Season 2, Episode 8: Giving Thanks

Aah ... a Thanksgiving episode. Season Two of any television show is where you really see them start to follow a regular timeline.

The Gist:
This is your basic Thanksgiving tale. Immediate upon their return, the Cooper-Quinn clan are met with a drought. This puts a serious dent in their Thanksgiving plans. Of course, Cloud Dancing and the tribe are willing to help the ungrateful citizens out.  Of course, the citizens are complete unyielding assholes about it and wind up getting dysentery and then having a rain-drenched Thanksgiving Supper. You know, the classic tale.

And also: Sully is so ready to jump into a serious relationship with Michaela.  Michaela is as awkward as anything and it's downright adorable. They have some hilarious(ly uncomfortable) discussions about expectations for the relationship, sometimes veiled in discussions about other things (namely animal mating habits) and sometimes surprisingly direct (about what "courting" means). 


Commentary:
1.  What I really like about this episode is that it pick sup immediately after (like, minutes after) the hugely romantic final moment of Where The Heart Is. It would be easy to skip over the awkward stage of settling in for the new couple, but the writers knew that going into that adjustment would be great fort he characters. There's also some great continuity with the haircut Michaela is still urging Matthew to get.

2.  Sully is a little bit overly intense in this episode. Several times, he gazes deeply into Michaela's eyes and vows to share "everything" with her -- "his world." At one point she's like "Uh ... it's Colorado. We both live here, remember?" and he goes "Oh, there's so much more. And I want to show you everything."  Oh my. To my ten-year-old self, this was just the pinnacle of romance, but my thirty-one-year-old present self cannot manage the cheese factor.    Jane Seymour does a perfect job of acting uncomfortable with it all.

3.  "Sully's world" mostly involves some really crappy lean-to. Michaela, for some reason, is shocked by this. Mike, do you not know this man at all?


4. Horace and the divining rod twigs. Amazing! You know what i love about this town? the way everyone can drop what they're doing to go out on larks like this.  As they all struggle to live with the drought or figure out how to move on with their lives, I'm reminded just how much living in the 19th century colorado fronteir would really suck.

5. I really love Cloud Dancing. His storyline over the entire series is incredibly compelling.