... What is Batman syndrome you ask? Suppose you are a really evil villain. You have a powerful gun trained on the good guy who is intent on taking you to face justice. Your choices as the villain are:
A. Shoot the good guy with no further talk or thought about it.
B. Yammer at the good guy while battering a hostage you already have until the good guy gets the drop on you probably with the help of the hostage who hates you too.
In 1950s and 1960s TV the bad guy always lost, so they usually picked B, although not with the flair of the villains on the old Batman TV show, but I digress.
There is a blizzard blowing in Kansas, and Matt Dillon, returning from business in Hayes City, seeks shelter from the storm in an isolated cabin. Unfortunately the cabin is harboring two really nasty fugitives from justice. One is rather simple minded, the other is a sadist who is saddled with the aforementioned Batman Syndrome.
This episode has very little action and practically no Doc, Kitty, or Chester. But then the claustrophobic episodes of Gunsmoke tend to be the best. And at the end there is a conversation about a subject that was rarely broached on TV unless it was in a Western, and the impact on the victim in the aftermath of the crime is handled in a very sensitive and realistic way.
That's one reason there were so many westerns and science fiction shows and movies in the rather sterile 1950s. If the censors said - Hey! You can't talk about social problems here! Then the writers could say - We're not talking about modern issues! This a western!
Also keep a look out for Harry Dean Stanton 28 years before he was Pretty in Pink. Highly recommended.