Watching Coles Trapnell's episodes of Yancy Derringer, I can see why Warner Bros. might have pegged him as a passable replacement for Roy Huggins as producer of Maverick. Yancy's righteous anger notwithstanding, his motives generally aren't cut-and-dried '50s western hero fare. As was the case with Maverick, however, Trapnell isn't nearly as clever or witty a writer as Yancy Derringer's creators, Mary Loos and Richard Sale. This time, Yancy and Pahoo-Ka-Tu-Wah travel to Virginia City to collect Yancy's stake in a silver mine he's won in a poker game in order to replace the boiler on his riverboat.
Outside of three clever touches (the need to replace the boiler, a surprise death, and Yancy'a making his driver change his hat at the end), almost any given '50s TV western hero could have been penciled in for Yancy in this episode. Paladin would have gone to investigate his client's interest in the mine, and most of the other heroes would have inherited it somehow. Besides Pahoo-Ka-Tu-Wah, none of Yancy's usual cast of characters is around for him to play off of, the characters in Virginia City are largely archetypes, and the gist of the plot was probably a cliché even in 1959.
For once, we know the newcomer in town isn't the villain, but "The Louisiana Dude" is decidedly not one of this series' better efforts.
Outside of three clever touches (the need to replace the boiler, a surprise death, and Yancy'a making his driver change his hat at the end), almost any given '50s TV western hero could have been penciled in for Yancy in this episode. Paladin would have gone to investigate his client's interest in the mine, and most of the other heroes would have inherited it somehow. Besides Pahoo-Ka-Tu-Wah, none of Yancy's usual cast of characters is around for him to play off of, the characters in Virginia City are largely archetypes, and the gist of the plot was probably a cliché even in 1959.
For once, we know the newcomer in town isn't the villain, but "The Louisiana Dude" is decidedly not one of this series' better efforts.