Nerds That Geek TV Rewind: 'The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Unfortunately, while I think we all try to take the time to enjoy just about every single genre of storytelling out there, certain stories in certain categories simply don’t resonate with us. It’s not a bad thing by any means, because hey, you like what you like. But sometimes, finding a genre that doesn’t stimulate your senses means that you might not be able to enjoy the wondrous stories that populate that universe with someone that would like to share them with you and on a personal level, westerns were the one brand of storytelling that never quite clicked with me.
 
I’m not sure what it was about them, but when my father showed me a John Wayne movie, I watched, but not with the fevered curiosity that infected my mind when I watched say, Star Trek. But back in the early 1990’s, there was one particular western that popped up on T.V. that actually managed to catch my eye; The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. Now, the plot to this particular television show was pretty straightforward. Because in this tale we met Brisco County Jr., the son of a slain U.S. Marshal who is hired by a few barons to bring in the man that killed his father, John Bly, and we would spend every week following Brisco on his journey to bring Bly to justice.
 
If that summary of the overall plot of the show seems pretty by the numbers and unremarkable, then allow me to apologize, because it’s really the only way to summarize this magnificent series without spoiling all of the incredible twists and turns that the show provided us with. Yet an engrossing plot filled with surprises was merely the first key reason as to why I found myself instantly hooked on this show, because one thing that separated this series from just about any other western out there is the sheer fact that it threw in a little hint of science fiction for good measure. From the mysterious Orb, to the various futuristic technology present on the show, this saga made a genre that I thought to be inaccessible, friendly to fans like myself.
 
But truly, the biggest selling point when it comes to this series is its characters, because this show featured something you rarely see in television these days, in that the bad guys were bad through and through and the good guys were truly amazing human beings and really, I think a lot of that was driven by Bruce Campbell’s performance as Brisco Country Jr. Because Bruce brings an incredible sense of nobility and honesty to Brisco, and that earnest and magnificent performance always allowed for the audience to root for Brisco and Bowler in any situation and their push for good more or less made the show an uplifting experience.  
 
Sadly though, this wonderful experiment in genre blending only lasted a year on Fox before they cancelled the series, and, in all honesty, that was a damn shame. This really was something special, something that quite frankly hasn’t been replicated in the slightest when it comes to television. Either way, I truly have nothing but fond memories of this show and after writing about it today, I’m definitely considering picking up the DVD set of the series that’s available on Amazon since I cannot find a legitimate place to stream it, just so I can travel back in time and relive the wonder of the moment when I discovered a western that I couldn’t get enough of.

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