Lonesome Dove



Lonesome Dove is the name of a highly-regarded Western novel by Larry McMurtry. It was also adapted into a Emmy-winning four-episode television miniseries.


 * Anyone Can Die: and how
 * Badass Mustache: Gus
 * Berserk Button: Do not hit Newt when Woodrow Call is around.
 * Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie: Woodrow Call brings  body across the country so he can be buried in his favorite orchard.
 * Broken Trail
 * Cattle Drive: the whole basis of the plot
 * Cool Old Guy: Gus
 * Dies Wide Open:
 * The Drifter: Gus, also, Jake Spoon
 * Driven to Suicide
 * Emotions vs. Stoicism
 * Grumpy Old Man: Call
 * Heroic Bastard: Newt
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Gus and Call.
 * Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Lorena
 * Maggie, Newt's late mother, who appears in the prequels Dead Man's Walk and Commanche Moon.
 * I Ate What?: When recruiting a new cook in San Antonio, Po Campo asks Gus and Call to try something he made. Call pops it in his mouth and says "Dang, that's tasty!" What exactly is it? "Grasshopper." Cue Spit Take.
 * Invulnerable Horses: Averted.
 * Magical Negro: Deets practically is one.
 * Scarily Competent Tracker: Pretty much everyone, but especially Deets.
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog
 * The Stoic: Woodrow Call
 * Stuffed Into the Fridge: In Streets of Laredo, the author discontinuously revisits  kidnapping from the Lonesome Dove, in flashback in order to add in a characteristically gruesome scene where a child is kidnapped and burned to death, just so we hate the main villain more.
 * What Could Have Been: Larry McMurtry originally wrote "Lonesome Dove" in the early Seventies as a screenplay called "The Streets of Laredo" to be directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring John Wayne as Call, Jimmy Stewart as Gus and Henry Fonda as Jake Spoon. The proposed film was abandoned after Wayne turned down the part on the advice of director John Ford. McMurtry turned the screenplay into a novel and used the original title for the sequel.