The essential episodes of Gunsmoke
Watch these 15 in order and you've got Gunsmoke — each pick states its reason.
- 01
Matt is critically wounded while attempting to arrest super-fast gunman Dan Grat. Grat runs rampant in Dodge while Matt recovers, but is unpleasantly surprised when the recovered marshal challenges him again.
- 02
Matt must go to extreme lengths to stop the killing spree of a psychopathic murderer who provokes gunfights with cowboys, farmers, and others who he knows have no chance against him.
- 03
Doc finds a half-dead man on the side of the road and tells Matt. Matt and Chester ride out to a buffalo hunter's camp but before they get far, the occupants show up not treating them much better than the man the doc found.
- 04
Cale is a bullheaded young drifter who takes a nap in a barn he comes across only to wake up to a shootout between a horse thief and the owner. Cale is shot, wounded, and becomes a suspected accomplice.
- 05
A half-Comanche has joined his mother's tribe in killing whites to avenge the murder of his father, but Matt sees the good in the man and the chance to re-integrate him, perhaps, into white society.
- 06
A mild old peddler of patent medicines and card tricks arrives in Dodge with his grown daughter, hoping to settle down, but instead they find their worst luck yet, beginning with a card game with a rich man and his spoiled son.
- 07
Mistakenly hailed as a hero who downed four robbers, a man rethinks his decision to let folks regard him as a gunfighter when protecting the woman he wants calls for a gunman's skill.
- 08
Etta Stone is a very bitter, older, woman who has Kitty and Matt captured, and thrown into a homemade jail, and now she plans on hanging Matt for the execution of her husband 6 years before.
- 09
A cowboy finds a lone Indian boy near his burned-out village. They become attached to each other, but boy is met by racism when they reach Dodge City.
- 10
Mannon, arguably the fastest gun in the West, terrorizes Dodge City while he waits for Matt Dillon to return. A cruel, violent encounter with Kitty Russell sets up the inevitable showdown.
- 11
An aging con-man arrives in Dodge with a desire to pull one last con before his health fails.
- 12
Matt, Maggie Blaisedell, her "stable" of call girls and a young boy who's the son of one of the women take refuge from Ben Rodman's gang in an old fort. Unfortunately, the fort has crumbled with age and Rodman and his gang are able to get inside and demand a fortune in gold dust Maggie is carrying for friends. Maggie also has a trunk full of fine hunting rifles and ammo, which she distributes among the group, and though the girls can't hit the broad side of a barn they can scare off any frontal assault. What they don't have is water - one of Maggie's girls turned traitor had drained their barrel before running off to join the gang. With time running desperately short, Matt (and the weather) contrive a scheme to force the outlaws to come headlong after the gold dust, hail of bullets or no
- 13
A very short man rides in on a Giant Horse into Dodge and offers $50 to any man who will take care of him from midnight to dawn tonight, the first light of the full moon, when he will turn into a "Were-Elephant."
- 14
When a mentally challenged young man comes to Dodge, Festus takes the man under his arm. But it will not be long until Festus knows the young man needs more help than he can give.
- 15
When Festus accidentally shoots a man in the leg, he takes the man back to his farm only to be used by members of the family.
Shows like Gunsmoke
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