Biography of Griff King
[Played by Tim Matheson in season fourteen, 1972-1973]

Griff King was a former prison inmate serving out his parole on the Ponderosa.   His character was rather hurriedly added in the fourth episode of what would turn out to be the final season - and not even a full season at that.   Dan Blocker's death left a gap that the producers tried unsuccessfully to fill with the addition of Griff and the return of David Canary as Candy.  What little backstory was given on Griff is mainly in his first two episodes "Riot!" and "New Man" with a few minor additions in "The Witness" "The Sound of Loneliness" and "The Marriage of Theodore Duffy."   Had the series continued for another season or two, it's likely Griff would have had long lost relatives, friends and enemies coming out of the woodwork.  Although his lack of backstory can be attributed to the speed with which his character was constructed, it was also the practice of television writers not to lock characters into too definite a family history.  As shown by the appearance of the occasional  Cartwright half-brother, cousin, etc., it's always  convenient to give writers the option of writing into an episode a character who has some kind of emotional hold on a featured player.

Riot!   [Episode 419, 10-3-72]

Appointed by the governor to a committee inspecting Nevada State Prison, Ben Cartwright sets out to conduct a fair assessment of conditions.    Aware of the upcoming inspection, prisoner Heiser organizes an inmate take-over using the inspectors as hostages to force the governor to meet a list of demands for humane treatment.  Griff appears to be his righthand man and confidant.   Griff plays a key role in the takeover,  which goes as planned until one of the more savage inmates -- Plank -- kills Heiser.   Plank has no interest in humane treatment for the prisoners.  He demands horses and supplies for himself and his cohorts.  He also has a grudge against Ben Cartwright and intends to kill him before he leaves.   Joe and Candy have accompanied Ben to the town outside the prison.   Candy infiltrates the cellblock under the guise of being a prisoner from another cellblock being used as a shield by the warden when negotiating with the inmates.  With Griff's help, Candy, Ben and Joe thwart the inmates.  Because his part in helping them would get him killed, Griff is paroled to Ben's custody.

The title of this episode refers, of course, to Griff.  The episode starts where Riot! left off, with Griff riding away from the prison with Ben, Joe and Candy.  Griff resents being a prisoner of the Ponderosa and has some trouble fitting in with the ranchhands.   When they pull a prank on him (cutting the ropes that secure the mattress of his top bunk causing him to fall thru), he starts a fight.  Worse yet, the first time a theft occurs in Virginian City, Clem wants to take Griff in for it, despite the lack of proof.  After Ben stands up for him and ranchhand Lucas gives him an alibi, Griff starts to thaw a little.  He tries with little success to make friends with the same ranchhands he'd fought with his first night.  When Griff offers to pick up a package for Lucas, the one man who has seemed to warm to his overtures, the express office is robbed and Griff is left looking guilty.  He runs, figuring he's as good as convicted.  He comes back only to try to convince Ben and Clem at gunpoint that Lucas must be guilty.   When he runs a second time, Candy goes after him.  They fight, but when Candy wins, he leaves it to Griff to decide whether to come back.  Griff returns to find that the man who committed the crimes in Virginia City has been apprehended.  [Note:  the original script had Lucas as the thief who frames Griff, giving him an alibi for the first theft only to give himself an alibi.]

Backstory and character gleaned from the first two Griff Episodes:
 

Appearance: Tim Matheson is 6’2" with dark hair and blue-gray eyes. [Eye color is hard to detect especially from TV color of the 60’s & 70’s. If anyone knows what he claims in an official bio, let us know because they could be blue, blue/gray or even gray.   In an episode of The Virginian where Tim played Jim Horn, Trampas rousts him out of bed one morning with a command to open "those blue-gray eyes."]  He says in New Man that he wears size 11 boots, although we're not sure boots were that precisely sized in those days.

Life Prior to Prison: In "Riot!", Griff recognizes Candy from having known him in Billings, Montana.  He covers for him to the suspicious inmate in charge by claiming to have also seen him in cellblock C when he came in.  When they talk, Candy says the last time he saw Griff was outside Billings, Montana.  Griff remembers, "Trying to rassle a cow out of a snow drift."  Candy says it was a long time ago.

 As they're riding to the Ponderosa in "New Man", Candy asks Griff how it feels to be on a horse again but gets no answer,  Candy says  "I'll never forget that little pony you were on the first time I saw you.  That had to be the worst spavined, spindly legged, little, old   hammer-headed  mustang I ever saw in my life.  You didn't look much better yourself.  Remember you wearing suspenders because you didn't have enough weight around your rear end to keep your pants up?  How old were you?  Sixteen?  Seventeen?   Griff answers with a little bitterness, "fifteen."    Candy goes on, "And always laughing.  No matter how bad things got, you always saw the funny side of it."  Griff answers, "Cause I was a kid.  Kids laugh a lot.  But when you grow up, you realize there ain't nothin' to laugh about.  And you grow up fast in prison, which is something you wouldn't know anything about."  [Candy's response is enigmatic.  "Oh, wouldn't I?"  That could be a reference to the experience he just had as part of the riot but it sounds more like a reference to something in his own somewhat mysterious past.]  The conversation indicates that Candy and Griff had some sort of friendship up in Billings but doesn't suggest whether it was of long duration.

In New Man, after Griff is complimented for doing a good job mending a saddle, he says he used to work for a saddlemaker.

Prison Sentence:  In "Riot!", when Candy asks Griff what he's doing there, Griff answers "Two to five".  Earlier, Heiser asked Ben what he thinks another four years in this place would do to  Griff.  From this we know Griff has served one year on his sentence and faces the likelihood of serving out the full five years.  Heiser tells Griff to tell Ben why he was there.  Griff says,  "Hammered a man with a pick handle."  Heiser asks, "Did you kill him?"  Griff answers, "Might have, but I got stopped.  My stepdad, he liked to beat on people.  Beat on me until I got tired of it.  He was my legal father.  That put the law on his side.  He put me in here." [The law gave parents a lot of control over their children in those days. There wasn’t much to stop a parent from inflicting serious physical abuse except community and church pressure. But a child was not generally entitled to fight back.]

Age: As Griff was imprisoned for assaulting his stepfather despite the fact that his stepfather had been doing the same to him, he must have been under 21 at the time of the conviction.  He mentions that because the man is his "legal father," the law listened to him .The concept of "legal father" would have no meaning if Griff was of legal age.  Therefore, Griff had to be under 21 when he was sent to prison.  How much under isn't clear but it's hard to imagine a young man of 19 or 20 with Griff's temperament and size hanging around getting beaten.  Seems likely he was closer to 17 – boys that age and younger were sent to prison in those days.  The fact that he's referred to as "kid" by both Heiser and Plank reinforces the notion that he's young - maybe eighteen, no more than nineteen,  by the time of  Riot!  His statement to Candy in "New Man" that "you grow up fast in prison." seems to confirm that he was pretty young when sentenced.  Although Tim Matheson was about 25 when he started on Bonanza [born 12-31-47], he could play 18 or 19 just as easily as Michael Landon (born 10-31-36) could play 16-year-old Joe in 1959.  Still and all, canon would allow him to be anywhere from 18 to 21 by the time he is paroled.

Family: The writers left the matter of Griff’s family for later episodes which unfortunately never materialized. The only mention of his mother is a sentimental reference to an embroidered saying she had on the wall of their home. ("Marriage of Theodore Duffy".) In "The Witness" Griff rides to Auburn to fetch a witness who can get Candy out from under a murder charge. He and this woman form a bond on the trail where they're forced to camp overnight. After a talk in which Griff speaks of the Cartwrights and Candy as though they've become his family, the woman kisses him good-night. The script notes for the kiss indicate that Griff is kissing her "like the mother he barely remembers" while she is kissing him "like the son she never had." This note suggests that Griff’s mother died when he was quite young. However, as Tim Matheson wasn’t quite good enough an actor to let the audience in on a sentiment that specific, it is still open to fanfic writers to suggest that she died while he was older, or was in prison. Although his reference to the embroidery suggests he was speaking of someone  who is dead, the reference isn’t so strong that a writer couldn’t write a story in which she is still alive or in which she was less than a beloved mother. There was nothing ever said to suggest that Griff had any family he wanted to look up, but he could have been falsely told his mother had died while he was in prison. Possibility for a story there.

Scenes [Riot!]:  The opening scene of Riot! has Griff and Heiser carrying another prisoner out of the Hellbox.  Griff mutters something about the guard killing the man.  This would have gotten himself and Heiser 5 days in the Hellbox but for the announcement that the inspection committee has arrived.  The whole episode shows Griff as something of a caretaker.  He tends to the man taken from the hellbox until he dies. After Ben is taken hostage, he offers Ben water, commenting sympathetically about how when he's scared, his mouth gets dry.  Candy has been whipped to make his claim to be a prisoner viable.  Griff tends his wounds despite opposition from Plank who says, "Something wrong with your head kid?  You want to take care of everybody?"

Scene [Riot!]: Near the beginning of the takeover, Heiser needs someone to write a list of demands for Ben, he calls for Griff even though he's surrounded by other prisoners.  [Griff is off tending to the inmate who's dying as the result of 6 days in the hotbox.]  Griff may be one of the few prisoners who can write well.

Scene [Riot!]:  When Candy lets Griff know about the plan to save the hostages, Griff expresses reluctance to get involved.  Candy asks him just to keep his mouth shut then.  Griff knows that if he cooperates with the plan, he's as good as dead in the prison.  But when Candy and Ben react to a diversion in the next cellblock by fighting, he helps them.

Scene [New Man]:  In "New Man" Griff first expresses resentment about his parole conditions in the general store where Ben buys him a new set of clothes. (Interesting that Ben picks them out since we know Griff will be wearing them for the rest of his time on the Ponderosa).. When Ben asks him if he's missed anything, Griff answers, "There's no gun."  Ben answers, "You can't have a gun, you're on parole."  As he goes in the dressing room to change, he says, "There is something else.  You forgot to have my prison number painted on the back of the shirt."

Scene [New Man]:  When they get back to the Ponderosa, Ben brings Griff into the house where he meets Jamie who hides a dime novel behind his back.  Griff is noncommittal but friendly enough when they're introduced and shake hands.  Griff looks on with some interest when Ben finds the novel which Jamie clearly feels a little guilty about.  When Ben asks him if that's the homework he's been doing, he claims at first it's "modern history."   Griff appears to be waiting to see how Ben demonstrates his displeasure with his son.   However, the only thing that happens is that when Ben shakes his head, Jamie reckons how he'd better go and get started on his homework.  Ben just chuckles, and says yes, he'd better.  Griff gives no outward reaction but it seems the little by-play was put in by the writers to give Griff a chance to see a good father in action.  However, Griff is not ready to be mollified.  He looks around the great room and comments, "This is the classiest prison I've ever been in."  Ben responds sternly, "This is a working ranch.  And  my home.  For you, it's an opportunity, a chance, a new start. whatever you want to make it."   Griff responds, "I just want to leave."  Asked why, he says, "Because, according to the terms of my parole, that's the one thing I can't do.  And when somebody tells me I can't do something, that's the one thing I want to do."  But when Ben tells him he can get on the horse and ride out if he chooses, Griff recognizes that if they caught him, he'd be facing 20 years in prison.  As he leaves to go to the bunkhouse with Candy, he insists Ben put the price of his new clothes on the books to be deducted from his first month's pay.

Scene [New Man]:  Outside the ranch house, Candy gives him what for.  "Griff, you sure know how to make things tough on yourself."  Griff responds with a so what, "Yeah". Candy:   " What's the matter with you anyway.  Ben Cartwright went way out on a limb to do you a favor and you act like he's . . ."  Griff:  "Did I ask him to?" Candy:  "People like him you don't have to ask."  Griff:  "A favor is something you ask for."  Candy:  "No, not always." Griff:  "My motto is, if you need a helping hand, you're going to find it right at the end of your own wrist.  A man has got to shape his own life, Candy.  And every time I turn around someone else  is telling me where I'm gonna go and what I'm gonna be."  Candy:  "If they'd given you the choice, you would have turned down the parole, is that it?"  Griff:  "I didn't say that, but nobody asked me."  Candy:  "All, right.  You wanted a chance to say yes."  Griff:  "That's it."  Candy:  "You want to make up your own mind about where you go and what you do?" Griff:  "That's it." Candy:  "Well, Griff, if you make up your mind to stay here, you're going to behave yourself.  Cause if you don't, if you cause any trouble for Ben Cartwright. it's not just going to be the law, looking for you."  Griff responds with just a little assessing look, then smiles.  "I thought you were going to show me where to bed down."   [This is a nice scene to set up the relationship between Candy and Griff.  Candy seems to be taking responsibility for Griff and Griff seems to have some trust in Candy.  Actually, it's something of an exaggeration to say that Ben went out on a limb to do Griff a favor.  Griff did them a favor during the riot.  Ben didn't volunteer to take on Griff - it was the Governor's idea so Ben would hardly be in trouble if it didn't work out.

Scene [New Man]:  When Candy introduces Griff to the boys in the bunkhouse, things get off to a bad start when he resents them asking questions and rummaging through his meager belongings.  In retaliation, the boys cut the ropes on his bunk so that he falls through when he lies down.  He responds with  his fists until Candy breaks it up.  Candy kicks the others out of the bunkhouse and gives Griff another lecture. He reaches out for Griff and asks him what happened.  Griff tells him to keep his hands off.   "Griff, where do you think you are?  What do you think you're doing?"  Griff answers as though something terrible happened.:  "They cut the ropes on my bunk."  Candy:  "They do that to every new man who comes in here.  It's a joke."  Griff:  "There's no jokes where I come from.  Everything's a matter of life and death." Candy:  "Griff, you're someplace else now.  This is not a prison.  I'm not a guard.  These men are not your enemies." Griff (rather pathetically):  "They was laughin' at me."  Candy:  "No, they were laughing at the joke.  Griff, if I'd a been here, I'd 've been laughing.  I remember the time you'd have been laughing.  You remember?"  Griff's expression suggests he does remember better times.  When Candy asks if he's all right, Griff insists he is.  When the men come back in, Griff tries to apologize but is met with silence. The men turn the lights out before he gets his bunk back together so he goes outside to sleep.

[The fight scene in the original script is much more intense.   Griff lunges at Lucas who's a head full head taller than Griff.  (This script may have been written before Tim was cast in the part.  With Tim at 6'2", finding an actor a full head taller would have been a chore.)  Lucas knocks him flat and  pulls a whip off the wall.  At the sight of the whip, Griff's face hardens and pulls a knife out of his boot.  He never takes his eyes off Lucas even when Candy enters.  Candy takes the whip out of Lucas's hand, telling him that the last time Griff saw a whip,  they probably used it on him.   Griff is described as coiled to spring.  He makes a pass with the knife at Candy's right hand when he extends it.  Candy slaps him with his left hand which brings him out of whatever state he was in.]

Scene [New Man]:  Clem rides in the next morning  to question the ex-con about a store that was burglarized in town.  When he goes in the barn to interrogate Griff, he calls him "Boy."  Griff responds, "Some people call me Griff.  And others call me Mr. King.  And those are the only two names I answer to."  Ben protests when Clem wants to take Griff in for questioning just because he doesn't have an alibi (he was sleeping outside that night).  It's Lucas, the man he was fighting with who gives him an alibi.  After Clem leaves,  Ben answers Griff's unasked question.  He didn't tell Clem about him.  He got a letter from the warden.  Griff asks, "What do I have to do, live my whole life in the middle of a crowd so the next time somebody's robbed, I've got a witness?" Ben:  "Nobody said it was going to be easy."  Griff:  "What do you have to do to get people to trust you?"   Ben:  "Maybe you can start by trusting them."

Scene [New Man]:  Later in the bunkhouse, Griff tries to be friendly, to make conversation, to get in a game of checkers.  He's rebuffed by everyone.  But we can see he's trying and hurt by the rejection.  The next morning he does manage to get a friendly conversation going with Lucas when he offers to help him mend a saddle.  Lucas advises him not to try so hard, to just to give the other men time.  They were a good bunch.  They'd let him off the hook eventually..

Scene [New Man]:  When Griff takes off from the jail and Candy goes after him, Griff ambushes him.  He holds a shotgun on Candy  and tells him to go back.  Candy dismounts and advances on Griff, unbuckling his gunbelt as he comes.  He says Griff is no more going to use that gun than Candy is going to use his.  Candy grabs the shotgun with one hand and punches Griff with the other.  They have a fist fight; Griff is no match for Candy.  But Candy doesn't take him back.  He tells him to go to Mexico or China for all he cares.   Griff watches him ride off, looking like he's lost his only friend - which is probably the case.

Griff's other appearances:

By the end of his second episode, Griff had lost his edge in terms of anger and resentment although it would be plausible to suggest that there could be some under the surface.  He doesn't appear in the next two episodes ("Ambush at Rio Lobo" & "The 26th Grade" [eps 421/422)  His character appears briefly at the end of "The Stallion" [ep 423] where he's just one of the guys.  In "The Hidden Enemy" [ep. 424], he breaks his wrist falling from the barn loft which brings out the town's new doctor.   The injured Griff is the means to get the doctor involved with the Cartwrights and to introduce the issue of morphine addiction.  Griff's injury is painful but the doctor (Mike Farrell) assures Ben and Joe that he won't feel any pain.   Good old Doc Martin, later warns Griff not to get feeling too good on the stuff because it's highly addictive.  The rest of the story is a drama involving the new doctor and his drug addiction.

Griff's next significant supporting role is in "The Sound of Loneliness" [ep 425]  an episode written by Michael Landon which was later reshot as an episode of Little House on the Prairie with very little change.  It's about two orphan brothers who run away when they are about to be separated by a couple who doesn't want to adopt the younger brother who apparently can't talk as the result of trauma.  Griff plays the part played by the adopted brother in Little House - the person who discovers the boys hiding in the home of a lonely old man who tries to find a way to adopt them.  Griff is part of the search party looking for the boys and is in Clem's office when the head of the orphanage tells them why the boys ran away.  He's disturbed that they wouldn't take the feelings of the boys into account when finding a home for the older boy.  When he comes across them at the old man's home, they play on his sympathies persuading him not to tell.  Griff's a very gentle, compassionate character in this episode but it doesn't reveal much about him other than that.   Griff's part could have as easily been filled by Jamie.   Although at one point the orphanage director tells Ben  they're not going to change their policies because of the ravings of a senile old man and a young ex-con, Griff's status isn't significant to the plot.  The next two episodes are Jamie episodes in which Griff is just a background character.  [The Bucket Dog (ep 426) & First Love (ep 427).]  Griff plays a significant role in "The Witness" [ep 428] and is the featured player in "The Marriage of Theodore Duffy" [ep 429.]  He plays no part in the final episode aired, "The Hunter" which centered exclusively on Joe.

The Witness [ep 428] : Candy is delivering Cartwright money to an elderly woman in Hawthorne.  He’s robbed, set up for her murder and arrested.   Ben, Joe and Griff ride to the rescue.  When Griff accompanies Joe to the jail to visit Candy, he’s clearly uncomfortable. Candy understands why Griff looks sick and tells him to get some air.  Griff gratefully leaves, shaking Candy’s hand  and then banging on the door to the jail office just a little more forcefully than necessary to get out.  Candy explains to Joe about jail house fever. [In the script, Griff’s reaction is more colorful.  He rushes outside and vomits over the side of the hitching rail.]

Griff is eager to help Candy in some way to make up for not being able to see him in jail.  While Joe rides back to the hotel/saloon in Sudsville where Candy was robbed, Griff rides to Auburn (California)  to find Kate Fallon, the woman Candy had dinner with in Sudsville, who rode with him to Hawthorne.  (Unbeknownst to everyone, she’s the wife of the man who actually committed the robbery.)  Griff finds her and gets her to go with him by not correcting her misapprehension that her husband sent him to fetch her.  Only when they have to camp out for the night, does he tell her he was sent by Candy.  The little relationship they develop is really charming.  Although she isn’t quite old enough to be his mother [Candy describes her as about his age], she treats him with a maternal affection that he responds to.  Back in Hawthorne, the prosecutor exposes Kate as a woman with a shady past and numerous aliases.  Griff is ready to do violence to him, calling him a liar.  He has to be held back.  Later, when Kate’s husband comes after her in her hotel room, it's Griff who first runs to her aid although it's Joe who gets the bad guy.

The Marriage of Theodore Duffy [ep 429]: In a rather unbelievable plot, Griff discloses some information about illegal activities he's heard from a man he knew in prison and is recruited by the secret service to pretend to be the husband of a female agent.  They set up housekeeping in a little house on the trail to a meeting place where an army of insurrectionists is forming.   They hope that Griff’s ex-con status, supplemented with a little obvious cattle theft, will help Griff get recruited by the bad guys.  Ben and Joe know of the deception but Candy doesn’t.

The first scene is played for laughs when Duffy “unexpectedly” shows up complaining that Griff married then deserted her.  Candy is perturbed at Griff and Joe pretends to be.  When Griff doesn’t observe the niceties like helping Duffy into the wagon as they leave for their new home, Candy tries to make up for Griff’s lack of manners only to have Duffy stand up for Griff.  Predictably, Griff falls in love with Duffy and also panics over the idea that she could get killed.  She seems to have developed feelings for him, but her career is more important.  After the job is successfully completed, she’s on to another.  Griff gets his second and third kiss - this time one less motherly than the one in "Witness" although the actress who plays Duffy is three years older than Tim so probably several more older than Griff.  However, that age difference makes sense in that a female agent was unlikely enough - one only 19 or 20 would be even more so.

Scene [Witness]:  When Candy’s lawyer gets a telegram from a hotel in Auburn about a woman who might be Kate Fallon they figure its 12 hours by stage. Ben thinks a rider could make it in 8 hours.  Griff volunteers that he thinks he could do it faster with a fresh horse.  He adds that Joe won’t be back from Sudsville until after dark; he could be in Auburn by then.  This comment indicates that he thinks Ben will want to send Joe - that he has to lobby for the job.  Like he’s not sure Ben will trust him.  But Ben sends him off with no trepidation.

Scene [Witness]:    While taking Kate Fallon back to Hawthorne, they have to spend the night camped out.  After he’s disclosed that its Candy who sent him not her husband, she agrees to help.  Then they start to talk about themselves.  The viewer catches Griff in the middle of his story:

“And there’s Joe, and Jamie, and of course Candy to be with.  Oh, and it took me awhile to get used to trustin’ people.  And there was this cook, this Hop Sing, who kept yellin’ at me - in Chinese - and I just knew he hated me, I knew it.  And then I found out he was just mad at me because I wasn’t eatin’ enough.”
Kate: “What was he saying?.”
Griff: ‘I don’t know, but Mr. Cartwright said it’s probably a good thing none of us speak Chinese.”
 Kate: “You love them don’t you?  Like a family.”
Griff: “I reckon that’s what a family is.  It’s lovin’ each other. What else is there?”
Kate: “That’s why Candy’s being in jail’s hurting you so.”
Griff: “Nobody knows what that’s like.  Not unless they’ve been there themselves.”  Then he looks a little chagrined and says, “I’m sorry, that’s not a very good thing to talk about to a lady.”
Kate: “You don’t know very much about ladies, do you?”
Griff: “Some days, I don’t think I know too much about anything.”
Kate:  “You know how to love.  There’s a girl somewhere has a lucky day coming.”

Then the conversation goes to her husband and Griff tells her how she ought to have children.  That gets her all teary eyed and Griff is sorry  he upset her.  She claims just to be tired so he leans over to fix a bed for her.  She takes the opportunity to kiss him - sweetly, softly on the lips.  Kate, as she gently strokes his face: “You didn’t mind me kissing you good-night did you?”  Griff: “No, I didn’t.”  Then she breaks down and cries in his arms. [We can see from this scene that Griff has been totally sucked into the vortex of the Cartwright love machine.”]

Scene (Witness): Kate’s husband shows up and starts to strong arm her.  She protests, alerting Griff who runs in.  Hubby pulls his gun but Kate runs in front of Griff and takes the bullet.  As Griff holds onto Kate, Joe runs in with his gun drawn and subdues the brigand.  Kate gives a little speech which suggests she’s dying. She asks Griff to think kindly of her.  He says he couldn’t do anything else as he holds her to him. [Next scene shows she doesn’t die)

Scene (Duffy): Griff seems fascinated over Duffy’s attempts to make the little house seem homelike even though its all a cover.  He starts talking about hooked rugs and where the clock looks best.  “You know if you could embroider, my mother used to have a sampler hanging up over the fireplace.  It read, ‘Oh, wind, if winter  comes, can spring be far behind?’” He says it a little facetiously and Duffy says there won’t be time for things like that.  She reminds him, “Griff, this is just a game.”  Later, he’s very touched when he finds she’s taken the time to embroider the sampler for him.

Scene [Duffy]:  Griff tries to take a little advantage of their situation.  When he comes home from a day of cattle theft, she knows someone is watching and greets him with a kiss.  He kisses her twice more, telling her there were two people watching him.  Inside, he tries to kiss her again.  She tells him that’s fine outside, but no one could see them inside.  He suggests that go outside again.

Scene [Duffy]: Duffy makes a bed for Griff in the front room.  However, after they’ve been in bed for awhile, Duffy comes to the bedroom door and tells him to bring his pillow and blanket and join her.  He thinks she’s extending an invitation, drops his bedding at the foot of the bed and leans over her recumbent body for a kiss.  However, the kiss is interrupted by several gunmen - men Duffy apparently knew were there.  Poor Griff.  After the gunmen leave, Griff heads toward the bedroom, only to be met by Duffy with his bedding in hand.   She ignores his protests that they might come back.

Scene (Hidden Enemy): After Griff his brought up to a guest room with his badly broken wrist, the doctor apparently takes some significant time to tend to him. When Ben and the doctor come down the stairs they find Candy is still waiting, asleep sitting up on the sofa.  Asked where Joe is, Candy says he must have gone to bed around midnight.  The fact that Candy’s still there says something about his concern is for Griff.

His Place on the Ponderosa:  Nothing in the episodes suggests that Griff was more than a ranchhand in terms of where he eats and sleeps.  (Of course, it was never shown on the series where the ranchhands actually ate and the bunkhouse shifted around a lot.)  In New Man it's clear that he is assigned a place in the bunkhouse.  This is confirmed in "First Love" where Griff is next to the bunkhouse with some other hands in listening to a girl playing music on the ranchhouse porch.  He does get a bed in the house when he breaks his wrist and the doctor is tending to him.  He's never seen eating at the dining table in the ranchhouse as Candy frequently was.  He was never a potential Cartwright son as Jamie was.  In the unflimed episode Barnaby however, he was apparently going to eat a meal in the dining room although the script doesn't actually contain the scene.

Griff's resentment at being on the Ponderosa has totally disappeared by the end of New Man.  His appearances in subsequent episodes are uniformly free of anything resembling hostility toward the Cartwrights or his own situation - :"The Stallion", The Hidden Enemy", "The Sound of Loneliness," "The Bucket Dog", "First Love" up to "The Witness" where he professes his familial love for the Cartwrights and Candy.

Jamie:  Griff has virtually no scenes with Jamie after they shake hands in "The New Man".  But then generally no one but Ben did, especially that season.  Jamie is the featured player in three episodes, "The Initiation" [ep 418], "First Love" & "Bucket Dog" and Ben is the only other significant regular in any of them although Joe has some scene time in Bucket Dog.. Griff does list Jamie as one of the people in his new family when talking to Kate in "The Witness".  Since they aren't all that far apart in age it would be logical that as Jamie gets older they would become good friends.  But that's all for surmise and can be manipulated for the purposes of a plot.

Joe:  Although Griff also has little interaction with Joe, Joe's reactions to Griff are interesting.  Several times Joe gets that adorable little underplayed smirk on his face when observing his father dealing with Griff.  First in the prison when the Governor lets Ben know he's the person he's decided will be responsible for Griff.  Second in the general store when Griff suggests he wants a gun.  Third, when Griff first arrives and reacts like the ranch is his prison.  Fourth, when Griff comes back to turn himself in at the end of New Man.  Joe has that little smirk as he watches Griff hear the news that the person he blamed for the robberies is also innocent because a third man has been caught red-handed.  Again as Joe is listed as part of his new family when Griff talks to Kate in "The Witness", we know that by that time they have a good relationship.  How they got there is for fanfic writers to fill in.

An unfilmed script "Barnaby" written for later in the unfinished season, gives Joe and Griff a more significant relationship.  The first Ponderosa scene in the script has Joe and Griff leg wrestling in the great room of the house with Jamie jibing at them and Ben at his desk, a mildly interested spectator.  This is a very improbable scene which one doubts would have made it to the final filming.  Ben - get your feet off the table - Cartwright allowing Joe and Griff to leg wrestle in the living room.  Not hardly.  Arm wrestling maybe.  This episode also has Hop Sing calling them to supper and Griff acting as though he expects to  eat in the house.  A friend is kidnapped, a seemingly incompetent uncle (Barnaby) insists on delivering the ransom.  Griff and Joe follow along because they have no faith in Barnaby.  It's pretty much a comedy episode.  Joe and Griff have a confrontation with three of the gang, beat them up and send them on their way.  They then almost get into a fist fight themselves, arguing about how to handle the situation.  As would be expected in a comedy, Joe and Griff get captured by the kidnappers and fat. little. old. city man Barnaby saves the day.  There's nothing personal to Griff in the script - it plays like it was written for Candy whose camaraderie with Joe was well-established.

Ben:  Although Ben doesn’t necessarily treat Griff like a long lost son, he does take a patriarchal, advice-giving role. [Would we expect anything less?] It's Griff who initiates their relationship in the prison by offering Ben water - recognizing that fear could make his mouth dry.  Although Griff’s initial interactions with Ben in New Man are riddled with his resentment over the limitations of his parole, they don’t extend beyond that episode.  Ben is simply firm and fair with him - telling him the ranch is a new start for him, speaking up for him with Clem, telling him he can start getting people to trust him by trusting them, offering him an advance on his wages if he wants to go to town on his first Saturday night there, assuring him he’ll get him the best lawyer in Virginia City to fight the robbery charges.  When Griff returns to face the charges, not knowing that the guilty man has been caught, Ben lets him know he still has a place on the Ponderosa - although he’ll be spending the next day chopping wood.

In the “Sound of Loneliness” when Griff finally tells Ben the runaway orphans are at the old man’s house, Ben sympathizes with his empathy for the boys.  Although he tells Griff he was wrong to keep the man’s secret, his affectionate hand on Griff’s shoulder says that he understands.  In “The Witness” Ben trusts Griff to ride off to Auburn in California to fetch a key witness.

Candy:  : Of course Griff’s closest bond on the Ponderosa is with Candy.  They had some kind of friendship in Billings when Griff was only 15 - apparently working on a ranch together.   Candy seems to take responsibility for Griff right away - a big brother type of responsibility.  Not only is he trying to get Griff on the right path, but he’s determined that Griff won’t cause any trouble for the Cartwrights.  He obviously has faith in Griff’s basic decency.  When Griff flees the jail and Candy catches up with him, Griff has a shotgun trained on him.  Candy advances on him, knowing that Griff won’t shoot.  He grabs the gun right out of his hand.  When Candy wins a fist fight but then turns away to leave, Griff calls after him.  He doesn’t want to go back to face charges because he doesn’t think he’ll get fair treatment, but he seems to want Candy to understand or to reassure him.  He looks after Candy with real wistfulness.

In “The Witness”, after Candy’s set up for a murder in Hawthorne, Griff arrives in town with Ben and Joe.  He goes to the jail with Joe to see Candy but can’t handle it.  He feels very guilty about letting down his friend, although Candy understands about “jail fever”. He’s particularly eager to go to Auburn to fetch the female witness Candy has told them about in order to make up for his inability to provide support for Candy in person in the jail.

Women:   The first woman we see Griff talk to is a bargirl named Amy [about Griff's age and not overly brassy] who tries to entice him inside as he rides by on his way to the Wells Fargo office to pick up Lucas's package.  He seems innocently eager to talk to her and promises to come back in five minutes - asks her if she'll be there.  Of course the script puts him on the run instead.

"First Love." a Jamie episode,  opens with Griff driving a man and his young wife to the Ponderosa.  He stops the carriage to offer the wife a drink of water from a creek and hands her a wildflower.  The purpose of the scene is simply to show that the man is unreasonably jealous of any attention to his wife.  However, Griff is aware  only that the man has crushed the flower underfoot. The man has limited his accusations to his wife when Griff is at the creek.

In his final episode (also the final episode filmed), "The Marriage of Theodore Duffy," Griff falls in love with the female secret service agent with whom he’s living under cover as part of a married couple. There’s no indication one way or the other about his prior experience with women. Although he doesn’t appear to be particularly awkward or shy with Duffy, he isn’t any suave Joe Cartwright either.  His only other significant interaction with a woman in the series is in "The Witness" with the older woman he fetches to testify for Candy.  He's very protective of her and gets angry when the prosecutor discovers a somewhat shady past that he uses to discredit her.  When her husband (the man who killed the woman Candy is accused of murdering) tries to kill her, Griff intervenes.

We hope for, but don't expect to see many Griff stories or  stories where Griff is a major supporting player.  Even Candy, with his longer tenure, doesn't get much mention in an original cast oriented fanfic base.   That makes sense in light of the heavy syndication of the original cast episodes.  Using Candy or Jamie means no Adam.  Griff means no Adam or Hoss unless the story takes place beyond the series timeline and has Adam return.  However, if people do write Griff, they might as well know the facts.  And perhaps having the facts handy will encourage people to include him in Adam returns timelines.

Griff has so little established series canon that a fanfic writer has lots of leeway to create a backstory.  None of the established facts are particularly limiting.   And, off course,  someone can take the Griff character and do a "what if" story.  One of the best ideas for a Griff "what if" we've heard was from  the Yahoo Bonanza Lost Episodes List.  Someone suggested it would have been more interesting if Griff was a rather spoiled son from a wealthy family in Boston whose father is an old friend of Ben.  His tenure at the Ponderosa would be the result, not of fear of the parole board, but fear of losing his inheritance.  Tim Matheson could easily have played an educated, aristocratic type whose father wants to see him become a little more a man of the people. [His character in The Quest was well educated although not aristocratic.]
 
 
 

Email us at:  opinions@williamsmith.org

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