The High Chaparral Best Episodes

The High Chaparral was a character driven series made up of fully developed individuals each with strengths and weaknesses, heroic attributes and character flaws. If you are looking for episodes that portray particular characteristics, this reference might help. If there are episodes you think we've missed, please let me know. Just keep in mind that these are supposed to be the best examples, not the only examples. Can't place the episode you're thinking of? Check the Episode Guide pages to jog your memory. Click on the titles listed on these pages to see the full episode description. Use your back button to come directly back to this page. The Character Guide pages show which characters played prominent roles in each episode.

Their Finest Hour(s)
Our favorite HC characters were usually courageous, loyal, self-sacrificing, and true. Here are some episodes where they best demonstrated their most heroic traits.

Characters Behaving Badly
Even heroes have a cranky day once in a while. HC characters each had episodes where their behavior was less than exemplary. In these episodes they may have been short-tempered, irritable, self-absorbed, immature, or merely thoughtless, but they always redeemed themselves somehow and set things right by the end of the hour.

**"One Way or Other . . ."**
Since it was the Old West, where everyone seemed to have a steel jaw, family disagreements occasionally turned to fisticuffs - sometimes out of sheer orneriness, sometimes out of fear or desperation, and sometimes to keep somebody out of harm's way, "one way or other". Here's a list of occasions when the situation came to blows.

Affairs of the Heart

John and Victoria had an on-going romantic relationship throughout the series and some episodes focused on that. For the other characters, serious romance was doomed to failure by the end of the hour. That didn't make them immune to Cupid's arrow, however, and these episodes are ones where he hit his mark or at least raised a passing interest. For Mano, that was most episodes.

*"Thank Goodness It Only Grazed Him"*
As unlucky as most of the HC characters were in love, they were very fortunate when it came to escaping serious injury. Being the wild west, bullets and arrows were constantly flying and rattlesnakes might appear from behind any rock or bush. Our characters were often stricken, but never so seriously that they couldn't be up and about by the end of the hour. Here are some of the more serious injuries, not counting the bar room brawls and fist fights, which occurred regularly with never so much as a loose tooth.

"Not even 110 degree heat will get me out of my long johns!"

The High Chaparral was a family show that aired in the late sixties and early seventies, so we didn't often get to see our characters out of their regular outfits. When they did remove a shirt or appear in their long johns or a bath tub it was always tastefully done, but still swoonable. So here are a few episodes to swoon for.

"That one was so funny I's like to bust a gusset !"

Certain scenes and sometimes whole episodes were played mostly for fun. Knowing our characters' more serious traits made the funny scenes that much funnier. HC's humorous moments were always genuine, not slapstick, and usually added yet another dimension to the characters. In the humor department auxiliary characters were important as well. Just having Bart Kellogg or Perlita in the story should be enough to qualify it for this list of humorous episodes.