Robert Conrad, RIP

When I was a kid, "Wild Wild West" was absolutely my favorite TV show. It mixed the spy and western genres with an element of sci-fi, tongue all the while held firmly in cheek. I loved Conrad's character Jim West, but especially his sidekick Artemus Gordon, played by Ross Martin. Having seen it since, I realize now that the show was really quite campy, and quite bad. But at the time, it was fun to imagine myself a blend of the dashing West and the clever Gordon. The freeze-frame cliffhangers that preceded each commercial break undoubtedly helped prime me for whatever they were marketing. It's surely a part of me, somewhere, somehow.