You’re ahead of me, Charles. Though a big Lonesome Dove fan back around 1990, I had never even heard of Comanche Moon until I got this e-mail from a reader:

Mr. Derbyshire — In case you are not watching Larry McMurtry’s ‘Comanche Moon’, Part 1 featured an eccentric Texas Ranger, originally from Boston, captured by one of McMurtry’s signature malign, sadistic villains. The Mexican villain puts his captive in a wooden cage, tells him to capture pigeons if he doesn’t want to starve, and dangles the cage over the rim of a very steep cliff. When the action switches back to this storyline, the Ranger, in his cage and in full voice, is singing Papageno’s first act aria as pigeons fly by, uncaptured.

As a founding member of Papageno Haters of North America, I ought not approve, but in TV’s “great wasteland,” I’ll take what real culture I can get.

In any case, you are right about there being no hope. We are doomed, doomed.