User Reviews

Jailbait Janet was played by Nan Peterson, who was 23 at the time this episode was released, and she had some woman miles on her. Janet did not look like a girl in her early teens. This was Nan Peterson's first and only appearance on Gunsmoke.

Janet's young brother was played by Steven Terrell, who was 31 at the time, and this was his only appearance on Gunsmoke. John Larch played the father of the gang, and he was 47 years old, and this was his fifth appearance on Gunsmoke.

Larch is not very convincing as a father, nor as the victim that he wants to be. According to Larch, a railroad spark started a fire on his crops and destroyed everything he owned. That is impossible, unless he had his crops planted right up to the tracks. Usually the land around the tracks is owned by the railroads. They are not going to lay down rail lines through crops.

The rest of the story is just as bad. Larch takes his teenage kids on a train to rob it. Why would he take the girl? It would have made more sense if she was outside holding the horses or maybe just at home reading her Bible. Larch shoots the baggage car agent, and takes off with $50,000.00. That $50,000 in 1870 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $987,320.61 in 2020, yet it had no guards.

Larch and his kids spend the rest of the episode crying "poor me" because the railroad owed them a million dollars. Into the mix is Bartlett Robinson as the evil railroad detective, making nasty insinuations about Dillon keeping the $50K and having a sexual relationship with "Jailbait Janet." This was the last of Robinson's seven appearances on Gunsmoke. He definitely stinks up Dodge with his slanders against Marshal Dillon.

One interesting note is that whenever people bad-mouth Dillon in front of Miss Kitty, she acts like she could care less. Later on, towards the end of the series, she became more defensive about Matt and his reputation.

The end of the story is as convoluted as the rest of it. Kitty begs Dillon to let Jailbait Janet stay with her. Janet takes advantage of Kitty's trust, and breaks her family out of jail. They go off to pick up the railroad money. When Dillon catches up, Larch gets what he deserves. Then Dillon cuts the kids a break.

Was it because he really wanted them to get a fresh start, or because he wanted to score some points with Miss Kitty? Either way, this is another example of Dillon selectively enforcing the law. Sometimes he arrests people who were defending themselves after being victimized, and yet Dillon has no sympathy for them. Other times he selectively enforces the law to fit his sympathy for someone. Either way, it seems like Justice is subjective.

A train baggage car is held up by four masked men one of whom ends up shooting the clerk. Matt and Chester track them, encountering a hospitable man and his son and daughter on the prairie. Still, Matt's suspicious and jails them except for the girl, Janet, who's turned over to Kitty. But the girl breaks her dad and brother out, and now Matt has to track them again.

This is an uneven episode, more contrived than usual, with Robinson going over the top as the demanding railroad agent. But the narrative again brings up the plight of homesteading on the prairie, which makes the little family more sympathetic than simply a bunch of robbers. But, it also calls into question Matt's judgment at story's end by making us wonder if justice has truly been served by his decision. Nonetheless, I see that as a series strength since life itself doesn't always wrap things up neatly. Then too, by bending to sentiment Dillon is humanized in an unusual way for the unbending lawmen heroes of this TV-cowboy period.

(In passing-- I'm curious why the final sequence was done on an exterior set. Of course, that was needed to stage the big storm effects. But why, I wonder, did the producers think a violent storm was needed when the dramatics themselves seem sufficient. Just curious.)

We can only guess that the writers wanted to show a soft side of Marshal Matt Dillon but it appears that they went well over the line as they used some questionable tactics, or even unlawful tactics, to fulfill the point they were trying to create. The story seemed to push the limits of what Marshal Dillon has been preaching to people when concerning respecting the law.

The story begins as three people rob the train that is heading toward Dodge. They get the money that train was carrying but end up shooting and killing a train clerk before getting away. Matt and Chester trail the bandits and find a father, Dan Everly, and his two teenage children, Jerry and Janet. They confess to the robbery but will not reveal the location of the money.

When they get to Dodge, a train employee by the name of Krocker is telling everyone that the reason the money is not returned is because the Marshal is going to run away with the young girl, Janet, and take the money with him. And it even looks worse when the family breaks out of jail and is on the loose. Matt will again have to track the family in order to bring back the money and hopefully justice.

They story, even with some flaws, is going fairly well at this point. However it is about to take a turn that would not follow the usual logic set forth by Marshal Dillon. Matt tends to violate the same law that he uses to arrest and prosecute others on the Kansas prairie. He threw out the law that he preaches to others and took it upon himself to rewrite the law on his own terms. Just did not set right and decreased the value of the show. The ending ruined the watching experience for this episode.

In this episode of TV's "Gunsmoke" there's definitely one law for the men and then there's another, quite different law for the women. And, I don't go for this kind of thing, at all.

And when it came to Marshal Dillon s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g the law, I thought that he was an even bigger dingleberry than the criminals were.

I'm not kidding here. This was really one terrible episode.