User Reviews

Wow! This episode stands out from the crowd. *No Hands" introduces a rich array of characters living in or visiting Dodge City. How the visitors interlink with the town dwellers, including the regular cast, is scripted to near perfection by John Meston. Here, the good guys are exactly that, the bad guys have no redeeming features. It provides a great role for Denver Pyle (as far removed from his character in The Dukes of Hazzard as is possible). Not only that, the regulars, particularly Milburn Stone, also have a story to get their teeth into and are given strong lines to boot.

But what makes this one special is the overwhelming sense of tragedy that slowly builds up and affects all the main cast principals. Here, Matt Dillon is powerless to counter all that happens, injustice is cruelly applied, justice is truly ironic. Watch it if you can.

While watching this episode was not sure where the story was going. Thought it was going to be another Matt shoot-em-up at the end and cleaning up the story. Instead we are treated to a special kind of justice one you can really sink your teeth into.

It starts rather sadly when a woodcarver named Will Trimble is harassed by the Ginnis family clan. The Ginnis's are composed of Pa and four brothers each just as wild as the other. When one of the Ginnis brothers breaks his leg they go to Doc Adams place where they have to wait about 30 seconds while Doc finishes with a splinter for Will Trimble. That is why the Ginnis clan picked on Trimble- they had to wait.

When one of the Ginnis boys steps on Trimble hand in cause a wound that gets infected to the point of having to remove the hand. The woodcarver can no longer work so his plan is to leave Dodge. Trimble goes and gets supplies but before leaving the clerk gives him a few jars of the widow Burns' special pork sausage.

On the trail, Trimble and his dog stop after a wheel comes off the wagon. Since they only have the sausages to eat they share them. Later one of the Ginnis brother comes by and Trimble gives him a few sausages.

That evening the Ginnis son dies. They ride out to where Trimble was located and find his dog dead and Trimble in an awful way. Trimble asks for help but they fear he has some disease and just beats him to death and take his supplies.

Quint finds Trimble's body and gets Matt. They ride out to where the Ginnis' are located knowing they are the ones that killed Trimble. However, there is no way Matt can arrest them. There just isn't enough evidence to arrest. Matt and Quint ride off thinking justice will not be served. But what goes around comes around.

Excellent story. A wonderful episode that truly is a nice piece of writing. Denver Pyle and Strother Martin are excellent as the leads in this exciting episode. A great watch that will have you wearing a side-ways grin at the end.

This is the episode that "Phoebe Strunk" should have been, but wasn't. It's another slice of Meston meanness, with bits of Hitchcock and Dahl thrown in.

The ending is telegraphed when Timble receives a going-away gift of "three jars of pork sausage -- made by the widow Burns -- best in all Kansas". You know it's gonna be p'isen. Six humans and one dog die. One wonders how many other Kansans the widow Burns has offed.

The sausage is (presumably) tainted with botulism toxin. Given the way food was overcooked then -- plus the fact that the links are unwrapped and exposed to air -- makes such contamination unlikely. But it's nice to see the bad'uns receive such a poetic comeuppance.

Strother Martin gives a marvelously pathetic (in the right sense of the word) performance. As Hobbs said, life is nasty, brutish, and short.

Wood carver Will Timble (Strother Martin) gets something in his eye and Doc drags him to his office so he can remove it. While he is busy, "Pa" Ginnis (Denver Pyle) and his four worthless sons come to Doc's office because one has busted his leg. They gripe over having to wait on Timble who doesn't insist on them waiting, it is Doc that does that. Then he treats the broken leg, as Doc always treats everybody, whether he likes you or not. The Ginnis's threaten Doc because he made them wait, but they know they need him so they ultimately do nothing.

Later though they do see Will having a beer and one of the sons hits him and steps on his hand, causing a free for all in the Long Branch and resulting in the overnight jailing of one of the sons. Eventually, this damaged hand develops gangrene and Doc must amputate, causing Will to be unable to support himself in his trade. He decides to become a peddler, and this causes him to meet up with the Ginnis family one more time, but it doesn't end like you'd think it would.

Marshal Dillon and Doc are up against it in this episode. They both blame themselves for the situation. Doc feels guilty for dragging Will up to his office at that particular time precipitating the whole issue with the Ginnis family and the loss of Will's hand. Dillon feels bad because the Ginnis family are pure bullies but he does not have anything for which he can arrest them. Their guilt over things they do not control contrasts sharply with the Ginnis family who don't really care for each other at all they are just a bunch of wanton bullies who want what they want when they want it.

This was an excellent episode if not for one thing. I remember specifically hearing this background music on Gunsmoke only once in the past - the episode entitled Phoebe Strunk in which a woman and her sons go about robbing people then killing them and setting their bodies and encampments on fire to hide any evidence. It was played whenever the Strunks appeared on that episode and I remember thinking it sounded inappropriate because it sounded creepily comical, as though there was anything funny about these pathetic human beings who caused so much sorrow and loss for others. This same music is playing whenever the Ginnis family appears, and it is still cringeworthy given the circumstances. Or maybe it is just me.

It was good to see Strother Martin play a character so meek and hapless in a pre-Cool Hand Luke role. One mishap after another befalls him. Of course he loses his hand due to the beating he received from one of the Ginnis "boys" -- grown men who have never achieved any maturity or morality through their father's example. But the splinter he gets in his eye while carving a sign for Miss Kitty, and the bad sausage he acquires, are unfortunate accidents.

At the end, the Ginnis family are NOT left to their own devices. The father takes to heart Marshal Dillon's words that there is something missing in him and is slightly redeemed -- just enough to learn to share equally with his sons. What does he share? The poison sausage that killed Strother Martin's character and his dog, and also the missing Ginnis relative Ben. So the audience knows the Ginnis family will all be dead soon.

Gunsmoke's plot lines were becoming increasingly harsh, cruel, and violent. It's the CRUELTY that stands out here.... a poor woodcarver, his trusty pooch, old wino Louie Pheeters.... and the Justice "Served" (as another commentator says) is richly deserved...even though I would have liked to see Matt and Quint kick the s___ out of those creeps.

I approached this episode saying "Oh, no...not ANOTHER show with Denver Pyle, Kevin Hagen and Strother Martin..", since they all appeared frequently in the series. But they were all damn' good actors, never more so than here.

One wonders what it was that brought out the special "qualities" of those tasty-looking weenies; was it the heat from ridin' in the wagon out on the prairie that did it? One would assume so, since otherwise there would have been an outbreak of painful, slow, poisonous deaths in Dodge for everyone who enjoyed them....and they were dang' popular, too. Good Show. LR.