The BEST episodes of The Virginian season 8
Every episode of The Virginian season 8, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The Virginian season 8!
The Virginian was the very first 90 minute western on prime-time television, and is about a man, only known as "the Virginian" who served as foreman on the Shiloh Ranch (owned in sequence by Judge Garth, the Grainger brothers, and Col. MacKenzie) in 19th century Medicine Bow, Wyoming. James Drury starred as the title character with the likes of Doug McClure, Lee J. Cobb, John McIntire, and Clu Gulager co-starring. It is in these settings that a variety of stories, much more based on character and relationships than the usual westerns, take place.
#1 - A Woman of Stone
Season 8 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/17/1969
The Shiloh people unwittingly stir up the past when they shelter the son and white widow of a Shoshone.
#2 - The Runaway
Season 8 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/22/1969
The Graingers become stand-in parents for a boy running away from an orphanage.
#3 - Holocaust
Season 8 - Episode 17 - Aired 1/28/1970
The Shiloh ranch is burned down after Clay joins with his fellow ranchers to oppose an Eastern combine trying for a land-grab. This leaves Clay with only has one chance for survival of the ranch, get a herd to Denver in record time.
#4 - No War for the Warrior
Season 8 - Episode 20 - Aired 2/18/1970
A man signs on to work a cattle drive for the Shiloh ranch putting the other hands in danger. He is a fugitive Indian caught between the white world and his Kiowa roots. Things get heated when they come to a small, bigoted town.
#5 - Rich Man, Poor Man
Season 8 - Episode 23 - Aired 3/11/1970
A farmer who has been poor his entire life suddenly comes into a lot of money. He goes on a spending spree giving large parties, buying luxury items, and a ranch hand more than willing to help him spend it.
#6 - You Can Lead a Horse to Water
Season 8 - Episode 15 - Aired 1/7/1970
The accent is on comedy as a proper Southern woman, aided by Trampas and old Luther, goes after robbers who took her dowry.
#7 - The Sins of the Fathers
Season 8 - Episode 22 - Aired 3/4/1970
Adam Randall is hired on as a Shiloh hand despite his being a gunfighter. Despite his being a troublemaker, the Virginian, whose life he saved, and Clay, for unknown reasons, stand behind him.
#8 - A King's Ransom
Season 8 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/25/1970
Clay Grainger is kidnapped and held for ransom by a gang hired by an Englishman (Patrick Macnee)who has posed as a friend of the Graingers. However, his true intentions are later revealed by his wife (Jackie DeShannon) but not before the Virginian follows the kidnappers - after the ransom drop-off - captures them, and convinces them to tell him where Grainger is stashed.
#9 - A Time of Terror
Season 8 - Episode 19 - Aired 2/11/1970
Two young men and a girl take over the Shiloh ranch and hold the Graingers captive. They are setting up a trap for a close friend of Clay's, Judge Will McMasters.
#10 - Train of Darkness
Season 8 - Episode 18 - Aired 2/4/1970
On a train to Cheyenne, Clay, Elizabeth and Jim become involved in a fellow traveler's efforts to escape a vengeful family.
#11 - Journey to Scathelock
Season 8 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/10/1969
Jim is in North Dakota to purchase ponies when he tangles with a pair of sharp operators after his $4000 bank roll.
#12 - A Touch of Hands
Season 8 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/3/1969
A pig tailed brat returns home from finishing school for a two week vacation as a beautiful woman catching Trampas' eyes again. They fall in love as she remembers the good times but her father wants her to return to school in the east.
#13 - Home to Methuselah
Season 8 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/26/1969
The Virginian becomes involved in a lawman's obsessive search for two surviving members of a gang.
#14 - A Love to Remember
Season 8 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/29/1969
The Virginian becomes attracted to Julie Oakes, an Eastern reporter whose mysteriously tragic past may doom their relationship.
#15 - The Power Seekers
Season 8 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/8/1969
The territorial representative resigns so Clay is drafted to run against a local man. Once in the race Clay learns the dirty side of politics including being lied to about who drafted him. He runs an honest contest but will the other side.
#16 - A Flash of Darkness
Season 8 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/24/1969
During a cattle drive, a rattler startles the Virginian's horse while he is chasing a stray, and he is thrown and hits his head on a rock causing temperary blindness. As he wanders in the darkness, he stumbles upon a young lady who lives with her father (James Whitmore)and brother, whom the Virginian had just fired. The daughter wants to help the Virginian though the men protest. The two men tell her that they are returning the blind man to his friends but actually plan to kill him. After leaving the house, the Virginian somehow manages to escape and makes it back to the house where he wanders into the corral and is nearly trampled by the horses until Trampas and Jim Horn rescues him from the corral and the two men.
#17 - Long Ride Home
Season 8 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/17/1969
The close friendship and free life of teenage cowhand Jim Horn and an old wrangler are put at risk when they both sign on the Shiloh. Young Jim takes a liking to his new surroundings, and to Elizabeth.
#18 - The Family Man
Season 8 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/15/1969
Jim becomes farmhand, midwife and friend to a pregnant teen whose husband is on the lam from the law.
#19 - The Substitute
Season 8 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/5/1969
Trampas' vacation takes a nightmarish turn when he's jailed in a small town on a trumped-up murder charge.
#20 - Halfway Back from Hell
Season 8 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/1/1969
Trampas takes the job as teaching foreman at a rehabilitation ranch in Arizona. The group of prisoners which has been selected to start the ranch are having more problems with the nearby town than in learning how to work a ranch.
#21 - The Bugler
Season 8 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/19/1969
A story of alienation between a veteran Army officer and his son, a deserter.
#22 - Black Jade
Season 8 - Episode 14 - Aired 12/31/1969
A bigoted gambler and his outlaw gang force Trampas and a black recluse into an alliance for survival.
#23 - The Gift
Season 8 - Episode 24 - Aired 3/18/1970
A saloon singer finds herself the target of killer after his partner dies in her room.
#24 - Nightmare
Season 8 - Episode 16 - Aired 1/21/1970
When the wife of a prominent Medicine Bow business man arrives, smoldering jealousies quickly rise to the top.