83 replies to this topic

[RandomWatcher]

I'm surprised there's not already a thread on this. This show had to be the western on the verge of a new century show ever. I mean come on, it had Bruce Campbell! Uh...that was Bruce Campbell right?

It had everything:
The sarcastic sidekick bounty hunter
The hooker with the heart of gold
The inventor with the wacky yet useful inventions
The futuristic bad guy
The ever loyal horse

*edited to correct spelling*

Edited by RandomWatcher, Mar 7, 2006 @ 4:38 PM.

[Midnight Creeper]

Sadly, almost no one from this show went on to greater things (although plenty went on to show up in The Pretender or assorted guest spots on various Trek series). Bruce Campbell rules, of course, and Kelly Rutherford still pops up here and there. Not so much with the other principals.

Creator Carlton Cuse is now a producer on Lost. And M.C. Gainey, who was on Brisco County a couple of times, now plays Zeke the Beardless on that show. Coincidence? I think n--yeah, it's a coincidence.

[queenb]

And M.C. Gainey, who was on Brisco County a couple of times, now plays Zeke the Beardless on that show. Coincidence? I think n--yeah, it's a coincidence.

Ha! Maybe everything strange that happens on Lost can be explained by the Orb.

[roosterboy]

Now that The Muppet Show and The Adventures of Pete & Pete have (started to) come out on DVD, this is the one show that I must have. I've heard rumors that 2006 will finally be the year, but I've been let down before.

Best FOX show ever. It's mostly been downhill since then.

[Emeraldfire]

I stumbled across this show years ago (in Australia) when it was the last episode to be shown. Have waited in vain ever since for it to come on again (unless it's been on again and I missed it because it was on at some ungodly hour of the morning).

If Fox made it, it may turn up on Fox8 on Foxtel (PayTV) sometime.

[ladyDonna]

The TVShowsonDVD news page on this series says that there is a good chance it'll be on DVD this summer. Apparently they're supposed to have shot bonus material in January. Let's hope this pans out!

[roosterboy]

And TVShowsOnDVD is now having a poll to help choose the set cover art!

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/brisco

Maybe it'll finally happen!

Edited by roosterboy, Mar 8, 2006 @ 2:45 PM.

[EileenH]

I've heard rumors that 2006 will finally be the year, but I've been let down before.

I read about it on Bruce Campbell's website. I will most definitely be getting this one on DVD.

But I have to admit that it was nice to hear that the theme is still being used by NBC Sports, I last heard it during the Olympics.

And because I have to: Fox you suck!

[amityisland]

And TVShowsOnDVD is now having a poll to help choose the set cover art!

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/brisco

Maybe it'll finally happen!

Oh, I hope so! crosses fingers
BTW, I voted for the one on the left.

[roosterboy]

Which one? They change positions as you reload the page. I voted for the one that shows Bruce holding a gun and not just his big head. That head one kinda scared me.

(And, no, before you ask, I didn't find that out by voting multiple times. I couldn't recall which one was on the left so I went to see which one amityisland had voted for and saw the big head cover on the left. Not imagining that anyone could vote for such an ugly cover, I reloaded a few times and saw them change.





I don't know why I'm telling y'all this. Like you care. I guess I'm just so giddy at the prospect of this series finally coming out!)

Stupid mismatched tags!

Edited by roosterboy, Mar 12, 2006 @ 7:48 AM.

[ladyDonna]

I also voted for the Brisco-with-gun-in-front-of-montage cover. But whichever one it is , it'll be fine by me!

[Selannia]

The only reason I ever started watching X-Files was because it was on after Brisco County. Once again, Fox took a lovely Friday night line-up and killed it. Bastards.

Christian Clemenson was recently on Boston Legal, and Billy Drago is definitely in the "Hey! It's That Guy" department. Whenever I see Clemenson, I still think of him as Socrates.

[c3k]

i dont know why i always got this show confused with remo williams. i guess they both had ridiculous names.

[Selannia]

I wonder if there'd be any way to just buy the first half of the series.

You know, the good half.

Yeah. Before the whole story got changed.

Brisco County Jr. is a perfect example of how America needs to embrace the 10 episodes and out school of television. This show would've been perfect for 10 eps then ended the arc. If they wanted to do a second series, maybe Brisco could be the mayor of a town or something and have new secondary characters.

[Jolie Blanc]

I was surprised and pleased to see that Brisco County is on the line-up for the new AOL TV-on-Demand thingie In2TV -- http://television.aol.com/in2tv.

You can watch them, for free, legally! Hooray.

:)

[amityisland]

Which one? They change positions as you reload the page. I voted for the one that shows Bruce holding a gun and not just his big head. That head one kinda scared me.

yeah, I voted for the non-big head one too.

[SVNBob]

We now have release date, price, extras, and official (non big-head) cover art. All info here.

[roosterboy]

$100? Oy, better start saving those pennies. Wish there were more commentaries, too; most of those extras don't interest me much at all.

Edited by roosterboy, Mar 28, 2006 @ 10:47 PM.

[sphinx81]

Oh my Lord, I absolutely adored this show when it first came on, to the point where Bruce Campbell was my first ever (and most enduring to this day) adolescent crush . I was too young when the Evil Dead series first hit to watch it, so for a long time, I only knew him from this series. I still wonder to this day why the X-Files was picked up and this wasn’t. It could have gone in so many different but good directions, especially after the whole Orb was destroyed and they had a chance to start over.

I will say the 2nd to 3 ½ seasons weren’t the best, but compared to all the rest of the crap on t.v. it was pretty damn good. You’d think I would’ve learned from the cancellation of this as far as the Friday Night Timeslot of Death goes on Fox, but literally a decade later I was still cursing Fox when Firefly disappeared (and don’t even get me started on wishing someone would do a Brisco/Firefly crossover fanfic with the Orb tossing the Brisco folks into the future with the Firefly crew. Yeah, I’m that nerdy, ahem).

[amityisland]

$100? Oy, better start saving those pennies. Wish there were more commentaries, too; most of those extras don't interest me much at all.

I never get why some shows' individual season sets are around the 35 - 40 dollar mark (Quantum Leap, Buffy, etc) and why some are 100 dollars are more ( I'm looking at you, Star Trek). Just bugs me.

Oh well, who am I kidding, I'm still buying it.

[stlbf]

$100? Damn. Forty or even $50 I could possibly handle, but $100? It'll have to go on my "Family, If You Love Me, One of Ya'll Will Get Me This For X-Mas" list. Or something after X-mas with cash from said family. It had better have some outstanding extras on it. Unlike the bare bones Space: Above and Beyond set from Best Buy. Perhaps Costco will have it pretty cheap.

[roosterboy]

It had better have some outstanding extras on it.

In my opinion, it doesn't. The only extra that sounds interesting to me is the pilot episode commentary by Bruce and Carlton Cuse. I'd gladly pay $100 if Bruce did commentaries on even just half of the eps. As it is, I'll still pay the $100, but I'm gonna bitch about it.

[teegee]

I just rented the first disc of this series, and the pilot (and the commentary) is pretty great. Aside from that...eh. I can't really get into it anymore. I find it kind of amusing, but some of the acting is horrid, and the mythology seems all over the place (admittedly, only four episodes in). I'm glad I rented - $100 is a lot to spend to realize something's not as good as you remember.

[Roark13579]

I tend to agree with those weaknesses, but I still loved the show. I couldn't take my eyes off Dixie, but it wasn't because of her acting, which I always thought was atrocious. In the commentary, Cuse admits that he never really figured out what the orbs were, even in his own mind, so it's not surprising that the mythology wandered. Of course, this was before shows had five-year plans and bibles and podcasts and Internet fan groups filling in whatever backstory the show hasn't provided. They wrote an episode and got it on film, and if they were still working the next week, they did it all again.

I've only seen the first disc so far, but I remember watching the original series and groaning a lot at the post-Bly episodes -- and not always in a good way -- especially when the Elvis character came along. The football episode with Terry Bradshaw, on the other hand, was so cheesy it went beyond bad and hit good again. (A recapper on this site once wrote about cheese being like multiplying negative numbers: if a show has two cheesy qualities, they cancel each other out, but if you add a third, it's cheesy again, or something like that. I've forgotten who wrote it, and wish I could find it back.)

Weaknesses aside, though, I think I'll still laugh at the first Pete's Piece exchange, no matter how many times I see it:

Forget about it? You mean... rip it from my memory like a picture from a book? A picture of a small boy... kind of shy... with big ears who only wanted to be liked. And the laughing faces of his classmates, mocking him because he forgot to wear his pants to school? Is that what you mean?

Pete Hutter could have made the show worth watching all by himself, even without the awesomeness of Brisco, Bly, Bowler, Socrates, Wickwire, and Comet.

A couple interesting things that I'd completely forgotten since the original run of the show: Brisco and Dixie sleep together the first chance they get. I remembered it as a typical will-they-won't-they TV attraction. Also, I had no idea that Brisco never shot anyone. I'd also agree that the pilot's commentary is great: the perfect mix of behind-the-scenes technical stuff and nostalgic chat. I was also amazed at how well the guys remembered the show after 10+ years. You could tell it really meant a lot to them.

One really cool thing about this show is that I've shown the pilot to a few people with very different tastes in TV shows, and they all loved it. I think you have to be fairly quick to pick up on all the jokes, but other than that, you don't have to be a fan of a particular genre to enjoy it. A lot of successful shows had shaky first seasons. It's a shame Brisco didn't get a second season to figure out where it was going.

[Loandbehold]

Sale on the DVDs at amazon.

[Gharlane]

While I didn't love this show, I enjoyed what I remember seeing.

[Kel Varnsen]

I loved this show as a kid but I agree that it doesn't really hold up as well all these years later. Some episodes are great but there are a few so far that are pretty bad. I have watched the first few discs so far and the one where his dad's ghost helps him find the kidnapped kid is boring as hell, although the one where he goes back to his hometown a few episodes later is great. Plus that episode had Sol Star from Deadwood in it and Briscoe and Bowler acting like cops (Briscoe pulling over horse racers and giving them a sobriety test, and Bowler dealing with a domestic dispute). Across the board I think the entire series would have been just terrible if not for Bruce Campbell.

[roosterboy]

Across the board I think the entire series would have been just terrible if not for Bruce Campbell.

Doesn't that pretty much describe about half of his career?