I finally saw this thing again. There was an episode of Bonanza. I remember my older brother and sister seeming to think it a big event when we watched it in 1971. It put the "real" into surrealism. It was the only episode of that show that I know of where the outdoor scenes were all filmed outside and not on a soundstage.
Little Joe has been shot in the back----bushwacked. Lying in bed, fighting for his life, he keeps having strange dreams where he's chased by a wagon wheel and takes refuge in a teepee.
In 1971, we thought we were witnessing television history, but I never saw it again. Until yesterday.
Joe doesn't dream of his late mother like Johnny Crawford did on The Rifleman. Michael Landon was an adult and being in the time period it was, he'd likely never seen a picture of her. He just has dreams of Lorne Greene calling him back from the abyss.
The only other thing they could have done differently is have him haunted by visions the countless men he killed over the course of the series. It makes me think of a line from a brief bit of western writing by Jack Handy:
"I'll be waiting for you in heaven----with a gun!"
I used to come home and watch Bonanza in syndication after school. And now that I think about it, I don't remember seeing any episode more than once. They used to film over thirty episodes per season and the show was on fourteen seasons. If I'm reading IMDb correctly, there were 430 episodes.
No wonder I never saw this again until now.
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