User Reviews

This Maverick story has James Garner chasing singer Peggy King like a groupie and attending all her performances the way Deadheads used to travel with The Grateful Dead and go to all of those shows. Can you blame the woman for thinking Bret Maverick is a stalker?

Of course that's not his reason. Maverick pal Big Mike McComb is in jail charged with robbing a stagecoach and killing several people. Leo Gordon recognizes the leader of the gang as King's husband reputed to have been killed in an explosion months earlier. Garner is sticking close to King on her tour and King continues to tour because she also thinks he's alive.

Peggy King sings several public domain ballads and also Some Sunday Morning which came from the Errol Flynn/Alexis Smith western San Antonio. Cost Warner Brothers nothing since they produced San Antonio.

The episode also has William Schallert as King's pianist and Sig Ruman as her concert manager. It ends on a sad and somber note as Garner has fallen for her, but she says this won't work out.

And Season 2 of Maverick also ends with this show.

This is the epitome of a non-comic Maverick episode. The plot has a complexity and depth that screams "Roy Huggins" (though he didn't write it). It's so complicated that it rivals the original "Perry Mason" for creating confusion.

The quality of the writing (that is, the characterizations and dialog), is exceptional, especially for a series written in an era when TV series were often "cranked out".

We also see just how well James Garner could act. Though arguably a male "pretty face", he could bring a subtlety of expression few of his films gave him a chance to reveal. He finally received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for "Murphy's Romance".

This episode is also a good example of why series production bogged down so quickly, and Jack Kelly had to be introduced as Bart, with episodes in overlapping production. "...Jenny Hill" has a lot of camera setups and many night shots, which slow things down.

"Maverick" remains one of the great Westerns -- perhaps because it isn't really a Western.

PS: The Maverick boys aren't named after stray dogies. Such critters were named after the man who illegally gathered them.

This episode is one of the weaker "Maverick" efforts, an instance of saving the worst for last, coming as it did late in the second season, after most of the year's good ideas had been used up. It starts with a tedious 8-minute singing revue by the plain-looking vocalist Peggy King, while James Garner stands by, seemingly mesmerized. King was not much of an actress, and in fact this was her last film appearance, so she wasn't fooling herself either. The romantic subplot between her and Bret M is as dull as dishwater and completely unbelievable. Some good character actors like Sig Ruman, Leo Gordon, and William Schallert are wasted as well. On top of this, the story is intercut with more than the usual footage of Warner Brothers' archived movies to pad things out even further.