User Reviews

T.V. Western set on a ranch provide a place for con men and other undesirables to visit. Alan Bergmann does a passable job playing someone pretending to be Adam's shipmate. His second thoughts aren't plausible. Still it's an excellent reflection on importance of family.

Alan Bergman arrives in Virginia City and introduces himself as a shipmate friend of the absent Adam Cartwright. Since Adam has written of this guy and how he's saved Adam's life, the rest of the family welcomes him.

This man's intentions are no good. Bergman and a fellow former sailor Ivor Barry have intentions of robbing the Cartwrights of an expected gold shipment. It's a meticulously planned robbery.

Which makes what happens completely ridiculous. A most inferior Bonanza episode.

I think I'm having mixed feelings about Adam still being mentioned. I don't feel the character should be erased but it also doesn't make sense to write of Adam's traveling without explaining why he got the urge to do it at all. I recently read this wild/iconic incest fanfic that had Adam and Joe being lovers. Ben and Hoss were told that Adam and Joe had been lovers for the past year. Ben ordered them out of the house. THAT made sense for why Adam and Joe had to leave right away and probably leaving their luggage behind. So Adam left his beloved guitar behind and now he also left clothes behind?

IDK how other people feel about the Cartwrights and their clothes. Do you think the characters have one basic outfit to wear, one dressier outfit to wear, and a set of night clothes to wear or do you think they have 3 or 4 copies of their clothes? I like to picture it being the one set of clothes tbh. That's why I remarked in another episode that Hop Sing deserves a raise anytime he's able to get the Cartwrights clothes off to wash them. Anyway, this crook is running around in Adam's black outfit. Pure blasphemy imo. Even more so is when you have characters mooning about this character looking like another character. The Cartwrights think this crook looks like Adam. I don't know what they've been drinking because the only similarities these men have are being of the male gender.

I thought this episode was gonna veer into 90s Lifetime movie territory. I was specifically thinking of that movie with Patty Duke and Tiffani Amber Thiessen called 'A Killer Among Friends'. 'Adam might not be dead but he's not here....why can't I take his place?' Something along those lines, ya know? Didn't turn out that way. This guy's just taking advantage of the Cartwrights kindness and wanting to steal gold with another guy as his partner.

Ben tries to put a positive spin on this guy's misdeeds at the end of the episode. The real Gilly is still on the ship with Adam. That Gilly helped Adam after an accident and this fake Gilly prevented Ben from being hurt/shot.

It was an ok episode. I guess I'm still thinking more about Adam's clothes than anything. I guess in my head cannon Adam left all of his clothes behind because he's starting up the first nudist colony. Just like incest, it might be hard to admit you're working at a nudist colony or starting the first one up.