I promised ten of these bad boys, and although I didn’t get them all in before the hiatus, I have several I still want to cover, so I’m going to keep chugging away at them whenever summer TV’s lackluster programming provides an opportunity. Up next, another influential offering from my childhood.
The couple: Dr. Mike, awesome unconventional female doctor in nineteenth-century Colorado Springs, is getting married to mountain man, hatchet-thrower and all around stud Byron Sully. The ensuing event launches Dr. Mike into an identify crisis, Sully into a political fiasco, and the whole town into railroad-inspired fits of cosmopolitanism.
The premise: It’s a two-part episode, and because Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman episodes were already an hour long, they have space for quite a bit of wedding wackiness. Custer’s trying to hunt down the best man, the bride doesn’t want to change her name, one of the bridesmaids has an STD, and the wedding dress gets completely remade on the morning of the ceremony.
General Custer and the best man
The inevitable sequence of mishaps: To begin, Sully’s best man of choice, Cloud Dancing, doesn’t look likely to RSVP for the wedding because Custer just killed his wife and son, and he’s now wanted by the government (bummer). Dr. Mike has crazy forward-thinking ideas like not changing her name and making Sully also wear a wedding band, and he’s not really on board. In addition, the train is finally coming to Colorado Springs! When it arrives, it brings Dr. Mike’s overbearing mother, who is determined to do the whole wedding Boston-style, including a wedding dress that Dr. Mike hates. Dr. Mike’s mother rubs Sully the wrong way, and he immediately disappears into the wilderness in search of Cloud Dancing. Even though he has a bounty on his head, Cloud Dancing promises to be Sully’s best man, and they’re both immediately chased down by Custer, who takes Sully into custody. Custer abandons Sully in the mountains, leading the whole town to believe Sully ditched her, but he returns full of apology and vitriol toward Custer. Sully agrees to let Dr. Mike keep her name if he doesn’t have to wear a wedding ring.
On the morning of the wedding, Dr. Mike’s mother still insists on traditional and refuses to walk her down aisle, while Dr. Mike makes her bridesmaids re-construct her entire wedding dress so that it reflects both what her mother wants (a giant train) and what she wants (more lace, less flouncy top). It’s a good thing, too, because Sully forgoes the tux jacket for Cloud Dancing’s wedding tunic over black tuxedo pants – an unusual look. Custer shows up for the wedding, as does Cloud Dancing, and the well-meaning townspeople “accidentally” knock poor Custer unconscious. Dr. Mike’s mother walks her down the aisle at the last minute, Cloud Dancing makes a hasty getaway after the ceremony, and the whole thing comes off beautifully in the end.
All that, plus Brian feels left out because he’s too young to be a groomsman, but too old to be a ring bearer, AND a whole C plot dealing with Dr. Mike’s sister, whose evil ex-husband gave her an STD.
The clichés: Dr. Mike has to ask Dorothy about “falling off a log” because she’s never done it (which is astonishing given that she’s nearly forty at this point), bountiful restrictive etiquette rules, bride who doesn’t want that much fuss, pre-wedding spats, overbearing mother, groom says goodbye to his dead first wife by cutting off the Jedi Padawan-like memorial braid he’s been sporting for the last decade or so (okay, not really a cliché, but it should be!).
The bridesmaid dresses: Not that bad, considering the nineteenth-century possibilities.
And in the end…: Dr. Mike and Sully roll away from town on perhaps the most awesome honeymoon vehicle ever seen: a railroad car made over as a Wild West/Victorian love nest. Seriously, I am freakin’ jealous of this thing. It must have been satisfactory, because the episode ends with some surprisingly sexy undoing-the-corset shots, and a final fade-to-black on a gaslamp that’s rocking back and forth – presumably rocking to the motion of the train, but it’s clearly meant to be evocative. “Sully!” she says. “It isn’t even dark yet!” “It’s getting darker and darker,” he says, slowly pulling down the shades. Oooooh yeah.
The verdict: LOVE IT. I love the random sister with the STD, I love recasting General Custer as a wedding crasher, I love that Dr. Mike keeps her name, and I really love how hot for each other Sully and Dr. Mike are. Honestly, for all the moralizing and politically correct allegorizing the show does, it lets its protagonists get quite steamy, and it’s hard to dislike such a strange, obviously sexual pairing.
