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This article contains some spoilers for Season 2 of “1923.”
If you are an adult American Girl doll fan, the show you should be watching is “1923” on Paramount+.
In case creator Taylor Sheridan and/or star Harrison Ford feel the need to clutch their neckerchiefs and bandoliers, be assured that I mean this as the highest compliment. Though “1923” has already grown its audience significantly in its second and final season, there should be no shame in reaching out to the stans of another highly successful historical fiction series.
American Girl alumnae are a broad and deeply committed bunch, and they should know, if they don’t already, that a series exists in which a wondrous medley of female characters deals with adult versions of the historic adversities (and fashions!) that make up so many of the dolls’ backstories. (Think the “Saturday Night Live” American Girl doll skit but with sex and guns.)
Long before the pandemic, many adults turned to toys from Legos to collectible items to tap into their inner childhood for comfort
As a Day 1 fan of the series, I have never been more irritated by a weekly release. Given the chance, I would have binged the second season, currently midway through, in a day while searching “Cara Dutton outerwear” and “Mary Jane pumps” on my phone.
As with Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” universe, American Girl founder Pleasant Rowland built a franchise on a series of characters whose adventures reflected the ever-changing United States. Unlike Sheridan, she aimed her stories at young girls and offered appropriately costumed dolls with each. (I’m not saying Sheridan should consider this, but I’m also not ruling it out.)
Her oft-stated purpose was to empower girls by giving them a narrative alternative to fashion plate (Barbie) or mommy-in-training (Cabbage Patch and every other babydoll) while underlining the importance of women throughout history.
All of which could easily describe “1923.” A prequel to “Yellowstone” and a sequel to spinoff series “1883,” “1923” sees the Dutton family’s Montana ranch under siege. The adversaries are typical of the American West — drought, snow, arguments over grazing rights — but above them all is dastardly millionaire Donald Whitfield (Timothy Dalton), who has eyes only for wealth and power and no appreciation for the majesty of the land or those attempting to honestly work it. (If that weren’t enough, his contempt for women is pathological, not to mention criminal.)
Whitfield wants the Dutton ranch, which is currently occupied by Jacob Dutton (Ford) and his wife, Cara (Helen Mirren), their great-nephew Jack (Darren Mann) and his wife, Elizabeth (Michelle Randolph). In Season 1, an attack led by Whitfield’s henchman Banner Creighton (Jerome Flynn) left Jacob injured, and Jack’s and Elizabeth’s fathers dead. In desperation, Cara summoned their nephew Spencer (Brandon Sklenar) home from Africa, where he worked as a big-game hunter and guide.
As luck would have it, Spencer had just met and fallen in love with Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer), a very posh Brit longing for adventure. At the end of Season 1, and midway through their Odyssean journey to America, the now-married couple were separated and forced to make their way to Montana, and each other, on their own.
In a parallel story, Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves) first endured, then escaped the horrors of a reservation school, killing several of her torturers in the process. Halfway through Season 2, she is in Texas and on the lam from a murderously racist U.S. marshal (Jamie McShane) and a vengeful French priest (Sebastian Roché). As of Episode 4, she has had no contact with a Dutton, but with Spencer making his way through Texas, it feels like it’s just a matter of time.
The appearance of U.S. Marshal Mamie Fossett bodes well, not just for the American Girl spirit (A female marshal! Based on a real historical figure! And played by Jennifer Carpenter!) but also for a bridge between storylines — she’s hunting the men who are hunting Teonna and Spencer, and neither can go three feet without getting waylaid by the law.
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1. Two tough women: Aminah Nieves as Teonna, who is on the lam. (Lauren Smith/Paramount+) 2. Jennifer Carpenter as Marshal Mamie Fossett, who is based on a real-life historical figure. (Lo Smith/Paramount+)
This being a western, there are plenty of menfolk squinting and spitting, making threats and getting into fights; certainly Jacob and Spencer are heroes of traditional dye. But the river that runs through “1923” is a story of women.
Cara, an Irish immigrant, runs the ranch, particularly after Jacob’s catastrophic injury. She is as adept with a rifle as she is with a frying pan (not to mention rom-com-worthy banter with Jacob), and no one delivers a spine-straightening “It’s the land, Katie Scarlett” pep talk better. Her no-nonsense empathy shines particularly when she’s dealing with Elizabeth, whose life at the ranch has been a series of unfortunate events, including being shot and suffering a miscarriage. In Season 2, she is almost immediately attacked by a wolf and forced to have rabies shots. Not surprisingly, Lizzie claims she is done with the Dutton ranch and as soon as all those shots have been administered, she’s getting on the next train to Boston.
We all know she’ll stay — for one thing, it’s winter in the West and there’s no way trains are making it from Bozeman to Boston — but it is still satisfying to see such a normal, natural reaction to the many hardships she’s endured. As every American Girl knows, true resilience is about moving forward when you honestly think you can’t.
Teonna does not think much of America, and she has reason. Though her crimes were brutal, the abuse that led to them was even more so. Yet even while being chased by a diabolical marshal, she is naturally kind, hardworking and open to romance. (Kaya’aton’my, the only Native American doll, lived too early to be threatened with boarding school, but she was kidnapped by another tribe and her family suffered from smallpox.)
But there is no “1923” character who is more American Girl than Alexandra, which is slightly irritating because she’s British. Lovely to look at and accustomed to things going her way, Alex learns very quickly that life with a Dutton means nonstop adventure and calamity. After she is separated from Spencer, the traumatic events just keep on coming. First she must sail to England second class, then make her way through Ellis Island, where people are treated like cattle and single women like sexual prey. Despite an Irish woman’s salacious advice that she’ll have to pay one way or another, Alex’s grit, and reading of Walt Whitman, allow her to disembark in New York relatively unscathed (with her neutral-toned outfit, complete with a fleece-lined light-gray coat and white embroidered stockings, miraculously spotless.)
Alas, despite many warnings about the dangers of New York City, Alex wanders into a Grand Central Terminal women’s room where she is robbed and beaten by a man whose face should appear next to “ruffian” in the dictionary. Still possessing her ticket and not much else, she runs for the train only to find she is, as the man at the ticket counter warned, sharing her compartment with an Irish woman and her children. (With the exception of Cara, the Irish take it on the chin a bit in “1923.”)
I will not spoil Episode 5, but let’s just say her troubles are just beginning.
With her can-do spirit and as much bad luck as poor Lizzie, Alex is proof that the pioneer spirit comes in every shape and size, including a woman who would choose to wear white embroidered stockings and a silk and velvet neutral-toned outfit on a transatlantic sea voyage. (Honestly, no adult character this side of “Downton Abbey” has cried out more for fashion-centered merch, and if someone will tell me where to get that coat, or her velvet skirt and matching vest, I will be very grateful.)
Heading into the back half of the season, I, like any viewer not made of stone, long for Alex to reunite with her beloved Spencer. But I look forward even more to the day when she joins Cara and Lizzie, and perhaps Teonna, at the Dutton ranch. Spencer may be good in a fight but against such a formidable band of American women, not even the scheming Whitfield has a chance.
And once the ranch is safe, maybe they could all open a cafe.
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