Big Man, Big Target

Ellie is bored with ranching and her rancher husband. So what better to do than take up with a guy who is as bad as her husband is good. That's enough plot and it does end up being a very good watch. But, as in MANY Gunsmoke episodes the plot takes a second seat to some of the characters. There's a 2 minute conversation between Festus and Kitty that is GOLDEN. this is exactly what sets Gunsmoke a notch or two above all the other Westerns of the 60s.

I know all about Dennis Weaver but we last saw Chester the previous season walking down the street in Dodge City after 'Bentley' and we never heard from him again. He went where ever Adam Cartwright went after leaving Bonanza the next year, never to be heard of or mentioned again. Matt clearly misses him. For the first 7 years of the series, whenever Matt left town, Chester was bound to be with him, helping him track down or look out for the bad guys. He wasn't Matt's equal with a gun but he could give him good support in a shoot out or keep an eye on some varmint while Matt went after his partner. The next two years sometimes Chester was there, sometimes not. Now he's gone for good.

In his absence, we sometimes see Quint or Festus riding around with Matt. later Festus will become a deputy and we'll see more of him. But in these middle seasons, Matt is often off on his own and if something goes wrong, as it does here when his quarry's secret partner shoots him, he's in real trouble.

What makes this episode particularly strange is that when Matt doesn't return, it's not Quint and Festus that go looking for him: it's Doc and Kitty, who could hardly have dealt with any bad guys they might meet along the way. Where are Quint and Festus? Probably off filming one of their comedy team episodes. But if Matt had Chester along with him, they might not have been needed.

Another solid episode from Gunsmoke's "middle period". Good script with typical Gunsmoke-style doom and violence hanging over everything..especially with an out-in-the-open illicit affair between lovely, winsome Mariette Hartley and caustic, incisive, sardonic J. D. Cannon, the sort of role he played so well. But you just KNOW somebody is really going to "get it" in this one and,...believe me...they do.

The "comic relief" between Kitty and Festus is fine, but I get impatient when the scenes are NOT integrated into the plot, and only seem to hold up the action, which is the case here. What should be "relief" only serves to frustrate and raise the tension level.

There's a GREAT surprise about midway through this one, as Matt tracks down J. D. and confronts him out on the prairie. But when Doc and Kitty realize that Matt is "MIA", I said out loud "Where the hell is Festus or Quint...or ANYBODY...even "1st Townsman" or "2nd Townsman".. to accompany them into dangerous territory.

Anyway, the "Day for Night" filming leading to the big shoot-out is REALLY obvious; in fact, as Matt was sneaking around the ranch, I thought "That's some really nice, warm, sun-dappled cinematography, lots of depth", etc....until I realized were supposed to believe it's NIGHT, with Mariette sitting inside with her lantern. BUt... that's the way TV production (and many low-budget films) are forced to operate.

And the violent action near the end is SO cheesy when the sound effects department uses MASSIVE, LOUD gunshot cues, which sound like they're reverberating in the Grand Canyon..when in fact they're being discharged in a very close, tight space (and Mariette Hartley's fall is really lame and unconvincing). It's just SO overdone..as is the MUSIC SCORE in this episode; it has this annoying grey-ish, dreary, thick Germanic sound that continually intrudes on the action and mood. Too bad...gone are the days in the run of Gunsmoke when great artists like Fred Steiner or Van Cleave would tailor a new score to the action..and the music problem only becomes WORSE as the series moves into the "hip" late '60's and the color era, when the series really began to lose its depth and texture, both visually and musically. And I have no idea how composer Rudy Schrager was able to compose full scores week-after-week, and what function Herschel Gilbert actually served. But it's a big step down from seasons 7-9, and I deduct a full rating-star for the annoying musical scoring in this episode.

Still, there's a lot of excellent material in "Big Man", especially considering the weekly grind that made uniformly high quality a real challenge. Impressive final shot, too. LR.

Good story, not great, but really good understated performance by Hartley.