Here Come The Brides

A few months ago, I noticed that Here Come The Brides, one of my favorite shows from back when I was a girl, was being released on DVD. I immediately logged onto Netflix and added the Season 1 DVD to my queue, and, with the kind of perfect timing that rarely happens in real life, the first three discs arrived a few days before my birthday last week. Brides was set in Seattle back in the 1800's, and centered on the Bolt brothers, who ran a logging company. To keep their men happy, the Bolts imported 100 marriageable women from New Bedford, Mass. I can't begin to tell you how excited I was about seeing the show again. I loved the series when it aired in the late 60's (I was a mere babe in arms, I swear!), but not for the reason most of the girls I knew watched it. Almost everyone I knew went gaga over either Bobby Sherman or David Soul, but not me. I was all a-twitter over the hunky guy in the middle -- Robert Brown, who starred as the oldest Bolt brother, Jason. Probably because everyone I knew held their breath whenever David or Bobby appeared on screen, I'd spent the past (ahem) years thinking that Jason played a minor part in the show, so when I popped in that first disc and realized that Brown actually played the leading role, I settled in for a delicious few hours of old-style TV. So okay, yeah, there's a little cheesy 60-style acting, but really not much. It's better than a lot of shows that aired back then (but, of course, imho, it always was.) And Jason Bolt is every bit as hunky as I remembered him, even all these years later. But here's where we come to the cautionary part of my tale. Never, ever, ever move from fantasyland (in which Robert Brown is still Jason Bolt, and Jason Bolt is still .... whatever age he was back then) directly onto the internet. It's too easy to Google those favorite actors of days gone by and discover (gasp!) that the hunk of your dreams is actually just 2 years younger than your own father -- who just happens to be 81 this year. A thing like that can cause quite a shock to a woman's delicate system! Not for me this harsh world of reality. Excuse me while I find my remote and slide back into my fantasy world for two more episodes.