Developing character

Each night I work on either a book or video or both for my Dreamcatchers project. The other night it was video. And the video selection was from a mid-1960s western I had not heard of prior to that. It was titled Branded and starred Chuck Connors, more famous for his work in the Rifleman.
I watched I believe 3 episodes and was fascinated by a huge, instantly noticeable difference between this western from 40 years ago and virtually every television show today.
Take "Surviving", for example. In this episode Jason McCord (the character played by Connors) is crossing a desert and comes across another man whose horse has died. The guy is almost dead but McCord risks his own life on the chance he can shepherd this other guy across the desert.
The inspiring part came when the show, which only ran about 22 minutes, actually took time to develop this other character. This man,also named Jason, may have never been on another episode, I don't know. But they developed his character including some emotion and some motivation. Towards the end he leaves McCord for dead.
They did such a good job of it that you cared. You hurt a little bit that he believed he had to do that. And you knew you would be upset when McCord caught him and killed him in front of his kids.
Except for one thing. McCord chose to shake his hand instead. There was not a single shot fired in this Western. Nor, for that matter, in two other episodes.
And furthermore, it made sense. Both McCord and the other Jason had sufficient character depth from this one episode, the first one I ever saw, that it made more sense for McCord to express friendship than it did for him to kill the guy whose life he saved.
Compare that to most shows to day. Female characterization is limited to how much of her breast or butt you recognize. Male characterization is what particular weapon he is skilled with. Those are the things that define people.
On comedies people are designed by cross-gender or sex jokes. There is no reason to care if a main character leaves because they were not real...they were a compilation of stereotypes and crudity.
I am glad we have progressed in some ways but in other ways...I wish the Lone Ranger and Bugs Bunny were the highest rated shows going today.