User Reviews

This is a likable episode complete with quirky characters, poignant flash-backs and even a little period music. Not wanting to spoil anything, the only thing that mars this episode for me is the mixture of feline experiences from death to dropping from high places to spinning in a bucket.

The best thing is undoubtedly the characters, an Irishman with a hot-line to his maker, a wonderful hillbilly Daddy played superbly by Royal Dano (I had no idea who he was until now but he really took quirky to a new level of character acting) and the disabled ferry-crossing matriarch played by Geraldine Brooks. And through all this walks our bemused hero dispensing wisdom, healing and pain in measure each each according to their need.

This episode focuses on the principle of helping ten others after one has helped you. The woman has times when she can't stand up and others where she's fine. The well scene is pretty silly and too long! No well would produce water at depths above the river level.

The only real fight was kind of silly too. And why didn't someone grab the pistol?

"Nine Lives" ranks as the first genuinely lighthearted adventure, Albert Salmi as the Irish miner Shawn Mulhare banished for carelessly lighting a fuse that causes an explosion near a legal encampment. His punishment is to replace their killed feline mascot with another equally adept at drinking beer (thus earning the name 'Boozer'), finding one with a crippled widow willing to part with her pet if he and Caine dig a well for her. There's also a family of brawling brothers led by papa Henry Skowrin (Royal Dano) eager to win $10,000 with Caine's capture. The most heartwarming sequence deals with a breech birth that endangers a pregnant mare, the foal emerging safe and unharmed. Football great Merlin Olsen was still playing for the Los Angeles Rams at the time, eventually earning his own Western series as Father Murphy. Back from the original pilot, Albert Salmi would return for a third season episode that also deals with animals, "Cry of the Night Beast."