Cimarron City - The Unaccepted

This is a lovely episode of Cimarron City. I say that like I know the rest of the episodes. I don't. I bought the series purely for this one episode and haven't watched any of the others yet. It has the feeling of a poor man's Gunsmoke (why oh why did Peter Graves never act on Gunsmoke? I would have paid to see that!). But still, this episode has great beauty in it. Peter Graves is a Danish immigrant who has come with a group of other Danish people to settle in America. He has lovely Victorian era clothes and a Danish accent and says a very few things in Danish. He has a knock-down, tumble-around fight. He drives a covered wagon. He fights fire. He tosses hot bread rolls about. He's cute with small animals. These screencaps are by no means comprehensive and I was just skimming through to take them, having watched the episode in full a good few months ago, but I thought I might as well upload them here.

Peter is playing Jens Seidengaard, a Danish immigrant. He's frustrated at the immigration man. There's an interesting mix of these people being a good, upright folk, but seeming quite quick to have fights.

Jens is on his covered wagon. I'd like to take him into the back of that thing...

Fiddling with the horse's harness.

He meets a lovely widow and her daughter, and is generally charming.

This is where they come into town, only to find out they were duped. There is no land office and no free land.

In the saloon (I almost wrote 'pub') they get into a fight. But Jens doesn't fight. He gets his incredibly strong sidekick to fight.

I can't quite remember what's happening here. I think it's an arrangement being made to rent land, with the option to buy for a lot of money later.

So all the Danes get busy making, washing, helping, cleaning, generally making money in order to be able to eventually buy the land. Jens has a joyful moment picking up a hot roll and tossing it about.

He's showing the widow's young daughter a calf, but we don't need to see her, just him.

Contextless looking pretty. A kind of rivalry rises up between Jens and the sheriff (I think?) who is the series star and has leased them the land. He never expected them to really want to stay. Jens feels betrayed.

Still feeling betrayed...

In the end it all comes down to fisticuffs in the office.

He tumbles over to land at the widow's feet. (She thinks it's all about her - they both fancy her - but I think it's more about dishonour.)

They're tired after their fight, poor boys.

Still tired.

But then on Independence Day some well meaning idiots set off fireworks to show the incomers how Americans celebrate, and it sets fire to the Danes' buildings.

Jens is all sooty and rather upset.

But then (yay!) the sheriff guy offers to sell them the land for what he originally paid for it so they can stay on and settle, as a way of making right what the idiot townspeople made wrong. Jens can marry the widow. All is good. Well, except for my captions, but I don't have enough knowledge about the episode to write good captions.

The picture below shouldn't be here. I uploaded it by accident. But it's pretty, so I'll let it stay.