User Reviews

A fun performance from Douglas Henderson as wily, extremely confident killer, Buck Lester (Barbara Knudson, his wife and willing partner in crime) and his cat-and-mouse with Highway Patrol Head, Dan Matthews (Broderick Crawford) makes this episode of "Highway Patrol" very entertaining. A Highway Patrol officer (Robert Dix) fails to fully frisk Buck after pulling him over for speeding, and this mistake left him vulnerable because he doesn't hand cuff the motorist (that and he left the wife unattended, too). Buck shoots him in the back as the officer was about to ruin his passage through the area, having called in the black Sedan's license plates. Buck decides to turn around, go to the nearest town, swap his plates (his car is similar to so many other Sedans) out, and get directions that would avoid road blocks. Stolen cash in their luggage and a criminal record behind him, Buck believes his plan, getting assistance from a local waitress in a diner they are eating, will prove successful while the Highway Patrol are spinning their wheels. But Matthews, working in concert with Officer Larrabee (Vance Skarstedt), put two and two together, soon guessing (rightly) that Buck might pull plates from a fully parked lot, calling them in, and concentrating on where the killer might go to avoid capture/detection. What I think this episode has going for it is the performance of Henderson, as his Buck considers himself quite smart and clever, far more intelligent than the cops out to catch him. His wife encourages his self-assurance, so when Matthews does catch up to him, the resolution is that much sweeter. It is a good episode documenting that police are human and fallible, prone to the occasional mistake which could lead to harm and violence. But even while bed-ridden and recuperating, his testimony was helpful to Matthews and Larrabee, so he wasn't a total failure. It was the kind of episode that does allow us to see that all procedures should be followed in order to prevent cop shootings such as this one. You could tell on Dix's face that his mistake was eating at him. Matthews needling Buck about his comment regarding the fallen officer's badge number is a satisfying close to the episode. As is often the case of this show, there's gunplay as the crook won't go down without drawing his weapon.