Thursday, March 19, 2015

Romeo and Juliet in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

"What is Love?" By Carl Binder. Perf. Jane Seymour, Joe Lando, and Chad Allen. Dir. Daniel Attias. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Season 3, episode 19. CBS. 11 February 1995. DVD. A&E Home Video, 2009.

I never particularly liked Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman—but I also freely admit to vast ignorance of the show. First, I thought (erroneously) that the reason Beverly Crusher left the Starship Enterprise in season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation was that Gates McFadden wanted to play the role of Dr. Quinn but the schedules couldn't, for that season, be reconciled. Second, I considered the show to be merely a version of Little House on the Prairie for older viewers interested primarily in cheesy romance. Actually, the jury is still out on that one.

But I find that I have, however slightly, digressed. In an episode in season three, the town decides to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet for Valentine's Day. Not uncoincidentally, the students of the town have been given an essay assignment: Answer the question "What is Love?" After the expected kurfuffle of lovers and friends falling out and misunderstanding each other (all of which one boy, pen in hand, poignantly observes), the director getting laryngitis, the lead getting laryngitis (if I remember correctly—the show doesn't lend itself to deep concentration), et cetera, everything starts coming together just in time for the big show. And that's where the clip below picks up. Enjoy!


Links: The Episode at IMDB.


Click below to purchase the entire series from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

No comments:

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest