Nothin' says Appalachia like the Sierra Nevada

The Incredible Journey Of Doctor Meg Laurel

(Made-for-TV 1979)

starring: Lindsay Wagner, Jane Wyman

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had a bad experience with the local, uh, witch doctor. Never did she want others to suffer as she had so she went off to a real medical school in Boston, Masschusetts. Big city traditions in the 1930's dictated that Doctor Meg Laurel couldn't make a man look bad, even if she's right and he's a big doofus. But after Dr. Laurel publicly embarrasses a very important judge, she decides to go and lay low for awhile. She sets off on a journey to her hometown in the Appalachian Mountains in the state of, well, they never told us. Why they didn't tell us, I dunno.

In any case, Dr. Meg arrives with medical supplies in tow, hoping to bring some real medicine to these backwoods hillbillies. That was not such an easy task. The mountain people don't care much for Outsiders and their ways. It's quite a challenge for Doc Laurel. Slowly but surely she's able to reclaim these people as her very own.

Going into this TV-movie, I had high hopes that The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel would be a gem. All I took away from it was a bit of a feeling of what that kind of life was like back in the first part of the 20th century. The mountain people lived, in a bunch of ways, very weird lives compared to how we live in 21st century suburbia. They even lived quite differently than people only a few hundred miles away in big cities like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philly and NYC. Unfortunately most of the movie just seemed to fall flat. I haven't done any research but I'm guessin' this is truly based on a real-life woman who I'm sure lived quite a remarkable life! Sadly, the story on the screen was kind of unimpressive and a little bland.

On top of it all, the producers completely misrepresented the geography of the Appalachian Mountains (on the Eastern side of America) by filming in the Sierra Nevada Mountains (in the West.) For shame.