Marry Me

For the past ten episodes 'Gunsmoke' has dealt with some serious and powerful issues within the plot of the story. This episode takes a break from the serious side and features a more comedy centered theme.

The story centers around a family of hillbillies with the last name Cathcart. The family consist of the father and two sons Sweet Billy and Orkey. Sweet Billy is set for marriage which would leave Orkey as the only Cathcart boy not to be married. So with a little help from Pa, Orkey makes his way to Dodge to find a woman.

Orkey picks out Ms Kitty to be his wife. Of course this is rejected by Kitty and Sam has to throw Orkey out of the Long Branch. But since Pa said that Ms Kitty must be shy, the three Cathcart's decide to kidnap Ms Kitty until she grows to love Orkey. So Ms Kitty is held hostage inside the Cathcart shack well outside of Dodge.

Meanwhile Matt and Chester are trying their best to find the whereabouts of Ms Kitty. While Doc is trying to prevent a cholera epidemic from taking hold around Dodge. But it will not be long until cholera takes hold at the Cathcart shack. And with the sickness a new purpose of life.

The writer did go somewhat overboard with trying to make the script comical - but the sad thing is that it was not needed. The show, in its own way, was a sweet tale of priorities of life. Nice Watch.

Of all attempts at this type of storyline I have ever seen, this is by far the most realistic in recreating the American Mountain people or hillbillies as they were known during 20th century references. Without speaking to the plot I have to give Dennis Weaver great praise for his directing in this masterpiece of true Americana. Having had come from a childhood that was exposed to the very people this episode is based on I am taken back with such an accurate interpretation and superb performance. 19th century hill people are an extinct blend of what became of free living Americans before the establishment of necessary social systems that provide education and middle class goal setting.

After viewing this storyline you will no doubt be reminded of other attempts at explaining a logical conclusion but with various situation set-ups provided for humor and entertainment but Dennis Weaver obviously did his homework and maintained an artistic yet documentary feel to this memorable episode.

Yet another variant on the yokel-kidnaps-himself-a-bride plot, this one is typical, trying to be funny but not succeeding; there just isn't much that's funny about being kidnapped. The little lady's oh-so-feminine shrieks of dismay, the kidnapper-swain's indulgent certainty that she's just playing hard to get--it's all standard and all unfunny. A sentimental turn at the lame climax of the story, done to soften up the viewer so that he won't want to see the kidnappers punished, seems forced and is unconvincing. A couple of errors against continuity also bothered me. Kitty is kidnapped wearing the sort of evening garb, complete with dangling earrings and pinned-up hair, that she would have worn in the saloon; after a day or two she is seen in the kidnappers' cabin wearing a pretty but modest daytime dress of the sort a prosperous settler's wife would have worn. Did the kidnappers wait while she packed? It didn't appear so at the time. Also, Doc is shown burning the personal effects of a cholera victim to thwart the spread of the disease; he takes no such precautions when someone else later succumbs to cholera in his presence. Seems like sloppy storytelling in a series I don't associate with sloppiness.

Maybe they did, but if they're as ignorant as presented in Gunsmoke over the years, I don't know how they could have gone to Dodge City from the hill country.

The set-up is very familiar, as noted in other comments. I refer to Seven Brides, from about a decade earlier, where abduction rather than elopement was the plot. A serious take on this would be rather grim, but we had an episode recently which had this kind of "serious" kidnapping.

This is about two years before the debut of the Darling family on The Andy Griffith Show, where coming into Mayberry and abducting a bride was played for laughs. The Darlings and their notions of proper "wifing" were the basis of several episodes. Like the Darlings, the Cathcart family also were musical, with fiddle, guitar and jug. And in Mayberry, of course, there was Ernest T. Bass.