User Reviews

The Barkley family especially Richard Long stir up a real hornet's nest in the Stockton area when they rent to Fritz Weaver and his wives. The plural is correct because Weaver is a member of the Church Of Christ of Latter Day Saints, a Mormon. Though the practice of polygamy may have finally been outlawed as Utah waits to me admitted as a state, some of the brethren haven't accepted that notion. One of those is Fritz Weaver who has moved and rented Barkley land with Oliva Dunbar and Donna Baccala.

That's got the locals all in an uproar and sheriff Douglas Kennedy in a real dilemma. Mormons or not bigamy is against the law still in the rest of the USA. And lawyer Jarrod Barkley is faced with a legal conundrum.

With an LDS member actually becoming a presidential candidate this past year, this episode takes on an additional significance. The Mormons did suffer great persecution for their beliefs and not just their belief in polygamy. Something Mitt Romney did not acknowledge nor show any empathy for other persecuted minorities. He was a couple of generations removed from that. What's shown in this Big Valley episode is the real deal with Mormon persecution.

And a good group of guest star performances helps a great deal to tell this not often told story.

I like this episode because of the legal conundrum it puts Jarrod into, discovering he's leased some property to a farmer who is a Mormon and whose "daughter" is really his second wife. Married before plural marriage became illegal, the Mormon family is running from place to place, and Jarrod feels for them but knows he can't keep renting to them once he learns their situation is illegal. But what to do, especially when the rest of Stockton finds out?

Fritz Weaver plays the farmer and this is my favorite work of his. He is just stunning as the stubborn true believer who doesn't think he has done anything wrong. He loves both wives, they both love him and they love each other. They just want to be left alone but anti-Mormon fever and the law are working against them. Weaver was everywhere on TV in those days, but never better than he was here and he really made you feel for a man who was too stubborn but absolutely earnest in his beliefs and in his love for his plural wives. I watch this episode repeatedly just because Weaver is so good.

For whatever reason this episode, even though nicely done, had little interest to keep the viewer entertained. It was about religious persecution when a Mormon family arrives in Stockton and the man is married to two wives. Not really the best subject matter for a western series appearing weekly.

It begins as Jarrod lets a family rent a house on the Barkley land. He believes that he is renting to a man, his wife and his daughter. However, later he learns that the man, Hebron Grant, is married to both women.

When news around town begins to circulate, a group of men believe that it is wrong to have a Mormon family in the area breaking the laws of the State of California. Soon they get a group together and go out to the Grant's house where they hope to burned the house to the ground so that the Grant's will leave Stockton.

With the group failure- the Grants know that it will be only a matter of time before more people come to make them leave. There is a way that they can legal in the site of the State. But which path will the Grants finally take.

Not really a big fan of this subject matter. The way the show would end actually came early but dragged out until the very end of the closing credits. This was a show so far from other 'Big Valley' episodes that it seemed odd choice to air. With many good shows in the series this was not one of the better programs.