy that he didn’t actually shoot anyone himself, he just got in with the wrong crowd.
Heyes and the Kid go to the saloon for a drink to cheer themselves up. As they walk up to the doors, who should come out but Harry Briscoe. The boys do a quick volte face, but alas, it is too late. I grit my teeth in readiness for a whole episode of my least-favourite character.
At the bar, the boys are surprised to be offered free drinks as friends of Charlie’s. It becomes evident that the whole town thinks they now know where the loot is buried and wants to get on their good side in the hopes of profiting from their wealth. I wonder if it was this experience that gave Heyes his big idea in The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg? I can see that it would encourage a certain cynicism about human nature, especially when you’ve just turned down the money yourself.
The boys sit down with Harry Briscoe, who pleasantly surprises me by demonstrating that he’s had an IQ upgrade and toned down his over-the-top acting. He’s clearly figured out who Smith and Jones really are – Heyes’s expressions throughout this conversation are very funny and further increase my tolerance for Briscoe – and he points out that if they try to leave town, people will kill them in an effort to beat out of them where the gold is buried. This thought puts Heyes right off his drink.
Harry leaves, and Heyes is evidently thinking that if they don’t have enough money to leave town, they can at least drink the saloon dry in freebies. At that moment a letter falls onto the table between them. It’s been dropped by Alice Banion, a singer in the saloon, who is currently sitting on a swing in a gilded bird cage strung from the ceiling. I will say this for Miss Banion, she’s a better singer than Michelle Monet, but she would be an even better schoolmarm. I have never seen a saloon girl with less sexual charisma. Even when she accidentally-on-purpose bumps into the Kid before changing for her number, she keeps her arms crossed defensively over her chest instead of flashing her cleavage at him. However, the boys are thrilled to find that the letter is an invitation up to her room and they do one of those gross little which-one-of-us-gets-her routines of theirs.
Happily, neither of them do. We cut to the boys sitting in Alice’s room, drinking tea, while Alice gets undressed behind a screen. Heyes is sitting ramrod straight, as if he were having afternoon tea with Queen Victoria. Both of them look wonderfully uncomfortable. Alice clearly doesn’t have a threesome in mind, as evidenced by the dress she changes into, which quite aside from meaning she’s now wearing MORE clothes than before, goes almost up to her neck. She seems like a reasonably bright, pleasant young woman, though, who’s brave enough to make her way through the world on her own, and I fully support her desire to make a career switch from saloon singer to saloon owner. Unfortunately, her plan involves persuading the boys to invest Charlie O’Rourke’s gold in her business venture. You can see from Heyes’s face that he is so over the people of this town. Both he and the Kid are starting to regret their own honesty.
Once Alice realises she’s barking up the wrong tree with the boys, she goes to visit Charlie in jail, bringing her guitar along, and offers to spend his final hours with him. Charlie’s touchingly grateful and asks her to sing him The Streets of Laredo, which she does, albeit with the lyrics adjusted to reflect his situation. The song provides a neat way of transitioning to the graveside after Charlie’s hanging, with only five people in attendance, three of whom are Heyes, the Kid and Alice. I’m glad Alice went, it shows that she developed some kind of emotional connection to Charlie, even if her main objective was his gold.
On returning to town, the boys are set on by four locals, just as Briscoe prophesied, who drag them into a livery stables. From behind the sign “The Friendliest Place in Town” come the sounds of very loud violence in progress, followed by the boys emerging unscathed to brush the dust off themselves and swagger heroically back to the saloon, where they drag out Harry Briscoe and proceed to dunk him in the horse trough. Apparently he set the locals on them. The dunking makes Harry start over-acting again and knocks several points off his newly-found IQ – he knows the boys aren’t really Smith and Jones, but it’s beyond his intellectual capacity to figure out who, despite their extensive knowledge of the Devil’s Hole gang, they might actually be. He threatens to go and look at wanted posters in the sheriff’s office to find out. Harry also explains that Alice Banion managed to worm the whereabouts of the gold out of Charlie and offers the boys a $5,000 reward for getting it off her. Heyes is reluctant to lie to Alice, but changes his mind when Briscoe points out that they’ll be saving her from a life on the run. Aw, they really do want to go straight now.
Alice, in turn, agrees to take the boys along as she needs someone to carry the gold. The locals, led by the sheriff, follow them with nefarious intent as they leave town on a stagecoach, but Heyes has a plan to throw them off. The plan involves stealing the stagecoach (and everybody’s luggage) but I guess the boys only think of it as borrowing and therefore not worth splitting moral hairs over. Heyes, the Kid and Alice, in her high-viz hat, hide behind some bushes and watch their pursuers chase after the now-empty stagecoach. Heyes then picks up some horses from Harry Briscoe and the three of them set off on a journey of several days to where the gold is hidden.
At this point ASJ’s love of threesomes raises its head again. Alice fancies both boys, but sadly for her she hasn’t spent any of her time off reading outlaw RPF and so thinks she has to choose between them, and since she can’t, hanky-panky fails to ensue. A nice friendshippy vibe does develop between them, though. They find the gold and all looks set for a happy ending when – surprise! surprise! – up pops Harry Briscoe, who holds them at gunpoint, steals their gold and their horses and sets off for Mexico, leaving them with nothing but a tiny gourd of water. This is the exact same plot of Smiler With A Gun, except played for comedy this time round, so nobody dies. Instead, at their lowest moment, they come across not a stream but a convenient German cook, Kurt Schmidt, who has two heavy horses and some rifles, which he lends out in return for being cut in on the reward money. Thus equipped, the boys catch up with Briscoe and soon have him at gunpoint. Briscoe then says they can’t turn him in because he went and looked at the wanted posters and has FINALLY figured out who they are. Given that he’s trapped in the middle of a desert with two notorious outlaws whom he’s just left to die of thirst, this threat seems calculated to reduce his life expectancy to about one minute. However, Heyes and the Kid, who I can only assume are suffering from sunstroke after all this riding around without their hats, agree that this is a Mexican standoff and strike a deal with Harry whereby he’ll keep mum about their real identities (honestly, WHY would you trust this man to keep his mouth shut???) in return for them not turning him in.
In their absence, Alice and Kurt have fallen in lurve – happily for the audience, the writers have learned their lesson from a past episode which shall remain unnamed and make no attempt to show us how. Back in civilisation, Heyes hands over her and Kurt’s share of the reward money and the happy couple depart for California, but not before Alice has expressed her regrets that she didn’t meet one of the boys separately first (hello, your new boyfriend is standing RIGHT THERE!!). Once they’re gone, the Kid says that next time they meet a woman like that, they should toss a coin for her. If the show never uses this “gag” again, it will be too soon.
Ultimately, this was a dull episode. I quite liked Alice’s dynamic in the desert with the boys, Harry Briscoe wasn’t QUITE as annoying as on his first appearance, and props go to Charlie O’Rourke for punching above his weight in very minor part, but most of it is just kind of blah.
Our heroes naturally feel bad about this and come to visit him in jail, where they’re confused when the sheriff implies that they must have ulterior motives for the visit. Charlie explains that he has buried $100,000 in gold from his last robbery up in the hills near the town, and since he’s about to die, he’d like Heyes and the Kid to have it. We see now that the previous episode’s revelation that going straight has changed Heyes was no mere flash in the pan, because he turns the money down. To his way of thinking, the gold was still stolen, even if he and the Kid didn’t steal it themselves, so to take it would be dishonest. Once again the Kid objects, but not very hard this time. Charlie is disappointed – not only has that gold cost him his life, he can’t even use it to help his friends - but Heyes is resolute.
Charlie asks the boys to come to his hanging so that he at least has two friends there. This is all very sad, not least because Charlie seems genuinely likeable and I buy that he didn’t actually shoot anyone himself, he just got in with the wrong crowd.
Heyes and the Kid go to the saloon for a drink to cheer themselves up. As they walk up to the doors, who should come out but Harry Briscoe. The boys do a quick volte face, but alas, it is too late. I grit my teeth in readiness for a whole episode of my least-favourite character.
At the bar, the boys are surprised to be offered free drinks as friends of Charlie’s. It becomes evident that the whole town thinks they now know where the loot is buried and wants to get on their good side in the hopes of profiting from their wealth. I wonder if it was this experience that gave Heyes his big idea in The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg? I can see that it would encourage a certain cynicism about human nature, especially when you’ve just turned down the money yourself.
The boys sit down with Harry Briscoe, who pleasantly surprises me by demonstrating that he’s had an IQ upgrade and toned down his over-the-top acting. He’s clearly figured out who Smith and Jones really are – Heyes’s expressions throughout this conversation are very funny and further increase my tolerance for Briscoe – and he points out that if they try to leave town, people will kill them in an effort to beat out of them where the gold is buried. This thought puts Heyes right off his drink.
Harry leaves, and Heyes is evidently thinking that if they don’t have enough money to leave town, they can at least drink the saloon dry in freebies. At that moment a letter falls onto the table between them. It’s been dropped by Alice Banion, a singer in the saloon, who is currently sitting on a swing in a gilded bird cage strung from the ceiling. I will say this for Miss Banion, she’s a better singer than Michelle Monet, but she would be an even better schoolmarm. I have never seen a saloon girl with less sexual charisma. Even when she accidentally-on-purpose bumps into the Kid before changing for her number, she keeps her arms crossed defensively over her chest instead of flashing her cleavage at him. However, the boys are thrilled to find that the letter is an invitation up to her room and they do one of those gross little which-one-of-us-gets-her routines of theirs.
Happily, neither of them do. We cut to the boys sitting in Alice’s room, drinking tea, while Alice gets undressed behind a screen. Heyes is sitting ramrod straight, as if he were having afternoon tea with Queen Victoria. Both of them look wonderfully uncomfortable. Alice clearly doesn’t have a threesome in mind, as evidenced by the dress she changes into, which quite aside from meaning she’s now wearing MORE clothes than before, goes almost up to her neck. She seems like a reasonably bright, pleasant young woman, though, who’s brave enough to make her way through the world on her own, and I fully support her desire to make a career switch from saloon singer to saloon owner. Unfortunately, her plan involves persuading the boys to invest Charlie O’Rourke’s gold in her business venture. You can see from Heyes’s face that he is so over the people of this town. Both he and the Kid are starting to regret their own honesty.
Once Alice realises she’s barking up the wrong tree with the boys, she goes to visit Charlie in jail, bringing her guitar along, and offers to spend his final hours with him. Charlie’s touchingly grateful and asks her to sing him The Streets of Laredo, which she does, albeit with the lyrics adjusted to reflect his situation. The song provides a neat way of transitioning to the graveside after Charlie’s hanging, with only five people in attendance, three of whom are Heyes, the Kid and Alice. I’m glad Alice went, it shows that she developed some kind of emotional connection to Charlie, even if her main objective was his gold.
On returning to town, the boys are set on by four locals, just as Briscoe prophesied, who drag them into a livery stables. From behind the sign “The Friendliest Place in Town” come the sounds of very loud violence in progress, followed by the boys emerging unscathed to brush the dust off themselves and swagger heroically back to the saloon, where they drag out Harry Briscoe and proceed to dunk him in the horse trough. Apparently he set the locals on them. The dunking makes Harry start over-acting again and knocks several points off his newly-found IQ – he knows the boys aren’t really Smith and Jones, but it’s beyond his intellectual capacity to figure out who, despite their extensive knowledge of the Devil’s Hole gang, they might actually be. He threatens to go and look at wanted posters in the sheriff’s office to find out. Harry also explains that Alice Banion managed to worm the whereabouts of the gold out of Charlie and offers the boys a $5,000 reward for getting it off her. Heyes is reluctant to lie to Alice, but changes his mind when Briscoe points out that they’ll be saving her from a life on the run. Aw, they really do want to go straight now.
Alice, in turn, agrees to take the boys along as she needs someone to carry the gold. The locals, led by the sheriff, follow them with nefarious intent as they leave town on a stagecoach, but Heyes has a plan to throw them off. The plan involves stealing the stagecoach (and everybody’s luggage) but I guess the boys only think of it as borrowing and therefore not worth splitting moral hairs over. Heyes, the Kid and Alice, in her high-viz hat, hide behind some bushes and watch their pursuers chase after the now-empty stagecoach. Heyes then picks up some horses from Harry Briscoe and the three of them set off on a journey of several days to where the gold is hidden.
At this point ASJ’s love of threesomes raises its head again. Alice fancies both boys, but sadly for her she hasn’t spent any of her time off reading outlaw RPF and so thinks she has to choose between them, and since she can’t, hanky-panky fails to ensue. A nice friendshippy vibe does develop between them, though. They find the gold and all looks set for a happy ending when – surprise! surprise! – up pops Harry Briscoe, who holds them at gunpoint, steals their gold and their horses and sets off for Mexico, leaving them with nothing but a tiny gourd of water. This is the exact same plot of Smiler With A Gun, except played for comedy this time round, so nobody dies. Instead, at their lowest moment, they come across not a stream but a convenient German cook, Kurt Schmidt, who has two heavy horses and some rifles, which he lends out in return for being cut in on the reward money. Thus equipped, the boys catch up with Briscoe and soon have him at gunpoint. Briscoe then says they can’t turn him in because he went and looked at the wanted posters and has FINALLY figured out who they are. Given that he’s trapped in the middle of a desert with two notorious outlaws whom he’s just left to die of thirst, this threat seems calculated to reduce his life expectancy to about one minute. However, Heyes and the Kid, who I can only assume are suffering from sunstroke after all this riding around without their hats, agree that this is a Mexican standoff and strike a deal with Harry whereby he’ll keep mum about their real identities (honestly, WHY would you trust this man to keep his mouth shut???) in return for them not turning him in.
In their absence, Alice and Kurt have fallen in lurve – happily for the audience, the writers have learned their lesson from a past episode which shall remain unnamed and make no attempt to show us how. Back in civilisation, Heyes hands over her and Kurt’s share of the reward money and the happy couple depart for California, but not before Alice has expressed her regrets that she didn’t meet one of the boys separately first (hello, your new boyfriend is standing RIGHT THERE!!). Once they’re gone, the Kid says that next time they meet a woman like that, they should toss a coin for her. If the show never uses this “gag” again, it will be too soon.
Ultimately, this was a dull episode. I quite liked Alice’s dynamic in the desert with the boys, Harry Briscoe wasn’t QUITE as annoying as on his first appearance, and props go to Charlie O’Rourke for punching above his weight in very minor part, but most of it is just kind of blah.
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