Main cast: Kelly Reno (Jobe H Farnum), William Boyett (Colonel William Travis), Lurene Tuttle (Harriet Wendse), and Richard Young (Davy Crockett)
Director: Michael Moore
Alamo Jobe begins during the Battle of the Alamo—you know, the one in the 1830s which saw the Mexican army laying siege to the Alamo mission and slaughtering nearly everyone inside. There are many fictitious stories and movies made around this, and Steven Spielberg of course wants to add his own because heaven forbid there is something out there that doesn’t have his grubby fingerprints on it.
The young lad Jobe Farnum is a messenger that opts to stay and help the defenders of the mission, even though he can barely aim and clearly doesn’t have the stomach for violence.
Just as he is about to bite it, however, he sees strange people in stranger fashion arguing about the Alamo in the middle of the battle. He follows them, and eventually finds himself in the 20th century, with people mistaking him for one of the actors in the reenactment of the Alamo. What has happened, and is there some kind of higher purpose awaiting him in this strange new time?
Well, this is an alright episode, if tad ordinary. Kelly Reno has to carry the whole episode with his perpetually startled facial expression, but it’s enough to get the job done. The episode is also predictable, in that eventually Jobe will learn the outcome of the siege, and he will have to decide what he should do with the knowledge.
It’s easy to guess what he will do, as well as why he will do that, but the episode focuses tad too much on Jobe’s fish out of water experience that any emotional gravitas associated with this decision feels muted. As a result, the whole thing can feel rather… wrong, somehow, in how light-hearted and even silly much of this episode is when it’s supposed to be about courage, honor, dignity, et cetera.
Perhaps this episode is aimed at kids, so it makes sense to avoid adding too many elements that may appear mature or frightening. If that were the case, it’s a shame, as there is a seed of a poignant coming of age tale here that is forced into some Disney-eque magical tale mold instead.
