I am by no means an expert on TV Westerns. (Actually, you could put “I am by no means an expert” on my headstone because I’m not an expert on anything; I’m just really good at running my mouth.) But I have watched all of The Big Valley and Bonanza, and just about every episode of Gunsmoke thanks to my father’s latest binge watching habits, and I’ve noticed something.

Women in the old west were pretty weak. The plot typically calls for them to be at the mercy of something, usually a man. The man is either a bad man who makes everyone miserable or a man she loves who is either a bad man who makes everyone miserable or a good man who makes terrible life choices.

I honestly think the latter makes my eye twitch more.

There’s this insinuation that all a woman wants is to have a man and that she will put up with anything to have one, even if that man is garbage. The number of times I’ve heard, “You have to do X because I am your husband,” or “because you love me” or “because you don’t have a choice.” I would be a widow. Men outnumber women in the Old West. I will find me a new one that does not try my nerves to such an extent.

Which brings me to my next observation.

Men did outnumber women back in the Old West because it was a rough life. It wasn’t for everyone. You had to be pretty tough to survive out there. So, it stands to reason that most of the women out there would be a little more involved in self-preservation. They probably wouldn’t be as tolerant of their man’s bullshit because finding another one would pose no challenge.

Also, women would have to be tougher to survive out there, period. Depending on a man wouldn’t be the best strategy because if your man is shit or if he dies -which was probably pretty likely, especially in a TV Western- a woman would be shit out of luck. And that has been the plot of more than one of these episodes. The women are always looking for a man to save them.

I find this most egregious when it comes to the saloon girls working at the Long Branch on Gunsmoke. We all know what their business really is -wink wink nudge nudge- and the fact is that in order to survive that lifestyle, you had to be a helluva lot tougher than the men. Looking for a fella to save you wasn’t going to work out in your favor and being pushed around by the clientele was bad for business. Miss Kitty was a bad ass broad, but I feel like she should have shot a lot more men.

Which brings me to the flip side. Sort of.

If the women weren’t weak, they were wily. They were plotting, cunning, and conniving, using their feminine wiles to get what they wanted. It frequently manifests as a woman pitting two men against each other, or using a man as a proxy to enact either vengeance or self-enrichment. These women are tough, in their way, and that’s a bad thing. Being tough and resilient is at odds with femininity, at least in the minds of cowboys and the men who wrote them.

Of course, there are exceptions. Miss Kitty and Victoria Barkley are notable in this respect. Both women are fiery, independent, and not apt to take shit from any man. Victoria Barkley was skilled with a whip and even though I thought Miss Kitty should have shot more men, that didn’t mean she didn’t have a gun behind the bar and that she didn’t use it. I also saw her whip a man with a parasol once. I wouldn’t cross either one of those women.

I suppose they didn’t want independent, strong women to have too much representation in the Old West.

The ladies might get ideas.

It’s a common trope on a cop show.

The good guys have caught the bad guy, but the bad guy gets off on a technicality. The good guys are then forced to watch their bad guy walk free to create more of their brand of mayhem, usually while giving an impassioned version of “I’m going to nail that guy if it’s the last thing I do,” a lyric that fits into almost any melody a fictional super cop wants to sing.

Naturally, since we’re on the side of our good guys, we’re incensed with them. The justice system is clearly flawed/broken if it would allow a bad guy to walk free, a bad guy that we know is a bad guy because our good guys said so. We’re confident that our cops will see that justice is done no matter what those fancy attorneys and incompetent judges do. And, of course, they do. Just as we knew they would.

It’s a clever trick of copaganda.

“Technicality”. It makes it sound like someone didn’t dot an I or cross a T. And while it is accurate -the defendant wasn’t found not guilty, they were released because of a technical error- it’s also deceptive. The shows tend to gloss over how these “technicalities” are part of due process.

Due process is that pesky part of the Constitution that guarantees a person is granted certain rights and protections when dealing with the legal system. These are guaranteed rights that apply to everyone, not just citizens, not just the innocent. Due process covers such things as habeas corpus, the right to remain silent, the right to counsel, the right to cross examine a witness, the right to a speedy trial, the right to access to the evidence, etc.

Cop shows love to make defense attorneys look morally questionable. After all, they’re defending the bad guys. They also love to make them look sneaky when they use these “technicality tricks”. While they gloss over the nature of the technicalities, they also gloss over the role of the defense attorney. Their job is to defend their client. Part of that defense is to make sure that their client’s rights aren’t being violated.

An episode of Hawaii Five-O deals with the consequences of due process in an interesting way.

In the sixth season episode “Mother’s Deadly Helper”, an accused man has his case dismissed because the prosecution can’t produce a needed witness to proceed with their case. The defense attorney asks for a dismissal based on the fact that the repeated continuations that the state’s attorney has asked for violates his client’s right to a speedy trial.

It feels like a miscarriage of justice because we learn later that this guy is a hitman. But it’s not because even hitmen are entitled to their rights.

His freedom is short-lived as a vigilante snipes him as soon as he leaves the courthouse. The disgruntled citizen in this episode is fed up with “soft-hearted judges” letting criminal walk. The “soft-hearted judges” in question are committing the unforgivable acts of upholding the rights of individuals.

In the context of cop shows, it feels egregious to allow these bad guys the same rights as the innocent folks because what we want to see is our good guys putting them behind bars for good.

I suppose it feels egregious in the context of the real world, too. Especially when it seems like those rights favor a select group of the population.

But we all have them.

Even fictional bad guys.