Episode 14: Little Arcadia

Review by Dale

August 12, 2000

In the city of Promontory, Milly is writing letters to each of her siblings. This keeps her up all night due to her enormous family. When asked why she stopped writing home, Meryl replies that it is troublesome and that her family would not respond well to her traveling with an outlaw. Outside, Vash is shielding an elderly couple from a gun waving maniac. The maniac is telling them to give up their land to Morgan. When a villager taunts him, the man takes aim. Vash tries to intervene, but he is taken down by the agents in an effort to prevent him from becoming involved in any destruction this time. Milly then proceeds to shoot the man onto his back. The building behind the man collapses and ends the standoff. The agents are asked by the elderly couple to be their bodyguards, and they only agree to prevent Vash from taking the job. The group visits the piece of land the maniac was talking about and we learn why it is so badly wanted. In the middle of a desert wasteland, it is an oasis built up gradually over many decades. The old man plans to turn the deed over to the city to keep it safe forever. When nighttime comes, a group of volunteer guards relaxes inside the old man's house with the agents minus Vash, who has gone back to the city. Meryl notices a crayon drawing on a desk depicting the couple when they were younger along with a child, but the old man quickly covers it up. After going outside, the agents find the maniac hiding in the bushes. Meryl recognizes him from the drawing and deduces that he must be the old man's son. Milly takes several swings at him for pointing a gun at his parents. The old man comes outside to break up the fight and is surprised to see his estranged son, Bardwick.

Back at Morgan's headquarters, thugs have reported that Bardwick is trying to reason with his parents instead of carrying out his assignment to kill them. Now seeking more extreme measures, Morgan hires a female member of the Nebraska family and her three children. Instead of a mad scientist in the pocket, this time we have a leather clad girl on the shoulder. The mother throws her sons like footballs toward the old couples house. After a round of fighting, a standoff occurs between the old man and Morgan. Offering to buy the land, Morgan holds out a check with the amount left blank. The old man answers with a bullet through the envelope. The agents join the standoff and Meryl attempts to scare Morgan with her pair of derringer pistols. Inside, Bardwick discovers the deed behind the drawing and heads on a motorcycle with it. To prevent him from reaching the city, the Nebraska family's mother hurls one of her sons at him. In a carbon copy scene from episode 5, Meryl shoots at just the right moment to save Bardwick. A distraught mother Nebraska falls crying to the floor, pinning Morgan and ending the threat. The old couple states that it's now all up to Bardwick to make the right decision with the deed, and they tell Meryl that "you can never sever ties with family." Upon handing it over to the city, Bardwick learns that he was the beneficiary to the land. He grows teary eyed knowing that his father truly cared about him. The episode closes with Meryl finally writing a letter home and rushing to mail it before they miss the bus Vash is on.

This is the weakest episode I have seen so far. The concept of family is crammed down our throats with three layers of it. We have the agent's family at the beginning, Bardwick's family in the middle, and the Nebraska family in the end. The whole episode seemed to be set up just to teach Milly a simple lesson about not losing contact with loved ones. The Nebraska family was purely recycling from episode 5 complete with the final scene. The episode would have lost nothing by leaving them out. To top the whole thing off, Vash is missing for 3/4 of the episode. In short, it failed on both plot and humor levels. Back to back with a clip show, this leaves me starving to see Vash go on a new adventure.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

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