User Reviews

Excellent episode! I believe this is the 1st time that Dillon lost on a shootout since the 1st episode of Gunsmoke. This episode had such a worthy villain for Dillon and their shootout was classic. One of the best so far!

Jack Lambert plays Kin Creed, the gunman after Dillon just to improve his reputation. He's fast and Dillon knows it. Kin's squint and confidence were intimidating. One of the best villains on Gunsmoke to date.

I loved everything about the episode except the very end. I wanted to see Dillon and Creed shoot it out again. Instead Creed gets it in the back. That was a real downer. Also Chester played a pretty good part, you felt his nervousness for Dillon, as we the audience did for Dillon.

Jack Lambert ranked as a classic villain in American cinema and television during his 28 year career. Mind you, he was never more menacing than as an itchy-fingered, trigger-happy gunslinger who sought Matt Dillon's scalp in the "Gunsmoke" episode entitled "There Was Never a Horse." Sadly, Hollywood never gave Lambert the chance to see his name glitter above the title on a movie marquee the way it later did his fellow contemporary character actors, such as Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Henry Silva, and Lee Van Cleef. Lambert radiates evil charisma as the scowling Kin Creed, and he is on the prod for anybody to kill. He rides into Dodge and ties his horse to a crowded hitch rail. He upsets a lounging cowboy by turning loose his horse so he can have room for his own mount. Creed forces the barkeeper to search for a bottle of rye even when the barkeep assures him that he has no more rye to sell. He riles a drunken cowboy (future movie director Joseph Sargent of "The Taking of the Pelham One, Two, Three") in the Long Branch later when he advises him to "Go home to your pigs, mister," and then kills him. Marshal Dillon concedes that Creed broke no law when he shot the cowboy. "I don't like gunmen here, Creed," Matt informs Creed in no uncertain terms. "I'll tell you something, Marshal, it didn't mean a thing to me to kill that drunk just now," Creed explains, "Not proud of it . . ., but taking a man like you—that'd be different." When Creed pistol whips a barroom patron, he forces Matt into a confrontation. Creed shoots Matt in the forearm and the wound causes him to drop his six-gun. The revolver breaks once it strikes the dirt and now it is no longer useful because the cylinder has fallen out of the frame. Matt knows that Creed won't follow up and kill him in cold blood. Creed insists that Matt tells him why he won't finish the lawman off. Matt sums it up the situation, "Because you wouldn't be able to brag about killing an unarmed man?" Creed refuses to shoot it out with Matt once he spots the forearm wound. "That's bleeding pretty bad. I ain't gonna shoot me no cripples neither," vows Creed. Meantime, somebody else shoots Kin in the back. The ethics that Kin displayed in the dealings with Matt prove to be his Achilles ' heel when a lesser man looking for a reputation enters the picture and kills him before Matt can slap leather with him again. Before the showdown, Matt knew that some people in Dodge were betting that he would shoot it out with Creed. Matt justifies his reluctance to square off against Creed to a citizen: "You know what I got in this envelope here? It's a paycheck from the United States Government, and it's for enforcing the law. It's not for stepping out into the street and shooting it out with every crazy gunman that comes into Dodge trying to make a reputation for himself." The message in John Meston's teleplay 'live by the gun and die by it' was re-echoed throughout other westerns in the 1950s, particularly "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral." This was one of the more memorable episodes, and one of Jack Lambert's stellar career moments.

Other reviewers have done a fine job of describing the strengths of this episode and the great villain turn by Jack Lambert.

My disagreement is with the apparent consensus that the ending was a cop out. It seems most wanted a shootout between Matt and Creed at the end. As Matt was the star, what exactly would you expect to happen?

The writing made it clear Creed was faster than Matt but didn't take time to aim. His wounding of Matt was a lucky shot, as one poster noted, probably a ricochet off Matt's gun into his arm. Having a climactic gunfight would simply have been a replay of the original episode in which Matt kills a faster gunman by taking aim. Firing fast isn't as important as firing accurately.

As for the ending, why did Creed die? I think John Meston came up with a perfect irony. Creed lived for his reputation. He killed to win that reputation. And he was in turn killed because he had that reputation. It was his own goal in life which led to his death from a loser who didn't share his silly gunfighter ethics.

For me, a much more interesting ending than another gunfight with Matt would have been.

Just my take. Kudos to John Meston.

**SPOILERS** Absolutely excellent episode that shows something most people don't know. Most of the ones known as gunfighters, really didn't what they mostly did was kill any way they could. In the last third of the twentieth century, Hollywood glorified outlaws and bad guys, but in this episode. Meston writes a good story. The way they showed Matt's gun broken, on the ground makes it pretty plain that it was a ricochet that creased Matt's arm. It was good to see Matt have Chester sew up his arm, and Chet thinking how Doc was gonna like it. What he said as he was going after Creed again makes perfect sense, almost. He tells Chester that creed is good close up, but at a distance, he won't be. Most likely right, it takes practice to shoot from a distance and get a clean shot in. It is also very likely creed would be shot from behind, like Bill Hickok, or John Hardin; both of those men, however, had ended their violent careers.

I wanted to start out saying I own all of the Gunsmoke DVDs for just the half hour shows. I feel many of these episodes are worth repeating for the action and the unexpected twists and turns as well as the family type relationships between Matt, Chester, Kitty and Doc. I feel the hour long episodes -- some of them were good -- focused too much on "relationships" and slowed down the show. Plus I'm not a big fan of Festus.

This episode starts off great. Jack Lambert is a swaggering sneering, squinty-eyed gunman named Kin Creed who rides into town and immediately starts throwing his weight around. He is truly an astounding villain and one of the very top ones in the history of the show. What a face! (and voice)

He goes into the Long Branch and kills a drunk then starts trying to intimidate Matt to fight him, in order to add to his reputation as a gunfighter. Matt will have none of it; he enforces the law, he doesn't get into fights with every gunman that rides into town.

There's a good comic exchange between Matt and Chester at Delmonicos until Creed spies them eating and comes in and stands uncomfortably close to Chester. Creed starts to bully Chester, but Chester gets some zingers in himself, adding fuel to the fire.

A fight is brewing and he townspeople are starting to whisper that maybe Matt is scared of this desperado with a reputation for a fast gun.

Creed is puzzled. Matt won't fight him. So he finally figures out that he can force a fight by breaking the law. He unexpectedly cracks an old man over the head with his gun and starts to laugh at the fallen drunk like a homicidal maniac. Chester sees this and calls Matt.

Then there's the confrontation where Creed outdraws Matt and shoots him in the arm. He won't kill him because of an unwritten code of not killing a cripple. Matt gets patched up and heads out to a final gunfight...

Now you know it can't be the end of Matt because that would be the end of the series. But I must say the conclusion of this episode was a cop out. I will not divulge what happens but to me, it was an easy out and quite random and unsatisfying.

It was actually a very enjoyable episode but mostly for the performance of Jack Lambert, a heavy-type more well known for Dick Tracy v The Claw. You can tell that he relishes the Kin Creed role as an actor.

It was one of those episodes that the writers couldn't seem to figure out how to wrap things up and so at the end it seemed implausible which takes points away from this fascinating but flawed episode.