Daniel agrees to repay a favor for a friend, and take on his son, David Watson (David Scott) for a time to teach him wilderness toughness.
Time for a fish-out-of water episode in the rotation, and marvel again at how Depression-generation parents could find an antidote to watching images of longhaired campus demonstrators by tuning into a tale of a spoiled kid made right by good old-fashioned toughening up. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when dad tried this attitude out on a son who had just returned from repelling the Tet Offensive.
Scott, a British teen-idol attempt riding the crest of the Beatles wave who made a 1960's TV splash and occasional acting gigs through 2003, gets the usual broad brush strokes - overeducated, overconfident, too interested in life's finer things to be practical. His father used to be a trail companion of Dan's, but then made it as a merchant and dislike's his son's route; he's the stand-in for the Depression kid who shipped out during WW II and then used the G. I. Bill to make it in middle management. ("A day at Normandy Beach would have been good for you, punk!")
Scott does force some complexity into the character - he's been to Sandhurst and knows how to shoot (though Sandhurst did not really get started until post-1801), learns fast and is useful in a fight. Still, Dan has to set his priorities right by walloping him a couple of times. His art interest is started off as a foppish obsession, but then rightly shown as a useful skill - that is more in tune with the formally trained painters such as John Audubon and Karl Bodmer, whose work provided the visual foundation these dramas are based upon.
The Shawnee (who else) are the antagonists, and have the usual Great Plains adornment. A word is due later on the nature of the technical advice the series received on tribal depictions.
A fair amount of chase and action, and the writers manage to push away a bit from the spoiled-kid stereotype; a slightly above-average road story for Season 5.