User Reviews

In this episode Eric Fleming is facing a crisis. He's gotten word there's a financial panic back east and he has to get to Abilene and sell off the herd before they hear about it there.

It means going through some rough country without water. Bad enough, but he then has to deal with Burgess Meredith and his fish.

Meredith, an enterprising New England Yankee complete with twang is bringing barrels of fish, shad to be precise to California. If they breed successfully in the Sacramento River he could get rich. But he has to contend with an unscrupulous partner Richard Webb and an unfaithful wife in Phyllis Coates.

His problems become Gil Favor's problems as they cross a stretch of desert.

Nice guest star turn by Burgess Meredith. Well staged climax in this episode.

Burgess Meredith was in several Twilight Zone episodes, and playing an eccentric character was his forte. Here he is bringing barrels full of shad, which look like minnows, to California. Introducing invasive fish into the California rivers is a crime nowadays, but it was a get-rich scheme for Meredith back in the 1870s.

It was not clear how Meredith was going to get rich thanks to minnows invading California rivers and streams, but he was sure enough that he left his wife behind. Phyllis Coates, who played Lois Lane in the first season of The Adventures of Superman, plays his wife. She is not very friendly, unlike her Lois Lane character back on Superman. Richard Reeves, who often played a henchman on The Adventures of Superman, is also in this episode.

Coates and her new boyfriend want payback on her goofball husband and his fish. Most of this episode is about a drought, and why the drovers want to drink the barrels of water that are full of fish. Fighting them with words is Burgess Meredith talking about fish and why fish are important, etc.

I found the episode a bit boring. After the first couple of fish talks I was hoping for a stampede. There is not much action until the very last minute or two.