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Cartwright women sure did not have long lifespans after they became engaged to Ben, Adam, Joe, or Eric. Many are shot almost immediately, others die of deadly diseases. The remainder, just seem to wander off and are never heard from again. It would have been nice if just one of them could have married into the family and survived before the show ended.
Cartwright women sure did not have long lifespans after they became engaged to Ben, Adam, Joe, or Eric. Many are shot almost immediately, others die of deadly diseases. The remainder, just seem to wander off and are never heard from again. It would have been nice if just one of them could have married into the family and survived before the show ended.
I always suspected Hop Sing as having some role in the mortality rate
Fleeting mortality was a tradition for women who came into the Cartwright orbit. Keep in mind that Ben was a triple widower, his sons all had different mothers and all of them had gone belly up prematurely.
Kinda makes you suspect Ben....were these wives insured?
And of course they didn't want to lock the sons into perpetual unions where they would not be able to romance the guest starlet of the week, so naturally any female who fell in love with a Cartwright had to:
A) Get killed
B) Learn that she has a terminal illness
C) Heartbreakingly sacrifice her love for Adam/Joe/Hoss in order to return east and take care of her sick father/mother/brother
The only thing more inevitably fatal on tv than being a woman in love with a Cartwright, was being a red shirt security guard who beams down to a planet with Captain Kirk.
It wasn't just Bonanza, most tv dramas operated along the same no permanent spouse lines. Falling in love with a Barkley was just as deadly. It worked for males as well as females. I recall that among Audra Barkely's love interests there were:
A. One who turned out to be the leader of an extortionist gang...he was killed.
B. One who turned out to be running from a group of vigilante soldiers who had a grudge against him....he was killed.
C. One who was a charlatan faith healer....he wound up getting real faith and left to spread the gospel.
D. One was turned out to be an insane doctor with a plan to kill Victoria to revenge himself for some past grudge...he was killed.
Jarred actually got married once...and she of course was immediately gunned down in a robbery attempt. Nick fell for a woman who turned out to be too addicted to playing the field and enjoying city life...she left. Heath fell for a nun....you can guess the outcome there.
And of course Victoria was already a widow when the program began.
It was just part of the preposterous necessities involved in inventing new adventures every week for one family. Both Audra and Jarred went temporarily blind. Both Victoria and Jarred suffered from amnesia. Both Nick and Heath were close friends with former commanding officers who were wanted fro crimes. Victoria was kidnapped at least three times that I can remember, and was jailed for a crime she didn't commit, as were Nick and Heath at various times. How many times have these things happened in your family?
The Cartwrights and Barkely's had to kill a lot of people, all of them absolutely justified of course, but the only time any of them ever stood trial for murder was when they hadn't done it. And that happened a lot.
Last edited by Grandstander; 04-03-2017 at 02:32 PM..
nothing to do with any of this, I just like to mention that show whenever I can
HAHA I actually thought of that show but 'Mother' was very much present in that case.
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