This is another Season 7 entry where a female character essentially drives a story that highlights her cruelty and treachery. When a woman named Daisy arrives in Dodge City, Chester begins to romance her in his own unique manner. After a date one night, Chester asks Daisy to marry him, and, after some additional, next-day discussion, she accepts. This engagement sets about a series of events that are both humorous and heartbreaking.
Daisy makes it clear she is interested in marrying a man that can provide for her and give her the material things she wants. While she agrees to marry Chester, she expects him to be able to provide for her in the manner she wants.
Gunsmoke fans are all too aware that Chester is far from being a man of wealth. He essentially acts as an administrative assistant/janitor for Matt Dillon. He isn't even a deputy. He keeps the jailhouse reasonably clean, makes coffee, makes sure prisoners are fed, and occasionally accompanies the Marshal on excursions to other places when asked. He also often acts as Matt's eyes and ears around Dodge, as Chester seemingly knows everything that happens around the town. In return, he is presumably paid some small amount, but it clearly isn't enough for him to accumulate any savings, or even afford a place to live.
The humor from the episode comes from Chester's acquisition of a piece of land outside Dodge, and his subsequent attempts to create something of value there. When the decrepit, old house on the land collapses, he sets about building a home with often unexpected, funny results.
Chester dreams of fields of crops and some pastureland for cattle with a home where he and Daisy can live and raise a family. Initially, Daisy does not realize just how unlikely Chester's dreams are to come to fruition on the barren piece of land he has managed to acquire. When he invites her to visit and see the dugout living quarters he has painstakingly built, she realizes she and her fiancé are light years apart in their idea of a life together. She does not share Chester's pie-in-the-sky dreams.
One of the highlights of the story is Doc's visit to Chester's "homestead." Although Doc and Chester frequently argue and exchange some good-natured barbs in Dodge City, Doc clearly cares for Chester and shows just how much with his visit. I particularly love the line where Chester is looking out at the barren land and dreaming about what it will eventually become, and Doc comments with something like, "Well, yeah, there is certainly nothing to obstruct the view!" The scene demonstrates well how two people can look at the same thing in drastically different ways.
For that matter, Matt, Miss Kitty, and Doc all go out of their way to express kindness and compassion to Chester throughout the story, although they can see things are not likely to turn out as Chester hopes.
I do not want to spoil the story too much, but the conclusion is pretty inevitable from nearly the beginning. At some point, Daisy completely rejects Chester as a possible mate (if she ever thought otherwise) and decides to get what she can from their relationship and move on.
Dennis Weaver is outstanding in this episode. Chester's almost-innocent naiveté is on full display here - much to his own detriment. Chester is a dreamer, and his glass is seemingly always "half full." It almost seems cruel to treat the character as this story does.
With that said, unlike some of the other user reviews, this story is definitely not one of my favorites of the series. It just seems like a vehicle to showcase Dennis Weaver's Chester character without anything much ultimately changing for anyone. We don't really learn anything new about Chester, and he essentially ends where he starts, albeit with a few additional emotional bumps and bruises.
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