M & M are driving at night in a thunderstorm, with Hastings the nearest small town, with Spring Falls also nearby. Milner has a premonition that Spring Falls holds danger but before they get there, they nearly run over Suzanne Pleshette, who is fleeing in the rain from a Christian revival tent where she was poised to give testimony.
What follows is a melodrama greatly heightened by Stirling Silliphant's sharp dialogue, filled with odd turns of phrase, flippant confrontational language and carefully crafted metaphors. Over 60 years later it sounds utterly freshed, sometimes strange but avoiding all the cliches one is accustomed to hear in a dramatic TV episode. Utterly original writing.
The tale of a fallen woman who sought redemption is a familiar one but it's all in the telling. Suzanne Pleshette is wonderful in the central role, sharp of tongue but highly vulnerable as a wanted murderess, accused of killing the brother of the sheriff of Spring Falls, where our heroes take her in search of refuge from the rain. The supporting cast does exemplary work: John Larch as the no-nosense sheriff who gets into a fist fight (mandatory in this series) with hothead Maharis; Warren Stevens, cool and underplaying a critical role as Suzanne's defense attorney and Harry Townes, very sympathetic as the revival show preacher.
Best scene of the show has Townes praying with Suzanne in jail, magnificently shot by director Arthur Hiller with a moving dolly shot out past the cells; he ended up directing innumerable fine TV shows as well as many a commercial Hollywood movie, most famously "Love Story".
But Silliphant's principal themes are not religious, rather he takes a strong humanist stance, using Milner & Maharis's going to bat for the rejected character played by Pleshette as evidence of the importance of someone out there able to care for every human being, as expressed by preacher Townes, who is anything but the hellfire & brimstone demagogue usually written as a Revival minister. Ultimately, it is not Pleshette's pledge to Jesus Christ, but rather Maharis and Milner who save her.
And the escapist lifestyle of our men in the Corvette is explicitly contrasted not only with another small town alien culture (alien to their New York City background, that is) but with anyone who has put down roots.