History Series / Bonanza

* Joseph "Little Joe" Cartwright (Michael Landon), his youngest son, by his third (late) wife. He was the young, hotheaded immature one.

* WesternCharacters: Used virtually all of them at one time or another.

Beyond the core cast of Cartwrights, the program had a vast ensemble of regulars and {{recurrer}}s numbering literally in the hundreds, including at times such current and future famous names as Creator/JamesCoburn, Tim Matheson, Jack Elam, Buddy Ebsen, Mariette Hartley, Tom Skerritt, Creator/HarryDeanStanton, George Kennedy, Creator/BruceDern, Bonnie Bedelia, Dawn Wells, Wayne Newton, Creator/MajelBarrett, Creator/JamesDoohan and Creator/DeForestKelley. Beyond the big name guest stars, there were rarely one-off characters on ''Bonanza'' -- almost every character ever seen, even bad guys, made appearances in at least two episodes; and even nameless extras in the background (such as "Blonde Saloon Girl" and "Brunette Saloon Girl") could and did have multi-year runs playing their characters. In fact, between the length of its time on the air and the scope of its storylines, ''Bonanza'' was virtually a gateway series for talent both new and established looking for television credits.

* LongRunners: The series had for 14 seasons, making it the second longest running Western series after ''Series/{{Gunsmoke}}'' at 20 seasons.

* BerserkButton: Do ''not'' mess with Hoss's pictures of his late mother Inger. Any harm done to them will be met with a fist. And unbridled rage that even has the power to reverberate through ''amnesia''.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Hoss is a major example. Kind as can be, an animal-lover, and a child's best friend. But to someone up to no good, he's a ''beast''.

* BurnBabyBurn: The notorious mapburning at the start of the opening credits.

* CartwrightCurse: The TropeNamer. Ben Cartwright has been thrice-widowed. His first wife, Elizabeth Stoddard, [[DeathByChildbirth died from complications after giving birth to Adam.]] His second wife, a Swedish woman named Inger Stevenson (and also Hoss' mother), was [[HoldTheLine killed during an Indian attack when she chose to help fight them and took an arrow to the back]]. Ben's third wife and the mother of Little Joe, Marie [=DeMarigny=], died from injuries after she [[DeathByFallingOver fell off her horse.]]

* CattleBaron: A rare protagonist example of the trope, the Cartwright family are stated to have a 640,000 acre spread and a few hundred permanent (though rarely seen) employees. Moving a few thousand head of cattle to new pastures is a morning's work, and the Nevada mining industry was nearly crippled by Ben's refusal to cut and sell more lumber than he was already providing.

* CousinOliver: The addition of Jamie Hunter Cartwright (Mitch Vogel) to open the 1970-1971 season, rounding out the Cartwrights where Adam had used to. As the character of Little Joe began maturing throughout the 1960s, he began to be too old to take Ben's intended-for-teenager's fatherly advice (his actor Michael Landon's aging becomes apparent when his hair suddenly grays and grows out long, and his chin starts to sag). That, and to maintain interest among younger viewers, justified Jamie's arrival on the Ponderosa. (To be fair, the series continued to be a top 20 hit for two more seasons, with the real dooming catalyst being Dan Blocker's death and a move of the series to Tuesday evenings from its longtime Sunday night home.)

* CriminalDoppelganger: All four of the Cartwrights have one.
** Joe actually has two! Shorty Slade from "The Gunmen", and Angus Borden from "Alias Joe Cartwright".

* CrusadingWidower: In one of the most tragic moments in the entire series, Joe Cartwright gets married in the final season and has his pregnant wife murdered all because she had a deadbeat brother who incurred the wrath of an angry gambler, taking revenge on her to hurt him by proxy, ultimately taking both their lives ''and'' an unborn one. Joe absolutely ''lost it'' and pursed his family's killer alongside Candy until the man was dead and gone.

* DeathGlare: Ben Cartwright is quite skilled in death glares; a particularly outstanding one can be seen in the final scene of "The Gift".

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The Cartwrights in the early episodes often confronted strangers in the Ponderosa in a hostile fashion with guns drawn. Lorne Greene convinced the producers that since the Cartwrights are such major landowners and a major business interest in the region, they logically would be more hospitable to visitors for economic, social and political purposes. One can only assume this was back in the days when they didn't feel settled in and comfortable on the Ponderosa yet.

* TheGamblingAddict: Helen Layton, who'd driven her husband to drink himself to death over her gambling debts, and latched onto Hoss as her new {{sugar daddy}}. When she was exposed, she left town with another man.
** In the 1972-1973 season premiere "Forever," Little Joe's tragic bride Alice Harper has a brother, John, who is a hopeless gambling addict on the run from a ruthless gambler named Sloan. Sloan and his henchmen kill both John and Alice when they break into the home of Joe and Alice Cartwright (when Joe wasn't home) in an attempt to collect the debt.

* GrandFinale: Zig-zagged with "Forever." It sets up Little Joe's final departure from the Ponderosa after he suffers a loss so great it has made it too painful to keep living on that land. It is also the most dramatic and arguably most memorable story of the last season, and made TV Guide's top 100 TV episodes list. Oddly, it was aired ''first'', to address the death of Dan Blocker, but the tone and nature of the story makes it more appropriate to be aired last as a GrandFinale because it sets forth a MoodWhiplash for the remainder of the season's episodes, which don't come anywhere close to the emotion faced in this one except for the last one aired.

* HistoricalInJoke: A few. The Cartwrights were directly involved with the invention of the honeycomb timbering for silver mines and the water pumping windmill, for example.

** Real life historical figures from the West - like Mark Twain, Albert Michelson, and Emperor Norton - would make guest appearances.
*** Chronology their presence in the show is reasonably accurate historically. Twain's first appearance coincides with the time he was working as a newspaperman in Virginia City, Nevada. Michelson is shown as a young Jewish schoolboy from Germany in the same town, subject to antisemitism, which he was in real life. Michelson gets an extra coda showing what he did in real life.

* {{Instrumental Theme Tune}}: An absolute classic example of this trope.

* Creator/MarkTwain: Appears in the first season to write for the Territorial Enterprise.

* NotSoFakePropWeapon: In one episode Hoss get framed for murder when the blank rounds from a prop gun get switched for real bullets and the blanks turn up in his saddle bag.

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Candy's given name is never revealed.

* PoorlyDisguisedPilot: "Sam Hill" starring Claude Akins, a blacksmith who reunites with his long lost father. It was intended to jumpstart a spinoff series but it never materialized.
** Also "The Avenger," though not as overt as "Sam Hill" was.

* [[PutOnABus Put On A Stagecoach]]: When Pernell Roberts left the show, his character Adam was said to have moved to Australia, and then almost never mentioned again.

* RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: John Harper, Alice's estranged brother in "Forever", gets cornered by the psychopathic Damion for running up a huge gambling debt of $5,000. Fearing for his life, John squeals on the Cartwrights and his newlywed and pregnant sister that they have the money to pay him off. Damion promptly corners Alice while her husband, Joe, is away, and John angers Damion. After ignoring his warning and laying hands on him, Damion puts a bullet in his gut, and he bleeds to death. Then, after Alice puts up resistance, he uses his brutish henchman Mr. Harley to make an example out of her and he murders her, and by extension, the unborn child inside of her. Then, the group burns down the homestead before Joe even had the chance to finish the baby's room.
** Even worse, when the authorities fish out the bodies of Alice and John, they at least recognize Alice's. John's is burnt beyond recognition. The Cartwrights bury her and erect a grave for the late Alice Cartwright, but because she rejected her brother, they had nothing to do with him and never learned he was dead because neither did the authorities, so his body was hauled off to be disposed of. That's right- he doesn't even get a grave to remember him by, because he doesn't deserve one. We also don't know if he died instantly from the gunshot wound, but he ''surely'' did when the homestead went up in flames, while Alice was already a goner. In other words, his sister went to Heaven while he burned in Hell.

** Hoss often can't remember which word he's looking for, and will look to Joe for help.
*** Once happens while the two characters are debating; Little Joe provides Hoss with the word he's looking for, then they jump right back into the debate.

** In the episode "The Flapjack Contest" poor Little Joe just cannot stop breaking windows.

* TemporaryBlindness: Joe in "The Stillness Within".

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Hoss is a major example. Kind as can be, an animal-lover, and a child's best friend. But to some up to no good, he's a ''beast''.

* Ben Cartwright (Creator/LorneGreene), patriarch of the family, a former ship's chandler from New England who has [[CartwrightCurse seen three wives lost to cruel fate]], each [[SomeoneToRememberHimBy leaving him a son that never got to knew their respective mothers.]]

* MinimalistCast: The final aired episode, "The Hunter", is a very simple story where Joe is relentlessly hunted by a demented man and you hear the inner thoughts and monologues of their characters in the heat of action.

* MinimalistCast: The final episode is a very simple story where Joe is relentlessly hunted by a demented man and you hear the inner thoughts and monologues of their characters in the heat of action.

* GrandFinale: Zig-zagged with "Forever." It sets up Little Joe's final departure from the Ponderosa after he suffers a loss so great it has made it too painful to keep living on that land. It is also the most dramatic and arguably most memorable story of the last season, and made TV Guide's top 100 TV episodes list. Oddly, it was aired ''first'', to address the death of Dan Blocker, but the tone and nature of the story makes it more appropriate to be aired last as a GrandFinale because it becomes a ToughActToFollow for the remainder of the season's episodes.

* CutShort: Season 14 has a very abbreviated run (only 16 episodes) compared to all the other seasons due to the death of Dan Blocker resulting in the termination of a huge chunk of episodes centered around Hoss- without him, they couldn't be produced. This also was the killing blow for ''Bonanza'' itself, as Blocker's sudden demise cause a production delay that kept the season from airing at its intended time, and got the show kicked to a weaker time slot that led to its downfall when it fell out of the top 30 most-watched programs of the year. Fortunately, it saw several sequel movie installments, though with a new generation of Cartwrights [[ActorExistenceFailure as more of the original cast passed away.]]

* ADayInTheLimelight: "The Lonely Man" focuses on Hop Sing (and shows that The CartwrightCurse rubbed off on him).

** TheKid = Jamie

* HangoverSensitivy: Little Joe in "The First Born" after he and Clay get drunk off pulque.

** Doing anything to [[{{Trigger}} remind Griff of the hostile environment of his corrupt imprisonment]] will get him on the defensive.

* Ben Cartwright (Creator/LorneGreene), patriarch of the family, a former ship's chandler from New England who has [[DoomMagnet seen three wives lost to cruel fate]], each [[SomeoneToRememberHimBy leaving him a son that never got to knew their respective mothers.]]

** A more subdued example, but trying to prove you're a bigger man than Adam will lead to [[GoodOlFisticuffs old-fashioned fisticuffs]] to duke it out and see who's really fit to lead.

** A more subdued example, but trying to prove you're a bigger man than Adam will lead to OldFashionedFisticuffs to duke it out and see who's really fit to lead.

* ColdOpen: Most episodes before Season 14 would start before the title sequence. In Season 14, the final season, the title sequence was revamped so that the credits play over the episode footage, allowing for more content to be shot in lieu of an abbreviated run. This style transferred over to Michael Landon's subsequent series later that same year, ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie''.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The Cartwrights in the early episodes often confronted strangers in the Ponderosa in a hostile fashion with guns drawn. Lorne Greene convinced the producers that since the Cartwrights are such major landowners and a major business interest in the region, they logically would be more hospitable to visitors for economic, social and political purposes.

** TheKid = Jaime
** TheAntiHero = Griff

** "Forever" turns Joe Cartwright into a widower in the worst way possible, seeing him lose a ''pregnant'' wife. He doesn't even get lucky enough to have his child survive.

%%* ColdOpen

* CrusadingWidower: In one of the most tragic moments in the entire series, Joe Cartwright gets married in the final season and has his pregnant wife murdered all because she had a deadbeat brother who incurred the wrath of an angry gambler, taking revenge on her to hurt him by proxy. Joe absolutely ''lost it'' and pursed his family's killer alongside Candy until the man was dead and gone.

* ForgottenThemeTuneLyrics:

* NeverLearnedToRead: Child, in the episode "Child," was illiterate. Sadly, this means [[spoiler:he went a long time not knowing what his name was (and going by "Child" because that's what everyone called him) until Hoss read the inscription in his Bible]].

* RearrangeTheSong: The driving, rock-oriented version of the theme song heard in later seasons.

* TemporaryLoveInterest: Virtually every woman the Cartwrights came in contact with, usually because they would die by the end of the episode.

* CutShort: Season 14 has a very abbreviated run compared to all the other seasons due to the death of Dan Blocker resulting in the termination of a huge chunk of episodes centered around Hoss- without him, they couldn't be produced. This also was the killing blow for ''Bonanza'' itself, as Blocker's sudden demise cause a production delay that kept the season from airing at its intended time, and got the show kicked to a weaker time slot that led to its downfall. Fortunately, it saw several sequel movie installments.

* Candy Canaday (David Canary) started out as a SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute for Adam when Pernell Roberts left the show, but then Candy [[CharacterDevelopment evolved into a unique character of his own right.]] When his character left the show in 1970 following a contract dispute, Jamie took his place, until Dan Blocker suddenly died and Michael Landon asked David Canary to come back to help fill the void.

* CousinOliver: The addition of Jamie Hunter Cartwright (Mitch Vogel) to open the 1970-1971 season. As the character of Little Joe began maturing throughout the 1960s, he began to be too old to take Ben's intended-for-teenager's fatherly advice. That, and to maintain interest among younger viewers, justified Jamie's arrival on the Ponderosa. (To be fair, the series continued to be a top 20 hit for two more seasons, with the real dooming catalyst being Dan Blocker's death and a move of the series to Tuesday evenings from its longtime Sunday night home.)