Another solid episode from Gunsmoke's "middle period". Good script with typical Gunsmoke-style doom and violence hanging over everything..especially with an out-in-the-open illicit affair between lovely, winsome Mariette Hartley and caustic, incisive, sardonic J. D. Cannon, the sort of role he played so well. But you just KNOW somebody is really going to "get it" in this one and,...believe me...they do.
The "comic relief" between Kitty and Festus is fine, but I get impatient when the scenes are NOT integrated into the plot, and only seem to hold up the action, which is the case here. What should be "relief" only serves to frustrate and raise the tension level.
There's a GREAT surprise about midway through this one, as Matt tracks down J. D. and confronts him out on the prairie. But when Doc and Kitty realize that Matt is "MIA", I said out loud "Where the hell is Festus or Quint...or ANYBODY...even "1st Townsman" or "2nd Townsman".. to accompany them into dangerous territory.
Anyway, the "Day for Night" filming leading to the big shoot-out is REALLY
obvious; in fact, as Matt was sneaking around the ranch, I thought "That's some really nice, warm, sun-dappled cinematography, lots of depth", etc....until I realized were supposed to believe it's NIGHT, with Mariette sitting inside with her lantern. BUt... that's the way TV production (and many low-budget films) are forced to operate.
And the violent action near the end is SO cheesy when the sound effects department uses MASSIVE, LOUD gunshot cues, which sound like they're reverberating in the Grand Canyon..when in fact they're being discharged in a very close, tight space (and Mariette Hartley's fall is really lame and unconvincing). It's just SO overdone..as is the MUSIC SCORE in this episode; it has this annoying grey-ish, dreary, thick Germanic sound
that continually intrudes on the action and mood. Too bad...gone are the days in the run of Gunsmoke when great artists like Fred Steiner or Van Cleave would tailor a new score to the action..and the music problem only becomes WORSE as the series moves into the "hip" late '60's and the color era, when the series really began to lose its depth and texture, both visually and musically. And I have no idea how composer Rudy Schrager was able to compose full scores week-after-week, and what function Herschel Gilbert actually served. But it's a big step down from seasons 7-9, and I deduct a full rating-star for the annoying musical scoring in this episode.
Still, there's a lot of excellent material in "Big Man", especially considering the weekly grind that made uniformly high quality a real challenge. Impressive final shot, too. LR.