Bonanza (TV Series) The Fear Merchants (1960) User Reviews

The Yellow Peril In Virginia City

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 2 November 2009]

Occasionally Bonanza took on some serious subjects and you can't get more serious than racial prejudice. This episode, The Fear Merchants deals with an unscrupulous politician stirring up hatred against the Chinese which include Victor Sen Yung as Hop Sing, the Cartwright cook.

On an errand in town Hop Sing is beaten up by some toughs that include Ray Stricklyn and Christopher Dark and these two are in the employ of Gene Evans, a lawyer who's running for mayor on a Nativist platform. It's mentioned that earlier Evans had previously sought office running against the influx of Irish immigrants, a Know Nothing platform in keeping with the times.

Anyway when young Patricia Michon is accidentally killed in front of young Guy Lee, Evans seeks to whip up a lynch mob and turn the mob into voters for him. The episode really belongs to Evans, he's an incredibly evil man.

The Fear Merchants is one of Bonanza's best early episodes, a lesson about scapegoating whole groups of people that sadly we don't learn no matter how many examples are put in front of us.

Fitting Show for Today

[mitchrmp · 7/10 · 20 January 2014]

Today it MLK Day, and what a fitting show to review! The Fear Merchants focuses on racial prejudice, but not prejudice against blacks like today's holiday; but prejudice against Chinese. When the Cartwright's cook is beaten, they have blood in their eyes, but they know that nothing can really be done unless they can catch the men red-handed.

It's also Jimmy Chang's eighteenth birthday. The store owner is scared of the hard cowboy that doesn't want Jimmy to have a happy birthday. Ben comes in and forces the store merchant to sell him the items requested. But I'm afraid a happy birthday just isn't going to happen for Jimmy this year. Tragedy happens inside a barn to a father and his two daughters. The father is scared of the truth, so tells everybody (except his shady lawyer who's running for mayor) that Jimmy is guilty of the crime.

The episode does a good job at showing racial tension and how those who fear the "stronger" men will give in even though they know it's not right. Hatred for "non-Americans" ran high in Virginia City. There didn't seem to be too many people who liked or even tolerated the Chinese, except for the Cartwrights, who of course put everything to right!

3 dead.

Then as now, the message is just as dark

[cashbacher · 10/10 · 31 August 2019]

While this episode first aired on January 30, 1960, the message remains appropriate for the latter years of the twenty-teens. There has been a major outbreak of anti-immigrant sentiment around the world, nowhere more pronounced than in the country that has accepted more immigrants than any other, the United States. The premise is that a major candidate for mayor of Virginia City is campaigning on a strong and uncompromising dislike of people of Chinese descent. The episode opens with Hop Sing, the Cartwright's cook, being beat up by thugs in the employ of the candidate. When a Chinese boy in his late teens is falsely accused of murdering a teenage girl, public sentiment runs strong and the only allies the Sheriff has against a lynch mob are the three Cartwrights. Much of the dialog could be transplanted into the modern conversation, where several highly ranked politicians openly accuse immigrants of being non-American and criminals. Just as significant are the people that acquiesce in accepting the most inflammatory rhetoric. This is a superb episode, showing the Cartwrights as the upstanding and brave citizens they claim to be. Without them, Virginia City would have reverted to mob rule and an innocent man would have been killed by the actions of a cold and ruthless man.

Mirrors what is going today.

[reb-warrior · 10/10 · 24 February 2024]

I was struck by how much this episode is mirroring what I see going on in the world today. Jimmy, a Chinese teenager is accused of killing a white woman whose family he works for as a stable hand.

Before the main plot above happened, there was a would-be politician, Gene Evans, who was running for mayor, stirring up the populace using fearmongering against the Chinese as his main platform issue. Saying stuff like the Chinese are taking jobs away, and how he wanted a "clean" town as mayor. This led to Hop Sing getting beat up on his way home for simply being Chinese.

The woman killed, was killed by her father in a struggle with a gun. Gene somehow manages to convince the father that Jimmy is to blame. The father goes along seemingly, almost brainwashed. Kind of what cult-like leaders do. They convince people to believe in something that is not true. Unfortunately, some people are gullible and can't think for themselves and go along with it such as the father and the rest of the town. Jimmy is cleared, but not before 3 people are killed, including the father who wanted to tell the truth.

Anyway, I thought the episode did a great job showing racism, and discrimination, and how politicians engage in racism and fearmongering to create platform issues. Vilifying an entire group of people. Creating fear and hate against them. All for a political agenda. This is happening today against groups of people. 10/10.

Hardly 'Deals' With Racism

[richard.fuller1 · 1/10 · 11 January 2013]

Utterly laughable episode seeking to focus on discrimination. At best an insight into Hollywood's failure to deal with 'tough issues'.

When a white girl named Sally is accidentally killed by her father, JR Ridley, he blames young Jimmy Chang. This situation is supposed to be the catalyst that a sleazy lawyer uses to win an election.

The lawyer is supposed to use swaying words to dupe Ridley into convicting Chang. Even Ridley's other daughter, jealous of how Sally conducted herself after their mother died, says Chang committed the crime.

This then is the first mistake. If she was momentarily glad her sister was out of the way, she should have been happy Chang did the deed. Or even her father then.

Actually that was the second mistake. The first was the puzzling way Ridley behaved after actually shooting his own daughter (or at best, they struggled over the gun).

Was insanity just over-taking him? Third was all this mishmash of so many ulterior motives behind bigotry; lynchings were not masking a father perpetrating a crime in his family or a child born out of wedlock or rivalries between land barons.

Nor was there some politician like Gene Evans depiction with that I'd-even-throw-my-own-mother-under-the-bus, tossing out Daffy Duck dialogue of "shoot him now. shoot him now." In the end, the episode seeking to deal with prejudice instead focuses on no Asian actors or characters.

Truly some of the best words came from Phillip Ahn as Jimmy's father, however brief they were.

The heroic Cartwright solution to such an offensive blight on American history? Reach for the gun. Wonder why we have problems with gun usage nowadays? Read into the effort what you can, regard the show as noble for its attempt but it also shows how Hollywood did (and to an extent, still does) avoid touchy subjects.