Reviews

"Rich people get get Ozempic, poor people get body positivity." It is simple. Nothing amazing, yet it had an effect on me to realize the truth. The medical insurance industry fights to make sure its customers stay sick and die. Providing less medical care is what generates greater profits for them.

Keep us making phone calls, requesting authorizations, seeking medical care that we paid for, and getting less medical treatment, or nothing. "Call back later" when the price is your life.

The rich get whatever they want. The poor on Obamacare get whatever the insurance company gives as the cheapest alternative. Body positivity instead of Ozempic. It is funny, and sad, and true.

My Mom spent several years fighting cancer. Every time she was prescribed an MRI or other expensive scan it took her months to get approved. Did that make it harder for her doctors to fight the cancer? Did it make it easier for her cancer to advance because of the delays? I know that the insurance company never had her health or her life in their list of priorities. Her insurance authorization review agent got a bonus when my mother died. That's how they roll. Lower costs equal higher bonuses for the insurance company admin.

THEM and TARANTULA are the two greatest bug movies of the 1950s! I remember watching this as a kid, and thinking how irresponsible scientists were, and realizing that anywhere in any town, some mad scientist might be mutating giant bugs. I was terrified!

The great thing about this movie is not just the story and the acting, but that it makes you think about the implications (especially if you are a child back in the day!).

I like John Agar in his roles, such as Sands of Iwo Jima. He just played his part, and did not try to be Kirk Douglas or John Wayne. As a result, he was very credible. Mara Orday as the lady scientist was smoking hot! She had a great personality for this film. Her scenes getting creeped out and attacked by Leo G. Carroll were great.

Leo G. Carroll really sold this story and made this movie much more than it was. He starts out as a believable scientist, and then you see the dark side of his lack of professional lab ethics. Everyone is mutating at his lab because Leo G. Carroll is violating all the basic rules of scientific research. But we find out it gets worse from there. Murder is not off limits either.

Tarantula is an interesting movie because it has a couple of stories that do not interfere with each other. The lab story, the escaped monster Tarantula, the local characters that are trying to save the day, it all works well together.

This is a fast paced movie, which is great. There is no stalling for a romantic interlude in the middle of the movie. It goes fast from beginning to the end with Clint Eastwood's first time piloting a jet (he would do it again in Firefox).

Robert Johnson was not the father of the Blues, nor did he invent the blues. William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 - March 28, 1958) was an American composer and musician who is referred to as the Father of the Blues.

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938) was a traveling performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He participated in only two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937.

Johnson's poorly documented life and death have given rise to legends. The one most often associated with him is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads in return for musical success.

Robert Johnson met his end in 1938. Johnson's mother recounted what she knew of her son's poisoning to Alan Lomax: "Some wicked girl or her boyfriend had give him poison and wasn't no doctor in the world could save him, so they say."

Johnson's mother told Lomax: "When I went in where he at, he layin up in bed with his guitar crost his breast. Soon's he saw me, he say, "Mama, you all I been waitin for." "Here," he say, and give me his guitar. "Take and hang this thing on the wall, cause I done pass all that by. That what got me messed up, Mama. It's the devil's instrument, just like you said. And I don't want it no more." And he died while I was hangin his guitar on the wall."

The most interesting character is the Blues professor, played by Hugh Quarshie. He is full of energy, and he runs circles around McDonald and Dodds. Quarshie really puts a lot of jazz into his character.

This is at least the second time that a murder is somehow connected to Dodds. That feels like lazy writing that now Dodds is going to become the lady in mourning all the time.

Jinxy was Dodds' first best friend when they were in elementary school, but Dodds has never been inside Jinxy's apartment. This is where Jinxy lived for forty years. Seems like they were not that close, and Dodds is exagerating the level of friendship. Then Dodds sits in Jinxy's recliner to listen to his Blues music collection, and to look sad. Really creepy and disturbing scene.

Jason Watkins gets to play the mourning prima donna again, and it is really bad stuff. Dodds is going to tears, and leaving the room in a sad huff while he is interrogating suspects. Never seen anything like this before. It comes across as morbidly grotesque.

McDonald continues to be a very unpleasant character. Her face alternates between sneering, smirking, and looking annoyed. I am not sure why the writers have taken this approach with Tala Gouveia. She seems like a bright actress who could do a lot more with her role.

The story is very convoluted. It goes around in a lot of directions. It is interesting, but then the resolution seems contrived. Like the writers started with the ending, and then worked back to create a story. When the true killer is unmasked, it is ridiculous and bizarre.

I just happened on this, and it was wild and bizarre! Women wrestlers in very skimpy outfits are fighting in a bar, on patrons, over them, and throwing food and beer at each other!

Some of it was too dark, and hard to see. The wrestlers and their bodies were the main focus. This was like soft core porn.

At some point they are taking food from the tables and smashing each other with food, and there is food all over the carpets, and it looks pretty gross.

The guys love it when the women are shoved into them, and their bodies grind on them as they move off the guys. I would have enjoyed getting one of these beauties tossed on me.

The only part I did not like was when a couple of big fat guys got into the ring to fight the women. The girl on girl wrestling was a lot more fun.

Richard Dean Anderson never acted. He just showed up. Thanks to gum, Swiss Army Knife tweezers, and random fishing line and duct tape, he could disarm nuclear weapons and make gasoline from a wet fart.

I never could warm up to him, and his cast of imaginary players from an unknown organization that got its funding from inventing Silly Putty. His boss was generic. His best friend was the really bad actor from Animal House. Another guy from the "Just Show Up" school of acting.

The only reason to watch this show is for background noise. If you are walking by when MacGyver is putting together something made out of pencil erasers and chewing gum, it is worth a laugh.

Boll Weavil is a traditional blues song about the beetle that feeds on cotton. Susan is similarly a parasitic creature in that she wants her aunt to do her bidding, and to take her to San Francisco and support her lifestyle.

Her aunt owns the stage coach station. Her aunt is the only one that does any work. Her aunt is the one with a bank account. Susan has manipulated her aunt into selling the station and taking her to the big city, and Susan thinks she has it made in the shade!

Then along comes Matt Dillon with an injured prisoner. Art Lund is big and cuddly and age-appropriate for aunt (Kathleen Nolan). She spends a few days taking care of the injured outlaw and they fall in love. Susan is freaking out now, because auntie is stalling on traveling to the big city. Auntie found someone warm and sweet in her guest bedroom! Big city life can't be better than big 'ole Art Lund!

Into the picture arrive a couple of thugs looking for money. George DiCenzo is one of them, and he would later appear several times on James Arness' How the West Was Won, and on McClain's Law. Susan approaches these guys in the woods (she has a lot of brass). She offers them a free horse, $30 for traveling money, and tells them that Art Lund has a $500 reward on him. It is all theirs if they take him away before Matt Dillon returns.

Before long all hell breaks loose, and Matt Dillon arrives in time to dispense Justice! Selfish Susan is left without a sugar-auntie, and no ticket to the big city. She finally turns to the station's handyman (James Gammon), who had always been smitten by Susan, as her last chance to get out of town. His response to the woman he once wanted to marry is beyond priceless!!

The annoying music from 1940s public domain continues. It is not Dean Martin, or Frank Sinatra, or anybody you ever heard of. It is the worst unkown music of the 1940s.

Along comes bug-eyed girl (Ella Purnell), and she gets tired of dragging around that incredibly boring and abysmally whiny Michael Emerson (from Person of Interest and Evil). He has a face for radio. Soon no face at all.

Did it ever occur to anyone to just crack open his coconut and look around for the chip inside his skull? It is a lot easier to carry around a USB drive than an entire stinking and rotting human skull. Even for a TV series based on a video game, this show is dumb.

Two young women look at each other a lot. Nothing happens. They stand nude next to each other in the gym showers many times. Nothing happens. They watch each other combing their hair several times. Nothing happens. They sit next to each other on the bed. Nothing happens. They almost kiss several times, but they never do.

This is a ridiculously pretentious and boring movie about two women who are too much in love with themselves to be able to engage, love, or have sex with anyone or anything else. They are too sexy for anyone else. I had to play that song by Right Said Fred after a while of watching this goof of two perfect women who can only love themselves, and nobody else.

Benito Martinez can never be a good guy. He has been in many TV shows where he seems to be a good guy, and then he soon shows his true colors, or his weak spots get the better of him.

Here Benito plays a legendary FBI agent that retired. Yet as soon as Sisto tells him that his son got four women killed, Benito is trying to hide the evidence and cover up for his son. Wow, what a slimy legend. Never a thought about the four dead teenage girls.

Like usual, Sisto is confused, because he is an alcoholic who is not in recovery, and has no moral compass. Sisto never actually shows any positive recovery thanks to the 12 Steps. Sisto is always confused about what to do in any tough situation. Sisto says he is sober, but he is always about to crumble under pressure.

There never seems to be an episode where the FBI know what they are doing. It always looks like they have no plan. I am not a big fan of Jeremy Sisto, and he seems to be on the FBI show to undermine the credibility of the FBI agents, and to show that there are corrupt and compromised people running the FBI.

This episode features young Michael Landon before Bonanza, Warren Oates, Kenneth Tobey, and veteran supporting actor Victor Jory.

Victor Jory plays the rich patriarch of a ranch. He wants to find some long lost Mexican gold treasure that was hidden in the mountains. He has no respect for his young son Michael Landon. He wants to get Josh Randall to lead the expedition into the desert, so he puts out a wanted poster on Randall.

He figures that will force Randall to find him. Unfortunately it also gets Kenneth Tobey and Warren Oates to follow them to the treasure.

The journey to the treasure is a nice amount of time with Michael Landon and Steve McQueen sharing screen time. At the end, when they find the hidden treasure boxes, they have to deal with Kenneth Tobey and Warren Oates. The finale features an excellent gun battle between the top stars.

John Drew Barrymore, who looked like a wimp compared to all the tough cowboy actors in his gang, takes over a town and spends seven hours to dawn robbing everyone in Dodge City.

Why would any gang go house to house stealing silver pots and gold watches? It did not make much sense to have around ten thugs treeing a town just to rob the locals. It seems to me that they could have just robbed the freight office, the bank, and the Longbranch Saloon, in about 90 minutes or less?

So the whole drama of herding dozens of townspeople around, and beating up some of them (and shooting one) gets played out with Marshal Dillon, Festus, Doc Adams, and Miss Kitty watching the horror play out.

At the beginning of the episode, when Barrymore walks into Dillon's office, it seems to me that Dillon could have taken him out. Having watched every episode of Gunsmoke, there is no question that Dillon was fast enough to have put slugs in Barrymore and some of his henchmen.

Instead, Dillon gives up, and lets himself and everyone else get pushed around. At some point, Dillon decides to fight back and make a break for it. That did not make a lot of sense, since there were ten or more outlaws walking around armed and ready to kill. The villains shoot Dillon off his horse, and leave him for dead in the middle of the street.

The fantastic ending had Doc Adams pulling four bullets out of Dillon, and five minutes later Dillon is planning his revenge. The most memorable and best part of this episode is Doc Adams. He stands up to the gang, he outsmarts the villains, he saves Dillon's life, and he avoids getting caught. Episodes that featured Doc Adams were always my favorites.

I can never watch this movie without fast-forwarding the parts with Lukas Haas. What is his problem? Where did they find that annoying deer caught in the headlights look?

So the kid is with his super-hot Amish Mom at the train station, and he goes to the restroom to take a dump. While he is in the bathroom stalls, pushing one out, he looks out between the edges of the stall doors, and sees some guy getting killed.

Just right there you know the kid has a problem. I have taken hundreds of dumps in public restrooms and never spent my time looking out between the doors.

The kid makes another mistake, by sticking his big face with the big eyes out of the restroom stall and scaring the killers. So they decide to track the kid down, in the interests of furthering mutant science.

Harrison Ford gets called into the investigation of the undercover cop who got killed in the toilet stall, and soon he is making it with the ugly kid's Mom, because that's how he rolls. The kid's Mom is played by Kelly McGillis, back when she was young and pretty.

Long story short, lots of bad cops try to kill off the big headed boy, and nobody can get a bead on him.

He probably never looked young or even had a childhood. Lee Van Cleef was so mean he was probably mean even as a baby.

Here he is playing the Kansas Kid, with many notches on his gun belt, and a lot of brass too. He is ready to pull off the Lone Ranger's mask, and gun him also!

Kansas Kid is so mean that he is letting an innocent man hang for his crimes, unless the Lone Ranger and Tonto can clear Tom Scott. So they break him out of jail, to set up a trap for the Kansas Kid.

Into the mix is also veteran Western actor Douglas Kennedy, who is working undercover in the Kansas Kid's gang. Lots of action, and lots of Lee Van Cleef's cynical remarks too!

Wimp Scola and his baby Momma Shantel VanSanten have less chemistry than Zeeko Zacko and Missy Peregrym, or Jeremy Sisto and Alana De La Garza. In fact, Scola and Whiffany Wallace have more chemistry that Scola and VanSanten.

Every scene with Scola and VanSanten is some kind of argument. So now every episode of this show opens up with them waking up in bed in the morning, and having an argument about their FBI work.

Scola is always pretending that he cares by interfering in whatever her work assignment is, and VanSanten has to straigten him out. Then the show ends with them going home to argue some more about whatever she did that was too dangerous. Ponderously boring and uninteresting.

The only good thing about this episode was that there was a gunfight. The FBI literally walk into an armored car being robbed, and engage in a gunfight with three armed men. Four FBI agents, and three robbers with machine guns shoot at each other for about five minutes.

They run through a restaurant, a diner and a waiter get shot, but none of the robbers are shot. Literally hundreds if not thousands of bullets are fired, and none of the robbers get shot. None of the FBI agents get shot. Just the innocent bystanders.

This has to be the worst aim in the history of Hollywood gunfights. The FBI agents rarely manage shoot anyone in any gunfights. FBI agents may as well leave their guns at home, and bring a SWAT team with them for field work.

SWAT got canceled and Shemar Moore might be available to transfer over. At least he can actually shoot people on his show, and he has a lot more personality than Scola (John Boyd).

So FBI eventually tracks down the robbers / killers and De La Garza wants to do an undercover sting, featuring all the same agents that were shooting at these guys. Even though they were all horrible shots, they must have gotten a look at the four agents that were constantly shooting at them??

So now Scola is the undercover guy who wants to buy $10 million in diamonds, and acts really testy when the robber / killer questions him. The answers are laughable.

Even worse is the killer and the informant, who both look like they work at Pizza Hut when they aren't acting. What a goofy scene. Not even Kojak or Starsky and Hutch could have been worse, 50 years ago.

Then Scola is pressured into setting up a buy at his home! Who would agree do that? I mean even the dumbest robbers had to realize that it was a setup when Scola agreed to bring killers into his (fake FBI) house to meet his wife and fake rubber baby.

Then we get Scola and VanSanten pretending to be a couple for the sake of the undercover sting. Wow, that was hard to watch. These folks have nothing between them, just totally no chemistry. Scola had more going with the fake rubber baby than with VanSanten.

I never watched this show because Douglas Henshall (Jimmy Perez) has all the personality of a dried up Winnie the Poo. So I started watching this season because of Ashley Jensen. She was great on Extras with Ricky Gervais. She can be humorous or witty, and serious too. She has a bright personality.

Unfortunately on this show, they wrote her as someone who grew up in Shetland, and hated it. The people that remember her do not like her much either. The Bain family refers to her as a tramp. The only guy that likes her is a local drug dealer who wants to jump into her pants. Jensen and this show do not feel like a good match, only because of how her character is written.

As I was slowly realizing I did not like this version of Shetland any more than the Jimmy Perez version, they throw in a totally disappointing twist. The uncle of Ellen, the girl that got killed, found the stolen money. The Bain's need to pay for farm equipment, and Uncle Bain finds a bag full of cash. I thought he was going to go pay the farm bills. Instead, he looks up the two Shetland drug dealers, so he can offer them the bag of cash as a buy in to become a drug dealer too.

That was it for me. The sour personalities, the dreary story, and the general wretchedness was tough, but when a dead girl's uncle uses the dead girl's money to buy into the drug trade, it is just gone too far into the muck for me.

Milly Bobby Jo from Stranger Things puts a wig on to look sweet and gets married to a prince in a grubby kingdom were people are not nice.

You know its not going to end well when you ask the Queen where you're going to be living with the prince, and the Queen tells you to get stuffed. I mean this was a tough kingdom, and the royals resembled the trashy kind from the United Kingdom, not the classy princess of Monaco.

So after the wedding, Milly Bobby Jo gets the tour of the palace, and she ends up at the cliff where royal brides get tossed to appease the angry dragon. A hop, drop, and a skip later, she is at the bottom of the pit, and a dragon is hunting her down trying to eat her.

Milly Bobby Jo finds a lot of silly graffitti on the walls, left by past princesses that got dumped into the pit to die. The grafitti explains what happened, and why the royals sacrifice brides to the dragon they betrayed hundreds of years earlier.

This is kind of a goofy movie, but the princess fights back valiently against the rich nobles that just discarded her like used tissue paper. Milly Bobby Jo escapes from numerous attacks, and becomes a tougher and stronger woman.

At some point Milly Bobby Jo connects with the dragon, and they make friends and she turns the tables on the crummy royals. It is certainly a fantasy, but it has good intentions, and it is entertaining.

Colm Meaney, the guy that made any Star Trek episode deadly boring, was the main villain on this show. Same charming lack of a human personality. The only thing missing was Odo as his wife. Meaney wants to be rich working for a railroad, and he is willing to kill anyone that gets in his way.

Anson Mount, another guy lacking in any charm or personality, is the good guy. He should have been cast as Colm Meaney's brother. They are the same person, and equally boring.

Add in Common, who is the only interesting actor. He represents normal people, and make choices that are usually the most interesting ones.

Finally there is the railroad town's escort server / barmaid. She has some tattoos on her face that designate her as the town public servant. Common is in love with her.

Not much going on in this show except for mostly boring characters making predictable choices and confrontations.

This is an odd episode, in that it sort of rambles to different little stories in the main story.

One twin brother want Randall to catch the other twin, and collect the bounty on him. Twin 2 is the criminal, but Twin 1 is the guy always getting harassed because he is trying to live a normal life. The twins are played by real twins Paul and Nick Bon Tempi, who tried acting very briefly and then went on to other careers. They had a very classic 1950s film noir look.

The second mini-story involves fellow bounty hunter Phil (played by Ralph Bell), who is down on his luck and tries to steal the bounty from Randall. Even though it was the wrong twin, Phil didn't care, because he needed the money. Randall gives him the permanent cure for stealing, right in the guts.

The third little story involves a very sharp looking Audrey Claire, who plays the bar owner / girlfriend of the bad twin, #2. Randall looks her up and gets into a brief but entertaining discussion with her. Then he follows her and she unknowingly leads her to Twin 2, who feels betrayed by her.

Lots of interesting little things, including what happens when Randall puts the two twins together, and Twin 2 continues trying to work his evil ways.

Matt Lauria is treated like the Captain of the football team, and not like a scientist who has to use his brain. By comparison, Gil Grissom was a real CSI type of character, and he was credible.

Lauria created his own problem, and he should sink in it. Why is everyone stopping their CSI work to focus on helping Matt Lauria out of the mess he created for himself?

It just seems like he is abusing a taxpayer agency by getting a whole bunch of people to work to exonerate him. What about everyone else?

I gave up on this show when Paula Newsome tells the review board that Lauria was totally irresponsible and abused his position, and he deserves to be terminated. Then she tells the board that she wants him back on the CSI team. I hope she was getting some good loving from Lauria, after embarassing herself so badly.

Paula Newsome, who plays the director of the CSI never impresses with her leadership ability. She looks like Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King had a baby. I keep expecting her to give life coaching advice, and a lot of times she does.

It is not a complicated show. Every episode sticks to a general formula. The Lone Ranger or Tonto (or both of them) seem to get captured very often. They turn over their guns and knife, they are hostages or prisoners, and yet they are never worried too much.

The calmness and faith in goodness and good people is amazing to watch. The Lone Ranger and Tonto always give people the benefit of the doubt. They put themselves in danger to protect others. It is all part of their normal day.

It is hard to put into words, but these two characters are so positive, and so nice, they are superheroes. Their superpower is good intentions, wanting to help people in trouble.

Jay Silverheels is a really good actor too. A lot of his acting is without words. He lives in a world that treats Native Americans pretty badly, and yet he gets his job done without expecting anything. He also puts a lot of meaning into his looks and body language. I doubt that he ever got the credit he deserved for his acting.

This looks and feels like a parody or comedy, but it is really boring and lame. The non-stop songs from the 1940s makes it painful to listen to.

I fast-forward through most of it, since it is one of those shows that fills up time by showing you a character walking every step from one place to another, so you can fast-forward and help them get where they are going faster.

Looking at the big eyes and goofy face of Vaultgirl is another downer. There used to be a TV series that featured a mongoloid kid. He could make that look work.

A lot of the characters are just dysfunctional and pointless. There is not much going for this show, except the Ghoul, a combination of Clint Eastwood and Rambo.

Whenever the annoying 1940s songs start playing, I put it on mute. The dialogue is lame. This show is based on a video game, so dialogue is not a priority. You can guess most of it from just watching. The music is all cheerful songs from the 1940s. I guess it is meant to be a cynical view of the post-Apocalypse. The music is in the public domain, and that is why it is being used (for free). This show is lame for many reasons.

This is a very interesting story that features several cold hearted killers. The story opens with Sam Pryor (Howard Petrie) fighting back against a robber who kills him as Pryor's daughter (Fay Spain) walks in and sees her Dad murdered.

A second later the Sheriff walks in (Joe Patridge) and arrests the killer (Harry Bakalyan). Fay Spain immediately demands that the Sheriff (her ex-boyfriend) kills Harry. When the Sheriff refuses, Spain vows that he will not live to take the killer to trial.

Fay Spain really put forward a powerfully mean and cold-hearted character in this episode. She was usually a temptress or girlfriend. Sometimes she had a harder edge, but I cannot recall any time that she was this ruthless.

Into town comes Josh Randall (Steve McQueen) along with Warren Oates and young Wayne Rogers (of MASH fame). They tell Randall they are just looking for work, but Randall is suspicious.

As the story unfolds, the Sheriff gets murdered taking Bakalyan out of town. Randall takes over, and he is told by Fay Spain that he is next unless he gives up Bakalyan.

A short time later, as Randall is on the road, he comes across Spain, Oates and Rogers, who are now going to free Bakalyan and kill Randall. Spain is fine with it as long as Bakalyan gets lynched, but the twist is that Oates and Rogers came to town to free Bakalyan, who is their buddy.

The very cool shootout happens, and Randall barely avoids getting killed. One issue I always have with this episode is that I believe it was Fay Spain that ordered the Sheriff to get killed, but apparently the blame is swept to Oates and Rogers.

Afterwards, Fay Spain is asking Randall to look her up in San Francisco, like she just may have had her ex-boyfriend murdered, and she paid Oates and Rogers to kill off Randall too. Why would any sane human want to be her friend??

The ridiculously incompetent and pathetic characters on this show manage to get an innocent bystander carjacked and kidnapped because of their horrible law enforcement practices.

They were supposed to do a controlled buy and arrest a guy. Scoma and Whiffany manage to botch that, because Whiffany imagines that she saw Hakim, the guy who killed Hobbs. Whiffany feels guilty that she ordered Hobbs into the restroom to befriend Hakim, and got him killed (she did).

So now Whiffany takes over the FBI and changes the orders. She decides to follow Hakim to a daytime strip club that is full of people. That is just bad writing, or else the outside scenes should have been dark instead of daylight. I have never seen a morning strip club that is packed with party people.

So Whiff goes in, and her spineless weasel partner Scoma is afraid to say no. Scoma does whatever Whiff says, even though he is the senior officer. Scoma is terrified of being accused of you-know-what, so he is always begging her forgiveness for anything white people have done.

In the club, the targeted villain immediately spots Whiffany, and gets very suspicious. She pretends it is just an accident they are meeting again, and immediately demands to know if Hakim is back. Villain gets more suspicious, and Whiff keeps pushing, like she is going to glimmer the guy into talking.

Guns are drawn, Whiff and Scoma do a typical failed chase, and squat down when shots are fired. The vil picks up a hostage, as is the tradition in every episode of this show, and another chase happens. Eventually after a car crash that should have put everyone into hospital, Scoma and Whiff shoot the guy and free the hostage.

They failed to get any information, they failed to arrest the target, and they almost got another innocent bystander killed. Typical good day on this show.

Whiff goes by Hobb's house to scare the hell out of his widow, and to feel better about herself. Hobb's widow tells her to get lost and not to contact her anymore. Somehow Whiffany can never show any credible concern for anyone else. Nobody likes her. She is a psychopath who happens to be in law enforcement.

The highlight of this episode is that Doc Adams is the star.

Kathleen Hite, John Meston, and Norman McDonald ruled the Gunsmoke writer's room during the first ten years, and their concept of an "adult Western" was that often all the good characters died, and nobody was happy. While the villains were usually killed off too, Matt Dillon avoided gunplay if possible, so a fair amount made it to jail.

Here we get a really dumb and depressing story that could have had a positive and happy ending. Mary (Jan Clayton) and her son Sully (Peter Brooks) are friends of Festus. He realizes they are very ill when he visits them, and calls on Doc.

Doc realizes that they have scurvy, and he gets Matt and Festus to help him round up vegetables and other foods with vitamin C, to help Mary and her son. So far it was a great story.

Unfortunately, because the "adult Western" crew was involved, they wrote Mary into not eating all the healthy foods that Doc brought over, because she wanted only her son to get healthy. This was really dumb, because Doc visited her several times and explained that the food was very important for their health.

As Mary refuses to eat the good foods, her health continues to decline, with predictable and unnecessary results. This should have been a triumph of medicine by Doc Adams, but Kathleen Hite, the writer, robbed Doc of his victory.

Into the mix comes Adrew Duggan, as some old friend of Doc Adams. He used to be a doctor too, but went looking for gold and got rich. Now he feels sorry for himself, because he wishes he had faith in himself and continued to be a doctor. So sad. The violins are out for sad little rich man.

It turns out his partner was Mary's husband, so he goes out to meet her just in time to witness her death. Unhappy trails thanks to the "adult Western" writing crew. Fortunately, their reign on Gunsmoke was about to end, and happier times were coming to Dodge City.