Summertime TV fare used to include pilot episodes of show ideas that were not bought. "We'll Take Manhattan", if I remember correctly, was one of these.
I absolutely loved the main idea. Yes, (the show says) the Dutch did indeed pay some natives about $24 in beads for the island of Manhattan. But, according to an old something-or-other (a document on an old piece of leather? I forget), those Indians did not own Manhattan; instead, they were just visiting from another part of the New York area and laughed all the way home. So . . . the rightful owners of Manhattan were the original Indian tribe that did live there, and it so happened that there had always been a member of the tribe living on the island, and the current one was the tribe's chief, a wizened old man -- and the rightful owner of the whole island.
Very cute, and I've never forgotten it. But I don't know what a second episode would have been about. Perhaps, then, I understood why the series never was bought.
