Dodie (Kathleen Nolan) plays a dreamy teen, trapped in a dismal orphanage that is really a front for a child labor racket run by the proprietors, a brother and sister. They beat the girls to keep discipline. One day Dodie decides to take on the woman who runs the place when her brother is away and get the keys away from her. She succeeds, but the woman hits her head as a result of the fight and may die. Dodie runs anyways. She soon hitches a ride to Dodge City with Doc Adams and begins exploring the town. Since she has been in the orphanage since she was five, the ways of the world are strange to her. That includes the reactions of men who were a bit on the wild side to begin with when an attractive and forward young woman confronts them. Soon Matt Dillon has his hands full with the aftermath of fights between men started over the clueless Dodie.
The funny thing is Dodie is not the least bit afraid she'll be found out as the person who injured/(killed?) the keeper of the orphanage. She is just enjoying life one day at a time in a way that seems almost creepy. She seems to have completely turned her back on the poor younger girls still trapped in serfdom back at the so-called orphanage.
Kathleen Nolan is a good actress, but she had just finished a five year stint as Kate of The Real McCoys, wife in a farm family that has moved from West Virginia to California. She was playing a thirty something level headed housewife who seemed older because she was playing pseudo mom to her husband's much younger adolescent sister and brother. Then she was written out of the show with the script saying she died of a brief illness. And almost immediately, here she is, playing someone who is supposed to be the age of the girls her pseudo step son would have been dating in the previous series. This is just a bit too much background information to just forget about and for me to suspend my beliefs.
The funny thing is Dodie is not the least bit afraid she'll be found out as the person who injured/(killed?) the keeper of the orphanage. She is just enjoying life one day at a time in a way that seems almost creepy. She seems to have completely turned her back on the poor younger girls still trapped in serfdom back at the so-called orphanage.
Kathleen Nolan is a good actress, but she had just finished a five year stint as Kate of The Real McCoys, wife in a farm family that has moved from West Virginia to California. She was playing a thirty something level headed housewife who seemed older because she was playing pseudo mom to her husband's much younger adolescent sister and brother. Then she was written out of the show with the script saying she died of a brief illness. And almost immediately, here she is, playing someone who is supposed to be the age of the girls her pseudo step son would have been dating in the previous series. This is just a bit too much background information to just forget about and for me to suspend my beliefs.