By Curt Schleier

The third and thankfully final episode of COMANCHE MOON begins and ends with death. (And I don’t mean mine, though there were times I contemplated it as a positive alternative.) It’s1865, seven years after the end of the last episode (if only these two hours could pass as quickly) and Gus McCrae (Steve Zahn) is a widower.  His wife of one year, a woman named Nellie, passed recently.  And he is stoic in cowboy fashion. “We’re all just lingering; none of us can avoid that.”

The Civil War is over and Inish Scull (Val Kilmer) apparently served admirably.  But it must have been a harrowing experience, because his hair and moustache are now completely white; in his brief appearance in this episode he looks like Mark Twain.  There’s also a brief cameo by his wife Inez (Rachel Griffiths), which also serves no purpose.  What were the screenwriters thinking?

The screenwriters are Larry McMurtry, who wrote the book on which this mini-series is based, and his partner Diana Ossana.  Here’s my theory.  McMurtry was too close to his book to do a good job on the script and no one had the balls to tell him.  The pair had just won an Academy Award for BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, a film based on someone else’s writing (Annie Proulx’s short story).  So I can’t imagine they were prepared to listen to any criticism if it was offered.

(As an aside, the screenplay for his novel Lonesome Dove was written by William D. Wittliff, and the difference in quality is startlingly apparent.)


I also think CBS recognized that it was a clunker, because the series was originally set to be telecast, Dec. 30 and Jan. 1-2, hardly prime time for prime time.  But the WGA strike added value to everything so the show was moved.  I wasn’t.

Woodrow Call (Karl Urban) spends most of his time on screen with a puzzled expression on his face.  He loves the whore Maggie (Elizabeth Banks) or seems to but refuses to claim paternity of his son.  Frankly to call Urban’s acting wooden is to insult the world’s forests.  In any event, it’s too late.  Maggie dies leaving behind her young son. 

There’s another death as well.  The rangers go in search of Blue Duck, the vicious half-breed son of Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump (Wes Studi).  But Blue Duck is on a mission of his own.  He wants to find his father, who has gone out on a death march.  He does and murders him.  McMurtry seems to create only two kinds of Native Americans in this mini-series: those that are spiritual and cling to their old ways and those that are vicious and will spear their father in the back.

I don’t ask much of you.  Okay, sometimes I do but it’s for your own good.  Rent the Lonesome Dove video and you’ll see how good television and Larry McMurtry can be.  Better still, read the book.  TV writers are on strike.  What else have you got to do?  You’ll thank me in the morning.