Here Come the Brides is a television show based on the novel Gangway, Lord by historical fiction writer Jonathan Etter. Jason (Robert Brown), Joshua (David Soul), and Jeremy Bolt (Bobby Sherman) are loggers in the 1870’s and make a deal with rich businessman Aaron Stemple (Mark Lenard) to invite 100 women to Seattle to help their frustrated employees. It aired on ABC from 1968-1970. Here Comes the Brides: Season Two continues the story of the Bolt brothers and their budding lives in frontier Seattle. The second season of Here Come the Brides begins with the youngest Bolt brother, Jeremy, asking Cathy (Bridget Hanley) to marry him. The arrival of Cathy’s little brother (Eric Chase) and sister (Patti Cohoon) complicate the proposal, when they bring with them a letter from Cathy’s dying mother. The rest of the season tells the goofy mix-ups that the frontiersmen get themselves into by virtue of being strangers in a strange place.

Despite its rather adult premise-men in Seattle importing women to help grow the city-the show is very family friendly. It is playful, goofy, and ultimately conservative. It seems to compromise between traditional family values and evolving family structures. The three Bolt brothers live together without parents and the women live in a dormitory together. They are isolated in new territory-yet they honor every gender stereotype and social expectation.

Every episode is about some outsider entering their small town and not “understanding” it. In one episode, Cathy, not knowing the big city nearby, invites a fraud traveling theater group that swindles them, so they have to search for them and to get their money back. In another, Greek immigrants have a party on their land to celebrate their new home only to find out that they were sold a bad deed. Even big foot travels to Seattle to attack the loved town drunk, Clancy (Henry Beckman). The most entertaining part of that repeated story line is finding humor in how blatantly xenophobic it is. The show is a glossy Western where the criminals have the makings of any threatening character, but even with guns and loose morals, they are not scary. They are frontier cowboys that are easily fooled, malicious but stupid. This makes it pure comedy. Good always defeats evil in Here Come the Brides. The stories are epic, but with the veil of Puritan, do-the-right-thing charm. At best, it is silly and charming with innocent characters.

At best, it is silly and charming with innocent characters. At worst it is campy and repetitive. It is filmed in 1.33:1 full frame and the picture quality reminds you that you are watching something from the past. Here Come the Brides is something to watch when your little brother who wants to be a cowboy wants to watch TV with you.