When I was eight, Roy Rogers was awesome and I couldn't wait to see Brady's Jeep NellyBelle appear on screen. It didn't occur to me until I was a bit older just how stupid it was to have such an anachronism turn up in a western set at the early part of the 20th century. The most obvious question raised by this show is that if a cowboy could own a Jeep that never needed gas, why didn't any of the bandits ever carry M1911 .45 Caliber automatics and why didn't the bank robbers ever show up with M1 Carbines or BARs? Today, watching the show just grates on my nerves. Frankly, I wince less watching the racist posturing of earlier The Lone Ranger shows that I do the goody-two-shoes absurdity that was the world of Roy Rogers. I'm just sayin...

This show was already in Saturday morning re-runs when I first watched it. And, I loved it! The "good vs. evil" plots might seem corny, by today's standards. But, we have to remember that this was produced during comparatively simpler times. When morality was just as black-and-white as the film stock the studios used.Furthermore, the hero and heroine practiced what they preached! Nor did they preach using four-letter words. Unlike, say, Dennis Franz on NYPD BLUES.Last, but not least? This was not a "steampunk" Western.The fictional city in which Roy and Dale made their home was contemporaneous with the shows' audience. It's just that the locals maintained a 19th-century ambiance for the tourist trade, similar to Virginia City, Nevada. So, the mixture of "old and new," especially modes of transportation, was most definitely _not_ anachronistic!In short, I am unalterably convinced that this show should be praised, rather than condemned, for the beneficial values it tried to instill in its mostly young viewers. That some of us might not have grown up to live by those values is--to paraphrase Shakespeare--not the fault of this show's stars. But, of ourselves.

Not to be derogatory, but I always wondered why Roy Rogers was the King of the Cowboys and John Wayne wasn't. What WAS John Wayne, anyway? Oh yeah, The Duke. Oh well. I guess it was because Wayne couldn't sing with the Sons of the Pioneers, although Wayne did sing a little in "Hatari" and didn't have that bad of a voice... but I digress.Who could resist Roy Rogers' charm? I mean, he was the nicest guy in the world. He even smiled while he was roundin' up the bad guys after they'd been bested.Dale had the best post-menopausal vibrato I'd ever heard after she got a little older - but she was Roy's partner and could pull her gun on an ornery desperado as fast as any of the ranch hands.Roy had Trigger (horse) and Bullet (dog), but, Pat Brady had Nellybell (a jeep). Pat Brady was played by Pat Brady, just as Roy Rogers played Roy Rogers and Dale Evans played Dale Evans. Were there any actors in this series who played anyone other than themselves? I mean, did Trigger and Bullet even have different names than their stage names? Pat was a great comedian - goofy face and lovable. A great sidekick for Roy.And of course, Roy and Dale sang "Happy Trails" at the end of each show. That right there was worth the half hour watch.

Oh how I wish THIS would show up in reruns! This and "Lassie" (with Tommy Rettig) were my favorite shows as a kid, in an era of great kiddie shows. In my little-girl eyes, Dale really had the perfect life--she got the horse AND Roy! It didn't matter what the plots were; they were basically all the same anyway. But there was something about Roy and Dale that was very appealing, and Pat and Nellybelle were fun too. One nice thing about it was Dale was not a damsel in distress; she was Roy's partner, and although secondary, she did her part to help him get the bad guys. ["Annie Oakley" had a female lead without a male costar, except for her kid brother. I think these two shows helped contribute to the rise of femininism in the 60's.] Every kid knew "Happy Trails" by heart, and Roy and Dale sang it right to us at the end of every show. Wonderful memories!