A Lost Moment in Time: Grizzly Adams (1977)

By Craig: "My name is Mad Jack and if anyone knows the story of James Adams that would be me." So says the character Mad Jack played by grizzled actor Denver Pyle at the start of every episode of the 1970s classic The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. I can remember watching this TV show when I was a kid and it was one of my favorite programs. They were simple stories that usually contained a lesson in morality. The main character of course, was Grizzly Adams himself, played by the late Dan Haggerty. He was a big man with a big heart who was accused of a murder that he did not commit. Fleeing his home he left for the mountains where he adopted a bear cub named Ben and built a cabin with the help of the trapper Mad Jack. Adams also had a native American friend Nakoma. In an early episode Adams tells a young boy how he became blood brothers with Nakoma after saving his life one day. The boy wants a blood brother of his own, and at the end of the episode is introduced to Nakoma's nephew. It is symbolic of peace and friendship and how easy it is to get along with people of another culture without the judgmental and preconceived notions that surround it.

I have started to watch these episodes again nearly 40 years after I first saw them. The first thing that I thought about was how this series would never make it on television today. The episodes are too slow moving. There is not enough violence to entertain a modern audience. People today require action and a fast pace. The attention span of today's Ritalin induced audience would be gone in the first five minutes. "Where are the guns? the ass kicking tough guys (and girls) and the cars crashing through police barricades?"  As if this vapid nonsense isn't enough, today's audience also requires there to be shows where certain people have their lives minutely examined and filmed so people can judge them. Who gives a damn about what the Kardashian's are doing? I don't. Oh well...I guess that is what our constricted, fear induced world has come to...watching bad guys with guns fight good guys with guns, and celebrating the arrogant pampered existence of reality TV stars that do nothing but engage in unfettered consumption. For my part, I'll go back to 1977, a time when I was nine years old...watching the adventures of a quiet, unassuming mountain man living among the wild animals and the peaceful forest of a an age that has long since passed.