The bad guys cover a whole spectrum of forgotten actors who were good actors but never got enough credit, for various reasons...
Dennis Patrick the classy leader, Tom Gilson the muscle-head goon, and John Alderman the... other muscle-head goon, but not as muscular and more of a dummy... with the name of Chum... the live-wire...
This is basically what would become known as a biker movie but in the west. These three fellas that Josh was on the way to pick up for what could have been just another episode had a tornado not come in beforehand and turn the town into something out of Mad Max, and the boys take over... not violently, but... rather logically... with everything in shambles, they fit as the new leaders... and the drunk judge couldn't be happier...
It's a great episode, has nice action and clever mind games, but also is a lot of fun...
McQueen sort of enters as happens sometimes on this series: There are either episodes where he's the main focus from the start (most of them) and people come to him, or where he's the backbone of what feels like an anthology story, but with him as the last word... Gunsmoke episodes were a lot like the latter...
Of the villains: Tom Gilson would be shot dead by his wife in five years (he met her while filming The Crowded Sky), John Alderman a raging alcoholic cult actor's cult actor doing good films but mostly horrible ones, and Dennis Patrick was a very underrated character-actor who could pull off really bad guys or just important people, starred in the movie JOE at the beginning of the 1970's and died in a fire a few decades later... outlived McQueen though...
You can say this episode is cursed, perhaps? Well, either way, it's pretty darn great.