Fri, Sep 15, 1972
While evading a posse, the boys run into their old friend, Harry Briscoe (J.D. Cannon in his last appearance on this show), who's been fired by the Bannerman Detective Agency and is now a derelict. They sympathize with him and convince him to use his old credentials to fool the smart sheriff and his dumb deputy by "arresting" them before the posse does. The sheriff lets Briscoe go with Heyes and Curry, but sends the deputy along on the stagecoach to Wyoming. Now to fool the deputy, which is fairly easily done, and to fool the sheriff a second time, which is much harder. Fortunately, they happen upon a pair of bank-robbing killers whom only Briscoe recognizes, and he uses trickery to catch them and get back into the Bannerman Agency's good graces. The ending of this show, as the boys ride through the Utah countryside and chat, was recycled for all subsequent episodes (the boys are filmed in long shot and their dialog was changed for each show). This show and parts of several others were subsequently syndicated under the title "The Long Chase," shown as a TV-movie separate from the series episodes.
Fri, Sep 29, 1972
Patrick "Big Mac" MacCreedy is tired of years of feuding with the neighboring Amandariz family, whose land abuts his own and is occasionally shaped by the Rio Grande. So he hires Heyes and Curry to try to negotiate a settlement. They put on their game faces and have their hats in hand as they visit the Armaendariz mansion, and get the expected rebuff. But there is a new player in the game -- Armandariz's spinster sister, who is even less friendly than he but who has a deeply religious streak. Heyes and Curry play on that, telling her that MacCreedy is a Catholic widower and piling on the soft soap (some of which is actually true). Carlotta, the sister, decides to investigate MacCreedy herself. There may be a way out of the feud after all. This was the writing debut of Juanita Bartlett for Roy Huggins, who brought her over to "The Rockford Files" a couple of years later; he soon left but she stayed for the whole run and worked extensively with Huggins protégé' Stephen J. Cannell before starting her own company as a producer.
Fri, Oct 20, 1972
The first of five episodes to deal with the real-life Wyoming Stockgrower's Association (which led to the Johnson County War of 1892 and inspired the film "Heaven's Gate," which changed many details of the story): two gunmen try to bushwhack Smith and Jones for being in league with "cattle rustlers" -- which in WSGA parlance, applied to anybody who owned fewer than 300 cattle. A small cattle rancher, who has tangled with the gunmen in the past, comes up behind them, surprises them and shoots them down in their tracks. He claims self-defense, but knows people will call it murder (which it is), so asks Smith and Jones to escort him, his wife, his partner and his cattle to Montana where he will be reasonably safe. WSGA "detectives" send out an armed party dedicated to killing the whole lot. When Heyes and the gunman are both critically wounded, Curry goes berserk and blasts away at them until they turn tail. Heyes survives (his comment about being shot in the head later became a tagline for "The Rockford Files"), but the killer dies -- and Curry figures out the truth. Now everyone has a moral dilemma.
Fri, Nov 3, 1972
The disappearance of a young heir to a fortune appears to be a kidnapping for ransom orchestrated by Kid Curry as Thaddeus Jones. At least that's what the heir would like to think. In fact he himself is the kidnapper and Curry is his hostage. The kidnapper has his eye on an eligible bachelorette, whom he plans to woo with the ransom money once it gets out of escrow and is paid. Heyes, who comes into town separately, doesn't know all the details but puts together enough to realize Curry is likely to be murdered and his body dumped in a stream until it rots once the ten days are up. So Heyes decides to woo the eligible bachelorette on his own. He meets up with Doc Holliday, whom he knows from a poker game (Holliday was a great winner at faro but not much of a poker player; Heyes had won $20,000 from him in the earlier game, only to have Wyatt Earp force him to lose it back). Heyes points out the young woman and explains that he wants to court her. He's already swiped a book of poetry and memorized it to appeal to her intellectual instincts; now he wants to prove he's a man of means. So, he proposes that he and Holliday play poker together under the woman's eye. Heyes will "win" Holliday's stash (then give it back immediately once they leave the room) and impress the woman with his money. Holliday surprisingly agrees and the plan goes off. But Heyes must still try to track the woman and her treacherous boyfriend to the hideout where Curry is being held hostage.
Fri, Nov 24, 1972
Had series finales been a staple in 1972, this would have been it. Heyes and Curry get a telegram from Wyoming sheriff Lom Trevors that the Governor has at long last given them amnesty, and rush to meet the sheriff (Western veteran John Russell takes over from Mike Road, who had played the role in the first two seasons and still voiced it in the opening credits). But the day the amnesty came through is also the day the Governor was removed from office (as a territorial governor, he was appointed by the President -- when the Executive Mansion was occupied by a President of a different party, in this case Grover Cleveland, he appointed one of his own party men to the post). The new Governor, George W. Baxter, is a friend of Trevors and agrees to keep the amnesty on the table, and maybe approve it if the boys will track down his missing daughter. Our heroes succeed, but return to find that Baxter has been removed from office ("Seems he fenced in some Federal land"). Trevors doesn't know the new Governor, Charles Midnight. The last words of the episode are a replay of the words spoken in the pilot (and in the opening credits) about the boys keeping their nose clean until the Governor figures they deserve amnesty. A printed crawl over the last shot records the tumultuous history of the Wyoming Territory governors during the period in question (although buffs will spot several flaws: Governor Midnight's name wasn't Charles -- Roy Huggins may have confused him with famous rancher Charles Goodnight; and the period where the gubernatorial merry-go-round took place was in the infamously deadly-cold and stormy winter of 1886-1887 rather than the summer where filming took place).
Fri, Dec 1, 1972
Sorrell "Boss Hogg" Booke has the title role, as a mining-company executive who went from Arizona to Old Mexico to try to settle miners' grievances over unpaid wages, only to be taken hostage in his own right by the miners, who hope to use him as a bargaining chip. A mine supervisor has a particular interest in getting Zulick back to Arizona, but won't explain why. It turns out that Zulick is a lot more valuable than anyone suspected, for reasons that are hidden until nearly the last minute. Another surprise comes when the mine detective turns Heyes and Curry over to the sheriff and then refuses the reward on them in Wyoming, allowing the sheriff to set them free, because he is convinced his debt of gratitude is too great. Ironically, "Bonanza" was also floundering in the ratings in a new time slot against a Norman Lear situation comedy ("All and the Family" was "ASJ"'s nemesis; "Maude" was trouncing "Bonanza"); the two shows would end production and then leave the air less than a week apart.
Fri, Dec 15, 1972
The last episode to be filmed ("Only Three to a Bed," airing four weeks later, was left over from the Utah trip at the beginning of the season) again delves into "Heaven's Gate" territory, albeit less obviously than other episodes. Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association have lynched two small ranchers they accused of rustling. Sheriff Lom Trevors hires the boys to get the two surviving witnesses out of Wyoming and into Nebraska. The WSGA sends a sheriff after them with extradition warrants as material witnesses, and offers them a fat bribe if they promise to perjure themselves and say they didn't see the accused killers. The lynching was based on the 1889 hangings of Jim Averill and Ella "Cattle Kate" Watson, whom Michael Cimino would resurrect as the leads of "Heaven's Gate" -- set three years later.
Fri, Jan 12, 1973
The boys hire on to cut out horses, break them and get them to market before a Big Daddy rancher nearby can claim all the mavericks running the range as his own. In a role reversal of sorts for our heroes, Heyes strikes out miserably talking the talk and playing the cards with a beautiful brunette, while Curry finds a kinship with a very young, very beautiful young blonde lady who is traveling with her very protective older brother.