Marie, My Love

"I gave this one a three. There was so much potential there for an episode about Ben meeting and falling in love with Joe's mother, but I felt disappointed. Ben seemed smitten from the moment Marie nearly ran him down on the street, yet, when they met, she wanted nothing to do with him. She was bitter about the cards life had dealt her - a husband who abandoned her, a mother-in-law who was a monster, a baby she believed had died shortly after birth - and didn't seem to be anything like Ben's descriptions of her in earlier episodes. If only the writers had paid attention to previous episodes that mentioned Marie and if only this episode could have been a 2-parter it could have been so much better." - patina

"I agree with Patina; there was a lot of potential for this episode. We didn't see any falling in love, just a little half-hearted courting by Ben. Then, bang! at the end she is in love with him! When did THAT happen?

The plus side is we did get to see young Ben all dressed up in his finery, throwing punches at the gaming house. Ben is a powerful man and does great in a fistfight.

I would have LOVED to see an episode where Ben brings his new wife Marie home. - ellen

"Of the four wife episodes, this one is definitely my least favorite. I agree with both ellen's and patina's comments. I will only add, as I've posted before, that the Marie that we see in this episode would not be a good stepmother to Hoss and Adam. All her love would be focused on her own child and his interests. Maybe we're meant to believe a miracle occurred on the journey from New Orleans and she was transformed into the woman Ben described. Judging by both Adam's and Hoss's expressions when Ben talks about her in The Stranger, I'm not so sure. - Deborah

"In My Hoss Opinion, it's amazing how many Bonanza fans like this episode for the Jo-Mo and may not see Marie, My Love as an inconsistency.

This is one of the eps that just doesn't make sense. How the scriptwriter got it past the department heads who are supposed to be looking at the scripts for plot lines or whatever I've no idea I can only guess the department head was out to lunch.

Ben's trip to New Orleans may have worked as a flash-back sequence if they had kept the sequence to a brief glimpse. The question most fans have after all is how did Marie cope with being brought into a foreign element and adjusting to two "sons" and a husband whose raison d'etre is his sons?

Forget about a young Ben falling in love with Marie. There's no story there. Forget the soap opera nonsense with Ben fighting a duel and Marie's angst about her ogre monster in law and her dead baby. If I wanted this kind of schlock, I would read some stupid romance story or tune in to Days of Our Lives.

Marie, My Love would have worked for the benefit of Bonanza's back story if they had done a story with her already on the Ponderosa, and her tending to a growing family of men who belong on the ranch.

What does it matter if Ben get's starry eyed when he talks about Marie to Adam and Hoss? They lived with her too, or were they sent away to live with their uncle and swarmy cousin?

It seems nobody was paying attention anytime when Marie was written in." - Blue Velvet

"Ben brings his NEW wife home to a young just getting started ranch out in the wild west and introduces her to his two young sons...one probably a young teenager and one on the brink...great stuff here...and she embraces it all...she would have to...we have always heard good things about her...the two young boys needed a mother figure at that time in their life...she would have provided that...and then when she brought her own son into the world...she did not die immediately...Joe was a young boy...we could have seen the three sons as youngsters...like the charming young Adam of Inger, My Love and Journey Remembered...but what we get is Ben with dyed hair all dressed up in fancy clothes recusing a damsel in distress...how hokey...we could have made several eps from this like they did with Inger." - Thompson

"The only time Marie really smiles is at the beginning of the ep, is when she rides past Ben. This tells us that there is a cheerful side to her. I can understand that she is bitter but I don't want to believe she is callous. Unfortunately she does not show her other side when she has the chance to, even in this episode.

In the end, when Ben asks her to marry him one would have expected a more emotional response than she actually gives. Her "I love you" didn't sound like anything a woman would say to the love of her life. It was more like an indifferent "Thank you". Yet throughout the episode we get a glimpse of that she is not totally indifferent...

In the episode, only problems are dealt with, and there is no space for a developing relationship. That is why the proposal in the end seems very tacked on. It came much too early. After sorting all the trouble out, love might have had a chance to grow, and then a proposal would have made sense. In this case it seems, as if they got married before they actually fell in love.

In the earlier episodes Marie comes off even worse: because of her, Ben and Adam couldn't go many places and do many things (Julia Bulette), she was blackmailed and Ben went to sort out the mess (The Stranger)... now that doesn't sound like a happy life together. She comes across more like a nuisance, an outsider, rather than a full, accepted member of the family. Of course, Ben keeps sayin he loved her and all that...

A sequel could have dealt with her getting to the Ponderosa, Little Joe's birth, the blackmailing or her death, although that would have fitted best into this ep, because Ben told Joe that his accident reminded him of hers...

Unfortunately Marie turned out different from what most people would have imagined her. I'm not sure how much of it is due to the script and how much is due to Felicia Farr's acting. I don't know whether Marie was supposed to be so cold, or whether it was Felicia Farr who made her like that. After all, there are lots of different ways of expressing things." - Teddy Buletti

"I really, really dislike this episode. The story line is convoluted and confusing, and drags on forever. I am grateful to the writers for at least providing us with the opening, though, for it at least gives us some information on what happened (on at least one afternoon) after Marie came to the Ponderosa, and it tells us that she was probably an adventuresome (too much so for her own good) person. Because of that opening, I rated the episode a 2. Otherwise it would have been even lower.

While I thought the Marie we were shown came across as cold and self-centered, I don't know that I would agree that she would not have made a good mother for Hoss and Adam. I don't think we were given enough information based on what we saw in Marie, My Love to make that decision. For that matter, how do we really know what type of mother Elizabeth would've been? We don't. We weren't given a chance to see. Yes, Elizabeth was warm toward Ben, but that does not necessarily mean than she would be a good mother. Most likely, yes, but we are still making a big assumption.

As others have said, there was a lot of potential here that simply was not taken advantage of. Had we seen more of Marie rather than this rather depressing time in her life, we could have made more informed judgments on her character. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to see more of her. So all we really have to go on, other than this look into a very brief period in her life, was Ben's personal assessment of her. Would he have fallen in love with a woman who was coldhearted and shallow? To do so would certainly have been out of character for the Ben we know. Because of that, I think we have to assume that there was more to her than what the writers of this unfortunate episode gave us. To base Marie's personality and mothering skills strictly on what we saw in Marie, My Love would be akin to basing the personalities of all the Cartwrights on, A Rose For Lotta." - southplains

"I had no trouble seeing why Ben so loved Elizabeth and Inger. They were affectionate and loving women and obviously loved him very much.

Not so much with Marie. I saw no spark between them. No affection, no warmth. I could never imagine him taking her home to his two sons. At Adam and Hoss's ages, it would have taken an incredible woman to come into their home as wife to Ben and their stepmother without being resented.

Marie didn't show any of those attributes. To me, it seemed as if Ben wanted to marry her for the wrong reasons. He wanted to save her from her troubled life and take her to a new life on the Ponderosa where the trees grow tall. He wanted to show her what life could be. But then, maybe that's just me.

Definitely, there should have been at least one more episode of her interacting with the family. They missed on that point." - marigold

Bonanza Episode Guide by Julie-Ann Sanderson © 2008
Compiled for Bonanza Brand
All episodes are rated out of 5