User Reviews

A meek, mild manner young man named Raffie Bly (played very well by Jack Grinnage) comes riding into Dodge carrying a drum. We learn that Raffie was in the war and was too young for fighting and was assigned to the Drum corp. Now years later he is trying to find a place to settle down.

It just so happens that the first people that he meets are two brutes named Sloat and Grade. Grade is the one that seems to want to harass the young man with Sloat nagging Grade alone. It all comes to a head one day in the stables where Grade makes the young man crawl across the rafters to get his drum. Raffie falls to the ground but is only slightly injured.

The mild Raffie then tells the Marshal that he is going to stand up for himself and get a gun. The next day Grade has been killed by a shot to the chest. Matt is looking for Raffie.

This plot has been played many times including within the noted series. Two brutes harass a victim until something terrible happens. This situation has been played in nearly every show on TV. What the writer has to do is change the victim into someone that can gain the attention of the viewers. They way that the drummer, Raffie Bly, was written is what made this episode interesting and different from the rest. Not the most entertaining episode but one that turned into a nice watch.

Jack Grinnage, who played Ron Updyke on the Night Stalker, plays Raffie in this episode. Raffie is young man who seems to be suffering from the 1870s version of PTSD or shell shock.

He was a teenage drummer during the Civil War and his experiences have left a mark on him. Raffie travels around with his drum, and it is hard not to see he has mental issues.

When he arrives in Dodge, the main characters welcome him, and he could have been an interesting recurring character. Unfortunately, a couple of drunken thugs start picking on Raffie.

It was not clear if they were bullying him because he was mentally disturbed, or they saw him as a weak former soldier. It looked like Raffie was a Union drummer, and occasionally characters who were former Confederate soldiers were troublemakers on Gunsmoke.

The incidents of verbal abuse of Raffie escalate to physical abuse, and attempts to kill the poor kid. Jack Grinnage really does a great job looking like a young kid (he was 29), and acting like someone with mental issues. The villains are very sadistic, and eventually they meet their just desserts.

As others have pointed out, everyone else welcomed Raffie, and yet after the bad guys are gone, he blows off the main cast and says he would rather go live somewhere else. It was sad, but it seemed consistent with a guy who made bad choices because he was not all there.

Raffie was one of those characters that would have been nice to see again, but on Gunsmoke, almost nobody ever came back (as the same character).

A helpless drummer boy Raffie comes to Dodge and is immediately harassed by two rival freight haulers for no apparent reason. The abuse escalates until finally Matt has to intervene.

I hate to disagree with my fellow commenter, but this is a contrived, one-dimensional story not up to the series norm. The basic idea of the helpless drummer boy is a novel and good one. However, the writers seem unsure what to do with it, leaving us unfortunately with a one-note story. Then too, no real motivation is supplied as to why the two roughnecks bully the boy (actually, actor Grinnage is 29!), unless his rather high-pitched voice and scrawny appearance are factored in. But that's still slender reason for the single-minded brutality, unless, that is, the writers are hinting at a TV taboo of the time. Neither, for that matter, is there much suspense since the upshot is apparent from the outset. All in all, the entry suggests this may have been a hurry-up job.