User Reviews

This really is not that bad of an episode. I have never been a fan of Jack Albertson but in this episode he was perfectly cast as lovable pool playing giant.

It begins when a young man named Dave, who is in love with a woman named Sally, watches an older gentleman named Joshua Finch con some cowboys out of a monthly pay while playing pool. Dave sees the older man as a partner where they can go from town-to-town playing pool and winning money.

While in Dodge- Finch, who real name is Mose Darby a well known pool player, beats a rich cattle owner out of hundreds of dollars, the rancher hires him a professional pool player to beat Finch. Since this game is the talk of all Kansas a traveling gambling wagon, with his rough sidekicks, comes into Dodge to take bets on the pool game. Dave sees dollar signs as he bets all the money on the other pool player with Finch throwing the game. However Finch feels young again and wants to keep the feeling of winning. He tells Dave that he is not throwing the game. If Finch wins, the roughs will surly come after Dave since he did not have the money that was used for the bet.

This was not an action packed show but one that was pleasant to watch. The story was good and the acting professional. And the ending may seem happy but it will not be a good feeling as the credit roll.

At a stagecoach way station, sharply dressed, aging -- and flat broke -- Moses Darby hustles three cowboys out of their wages when he beats them at pool. Darby is a pool player of some renown, but he has fallen on tough times. He drinks heavily and drifts from town-to-town hustling. He tells everyone his name is Joshua Pinch.

Dave Rope is at the way station visiting Sally, his girlfriend. Rope is one of those people with lofty aspirations always looking for some kind of "get rich quick" scheme. When he sees how adept Darby is at pool, Rope is convinced a partnership with Darby will help him achieve his goals.

Rope proposes a partnership with Darby, and the old man agrees. Darby, Rope, and Sally travel to Dodge City looking for opportunities the larger town might afford. In Dodge City, they meet Adam Kearny, an obnoxious, arrogant, wealthy cattle baron who enjoys high stakes gambling. When Darby wins $1,000 from Kearny playing pool, the cattleman pays Willie Tomsen, regarded as the best pool player west of the Mississippi, to travel to Dodge City to take on Darby.

The planned event sets a frenzy of activity into action within Dodge, as a man named Thaddeus McKay arrives to facilitate the betting. Matt Dillon is not happy about the circumstances, but there is little he can do.

Jack Albertson plays the part of Moses Darby. This is Albertson's third and final appearance in the series, and the roles he was given were all similar. In Season 15's "Danny," he plays a dying conman. In Season 17's "One for the Road," he portrays an alcoholic drifter. In this episode, he plays an alcoholic conman drifter. Albertson is well suited for this type of role.

Actor Jonathan Goldsmith appears in fourteen different Gunsmoke episodes. His final role in the series is his most prominent in this story as Dave Rope. Goldsmith is credited as Jonathan Goldsmith Lippe for the first time with this episode. In the previous thirteen appearances, he was credited as Jonathan Lippe, which was his stepfather's name. He later decided to change his name back to his birth name, which was Goldsmith.

Goldsmith often played villains with a penchant for a sort of sly arrogance and speaking when he should keep his mouth shut. His career began with appearances mostly in Westerns before he began being cast in other television dramas. One of his more noteworthy roles was in John Wayne's final film The Shootist, where Wayne's character shoots Goldsmith's character between the eyes at point blank range -- a scene Goldsmith described as requiring several extremely painful takes.

In 2007, Goldsmith began appearing in a wildly successful series of television advertisements for Dos Equis beer in which he portrayed "the most interesting man in the world." In 2016, Dos Equis replaced Goldsmith with French actor Augustin Legrand, but the popularity of the ad campaign has since waned. Shortly after Dos Equis dropped him, Goldsmith began appearing in ads for Astral Tequila, where he essentially played the same character he did for Dos Equis.

Nellie Bellflower fills the role of Sally, Dave Rope's girlfriend. This part was one of Bellflower's first acting jobs. She eventually found success in production. The film Finding Neverland starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet was one of Bellflower's most successful production projects. This is her only Gunsmoke participation.

Gunsmoke fans will recognize actor Dabbs Greer in this story. Although he plays the character Joe Bean here, he is most recognizable to long time Gunsmoke viewers as Mr. Jonas from the General Store in Dodge. This is Greer's final appearance in the series, which included a whopping forty-one other performances.

Actor Henry Beckman returns to the Gunsmoke world after a twelve-year absence. Beckman's last appearance in the series was in Season 8's "Uncle Sunday" where he plays Chester Goode's Uncle Sunday Meechum, who has a reputation as a crook. Beckman would return one last time in the final season of the series.

Actor John Davis Chandler makes his second and final Gunsmoke appearance as Willie Tomsen, the young pool player Adam Kearney brings to Dodge to take on Moses Darby. Chandler was excellent at playing especially despicable, sinister characters that often displayed psychopathic behavior. The Willie Tomsen character is less villainous than many of Chandler's other roles. One of Chandler's most memorable performances takes place in Sam Peckinpah's 1962 film Ride the High Country. He also had parts in Peckinpah's films Major Dundee and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.

The strength of this episode is the magnificent cast. The performances lift an otherwise predictable story. The closest thing to a villain in this story is the Dave Rope character, although he is not especially mean. Sally knows who Dave is, but she loves him and chooses to follow him to Dodge City. She even tells Moses at one point to beware, because Dave uses people for his own purposes.

The old idiom "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it" applies to this story and provides the fundamental theme that underlies the story.

This is another of those odd episodes where the regular cast is either absent or has almost no involvement. James Arness appears in a few scenes to issue warnings to Darby about hustling pool in Dodge and to look worried with all the gambling activity. Most of the story takes place within Dodge, which makes the absence of the stars even more noticeable.

It was also odd that no one questioned Rope's moneymaking scheme. I won't divulge details to avoid spoilers, but I would think if someone really did what the character does in the story, it would have elicited charges of cheating.

This episode is worth watching for the outstanding performances by the cast of mostly underrated actors.