And now, the worst
ones I saw:
"The
Gang" (October 8, 1966). This is a halfway decent story -- unrepentant
Confederates living in Mexico and taking in outlaws
-- but it's done in by
extreme and unnecessary violence. Five of
the six name players (and numerous
extras) take bullets in the chest, back, groin,
whatever, as do several
extras. The lone survivor is Arch Johnson,
a minor player in the sixties and
seventies, playing a loyal sergeant who finally
goes "home."
"Vengeance"
(October 2 and 9, 1967). Buck Taylor, Morgan Woodward and Victor
French all make their Gunsmoke debuts in this
two-hour episode, and that's
just about all you can say in favor of these two
hours of steadily escalating
brutality. Taylor's role was actually a
screen test for the role of Newly
O'Brien (he plays a vicious hired gun here), while
James Stacy and Kim Darby
try and fail to control themselves after sadistic
rancher John Ireland steps
on Woodward with his horse.
(unknown
title) (March 16, 1970) Earl Holliman could be very, very good --
but not on this series. Here he plays a
total brute, seeking revenge on a
farmer (Morgan Woodward, playing a coward for
once) who left him high and dry
when the law swooped down on them while robbing
a bank. If you enjoy
Holliman taunting Kitty and Sam while holding
the Long Branch's shotgun (is
it empty or isn't it?), you probably have too
much time on your hands. And
don't forget Holliman's bizarre, raspy voice in
the Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge
movie.
"Cleavus"
(February 15, 1971) Robert Totten sometimes acted and sometimes
directed, and on occasion he is credited with
doing both at once on this
episode. Totten had more pride than that.
He did not have the good sense to
turn down this role, though; with a huge fake
beard adding to his discomfort,
he plays a chronic loser who accidentally kills
a gold miner and says he
found the mine instead. Durn his luck; although
there is a little gold in
the mine, most of it is iron pyrite (fool's gold).
Cleavus even manages to
blow himself apart while tossing aside a shotgun
at episode's end. You'll
wish he'd done it about 30 minutes earlier.
The on-screen credits give
direction to Vincent McEveety, who had in fact
directed Totten as an actor in
quite a few previous episodes and probably deserves
full credit here.
"The
Widow and the Rogue" (October 29, 1973) This might not be as bad as
I
think it is, but it gets the award for spectacularly
bad timing, As this
episode unspooled, guest star James Stacy was
fighting for his life in a Los
Angeles hospital after being broadsided by a drunk
driver (Stacy's passenger
was killed, and Stacy lost an arm and a leg).
"A
Game of Death ... An Act of Love" (November 5 and 12, 1973). I've
said
before that the 19th season was the worst.
Don't know exactly why, but one ma
jor reason was how episodes dragged through long
conversations with the
equivalent of elevator music running in the background.
That's not the most
important factor of this episode, but it's a 90-minute
(tops) show padded to
two hours; the last 20 minutes are completely
unwatchable for reasons just
outlined. The screen credits give a hint
of trouble by placing Paul Stevens
in third place, although he dominates the show
as a half-Indian lawyer
defending some renegade tribesmen on a murder
charge, while the victim's
widower and daughter watch from different perspectives.
Incidentally,
Stevens suffered a stroke just before filming
his courtroom speech and the
segment had to be put on hold; when Stevens returned
to the set three weeks
later, he was propped up in a cart and shot only
from very close angles to
disguise his lack of mobility (this may well have
been a factor in the
post-courtroom scenes dragging out so long).
Incidentally, Glenn Strange
(Sam) died during that hiatus, and the Long Branch
was never the same.
"A
Family of Killers" (January 14, 1974) This is one episode which totally
screws up its priorities. Is it about a
vengeance-hungry marshal (Glenn
Corbett)? Is it about the head of the outlaw
family (Anthony Caruso)? Is it
about the family of killers (Mills Watson and
Stuart Margolin, the latter
totally wasted)? And is the final gunfight
dumb or is it really dumb? (Matt
Dillon and Corbett, each armed with only one revolver,
manage to cut down
four outlaws packing rifles, pistols and shotguns;
note how quickly Watson
runs out of bullets.) There's some nice
work by Zina Bethune, a former star
of the prime-time soap The Doctors and the Nurses,
but she was probably glad
to get the paycheck and go home.
"The
Town Tamers" (January 28, 1974) They finally give Jim Davis a lead role
(his last on Gunsmoke, although Jock Ewing would
be created just for him) and
it's plum worthless. Matt Dillon and Davis
try to impose law and order on a
wide-open town, and at episode's end it looks
like they took on the town and l
ost.
"The
Iron Blood of Courage" (February 11, 1974) Another good idea gone
south. What if a hired gun was well-educated
and a family man, and took his
wife and daughter with him when he was on assignment?
Not too plausible but
worth a look, until Patti Cohoon (her again?)
as the daughter starts spouting
bad essays and each side tries to bushwhack the
gunman. It's fitting but not
the least bit convincing when he decides to just
buy the disputed land with
his own money and become a farmer. Watch
the final negotiation and see how
much of it was assembled from stock footage of
James Arness, who's watching
from a hillside. Incidentally, this is the
first episode where Eric Braeden
(who plays the gunman and deserved better) wears
his famed Young and the
Restless mustache.
"The
Schoolmarm" (February 25, 1974) This wouldn't be that bad if it didn't
set a pattern for almost totally ignoring the
time frame in which Gunsmoke was
set (the way Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman would
make into a habit two decades
later). A schoolteacher, who has been raped
by a passerby, is pregnant and
stalked by the rapist. The rapist takes
a fatal tumble down the Long Branch
stairs in a fight with the teacher's boyfriend.
The viewer gets a very bad
taste in his or her mouth.
"A
Town in Chains" (September 16, 1974) Okay, Gunsmoke could have run two
more years as it was if Fred Silverman hadn't
decided to kill it (a dumb move
if there ever was one; the next successful show
in that time slot would be eig
ht years later). It would not have been
able to survive into the 1977-78
season, because episodes like this would have
been the result. CBS, as
viewers will remember, got hypersensitive about
violence and cut gunplay
almost to zero, unless someone was playing target
practice (as in this
episode) and the gunfire was cartoonish (again
as in this episode). A bunch
of bumbling thieves pose as Army men to rob a
bank, and the whole hour
becomes the seventies version of Dumb and Dumber.
The outlaws are so inept
that when Matt trades shots with them, he just
wings Jon Cypher in the arm.
(Even that would have been borderline for CBS
during 1977-79. Watch Hawaii
Five-O from those two years and see how limp it
became; even a lifting of the
restrictions for '79-'80 couldn't save it.)
"The
Guns of Cibola Blanca" (September 23 and 30, 1974) This two-parter taken
together may serve as the worst episode of the
entire series, unless you
count the first and third movies as series episodes.
Number One on the list
of problems is the fact that Kitty Russell was
supposed to be a major player.
When Amanda Blake quit the show shortly
before filming started, the
character wasn't dropped; instead she was renamed
Lyla (played by Dorothy
Tristan) -- and not rewritten at all. Watch
the show -- if you dare -- and
you'll see how Lyla flounders through what would
have been Kitty's scenes
(cat fight in the mud, rape, etc.). Number
Two on the list: in a season
where the worries about TV violence were skyrocketing,
this is hands down the
most violent episode in the entire series -- the
show ends with an entire town
and its inhabitants being blown sky high
(if they haven't been shot
already). There is a grotesque pleasure
in seeing James Luisi play a role alm
ost as psychotic as his Captain Chapman on The
Rockford Files, but nothing
else works in the slightest. Incidentally,
these constitute two out of
exactly four episodes (out of 24 in the last season)
where the four main
characters, minus Kitty, even appear together;
the other two aired in
November 1974. The other 20 dealt with one
character or another meeting up
with an old friend or enemy and doing the entire
story in conjunction with
that character (when they bothered to use the
regulars at all, that is).
"The
Wiving" (October 14, 1974) This was the second episode filmed
in the
1974-75 season and the writing debut of Earl Wallace,
who would team with
William Kelly to script the acclaimed film Witness.
When they won an Oscar
for the script, they spent most of their acceptance
speech throwing barbs at
Peter Weir, who had rewritten the whole thing.
They should have been
salaaming him on hands and knees for letting them
keep the credit. You be
the judge, starting with this episode: a
farmer (Harry Morgan in a huge and
incredibly fake beard) decides he and his idiot
sons need to get married. So
the boys ride into town and raid the Long Branch
Saloon of all its bar girls,
including new owner Miss Hannah (Fran Ryan), whom
they intend as Dad's new
missus. This is played partially for laughs
and partially deadly serious as
the shanghaied ladies struggle to either escape
or to avoid falling for the
farm boys. Definitely not for the women's
rights crowd. But, almost
unbelievably, this episode was so popular with
the viewers that a sequel,
"Brides and Grooms," was rushed into production
and shown February 10; at
least that one is wholly comic and shows off Ryan's
talents again.
"Manolo"
(March 17, 1975) Well, the premise is certainly original, but then
again it's an Earl Wallace script. Somewhere
Wallace read that in the Basque
country of Spain, young men show their maturity
by beating their fathers in a
fistfight. Say what? The whole episode
shows us Manolo (Robert Urich, even
more leaden than usual) whine and moan and get
into trouble over his refusal
to perform the ritual, because as a boy in the
old country he had
accidentally killed another child in a playground
brawl. Until, of course,
he takes on his younger brother, who had fought
Dad first and won by
head-butting him into a metal water jug.
(Mark Shera, as the younger
brother, was costarring with Urich in S.W.A.T.
at the time this episode
aired, and at least he has the good sense not
to take it too seriously.)
Since he didn't kill his brother, Urich decides
to take on Dad (Nehemiah
Persoff, who can do just about any old-country
role and comes through again
here), wins, and all of a sudden everything is
set right. Puh-leeze!
However, there are some good bits with Fran Ryan
as Miss Hannah, the new
proprietor of the Long Branch (she had been on
before, but almost always
outside the saloon). I don't suppose anybody
knows any real Basque
sheepherders other than prominent Republican politician
Paul Laxalt -- who
presumably wasn't asked what a Basque accent sounds
like. This is shown as
the last episode in the syndicated run.
"The
Sharecroppers" (March 31, 1975) This was actually filmed at midseason
and was the directing debut of producer Leonard
Katzman. Next thing you
know, he's out the door on his nose and replaced
by John G. Stephens. Don't
know the backstage politics involved in that one,
but I suspect it was
because this episode was so D-U-L-L (almost soporific)
that CBS moved it to
the end of the season. The plot, if there
is one, concerns a woman's efforts
to get her lazy family to grow crops on their
hired farm; when she can't talk
them into it, she shanghais Festus instead.
Maybe. I lost track after about
two minutes. (Yes, it's still another Earl
Wallace script.) Presumably
Bruce Boxleitner loves this episode, however;
he rode it to John Mantley's How
The West Was Won and TV stardom for the
next quarter century. Also catch
Lisa Eilbacher, who would play Eddie Murphy's
gorgeous, miniskirted lady
friend in Beverly Hills Cop.
From: HHarrisFam@aol.com
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 04:38:43 EDT
Subject: Best Ten and Worst Ten Gunsmoke Episodes?
Click Here to see Top Gunsmoke Television Episodes: The Harris
List
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