The third season ends with one of the better episodes. Chester Morris, who got his start in the silents and was still working in 60's TV forty years later, plays a hobo whom Tod befriends. Later, during epidemic of a rare illness previously found in Texas, where both the hobo and Todd have been, they become the leading suspects. (Linc is away trying to be a salesman in an irrelevant side story with Tom Bosley as a businessman who would rather party it up than get anything done.) Several children have become deathly ill.
Clifton James plays the leader of a gang that wants to take some kind of revenge on them. Morris sees this as an extension of how outsiders are treated in every town he's been in. Tod remembers being in a private school when he was a kid where an 'outsider' carried a disease that killed a friend. He and others harassed the kid so much he killed himself. Frank Overton plays the town's top businessman who intervenes to protect the outsiders, despite the fact that his son is one of the sick ones. Alan Alda plays a doctor, a decade before MASH.
Both this and the previous episodes cover the same territory: a small town suspicious of outsiders, gossip and jumping to conclusions. I like the plot of this one better and Morris is very good as the decent by cynical hobo. It's also one of Marty Milner's better performances.
Clifton James plays the leader of a gang that wants to take some kind of revenge on them. Morris sees this as an extension of how outsiders are treated in every town he's been in. Tod remembers being in a private school when he was a kid where an 'outsider' carried a disease that killed a friend. He and others harassed the kid so much he killed himself. Frank Overton plays the town's top businessman who intervenes to protect the outsiders, despite the fact that his son is one of the sick ones. Alan Alda plays a doctor, a decade before MASH.
Both this and the previous episodes cover the same territory: a small town suspicious of outsiders, gossip and jumping to conclusions. I like the plot of this one better and Morris is very good as the decent by cynical hobo. It's also one of Marty Milner's better performances.