Gunsmoke was a great show, but it often showed questionable calls by Matt Dillon. In many ways Gunsmoke was the first realistic police procedural, thirty years ahead of Hill Street Blues and fifty years before Law and Order, or The Shield.
In this episode, we get an avalanche of mistakes and bad judgment. Matt Dillon and Chester start off right, by arresting Leroy Pickett. Leroy was played by Rex Holman, a long-time thug, henchman, and third-rate gunslinger who got killed off on many Westerns. Holman was on Gunsmoke sixteen times, and he was also one of the Earps on the Star Trek episode "Spectre of a Gun."
While Chester has the job of guarding Holman for a couple of hours, Holman scares Chester up by telling him that his brothers will kill him. In a moment of incompetence that surpassed Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, Chester spooks at a sound, and Holman punches his sorry face in, and takes Chester's rifle. Matt Dillon wakes up from his nap, and ventilates Holman as he is about to put dumb Chester into a permanent vacation.
The next day, Warren Oates wanders by and tells Dillon and Chester that his Pa will be looking to kill them. Matt Dillon got tons of these types of threats, and I always thought he should have just shot Warren Oates out of his saddle, and sent him back to Pa, as a message. Dillon, like usual, takes the high road, and lets Oates go to join the other Picketts that are coming to kill Matt and Chester.
Dillon decides to mosey on back to Pa Pickett's house to explain things to Pa. This was an extra day's ride away from Dodge (two days round trip), and another dumb mistake. Where did Dillon get so much endless water, coffee, and food to spend forever riding around the prairie?
When Dillon meets Pa Pickett, Dillon has the vague notion that Pa is on a wanted poster, and that Pa Pickett is wanted for murder. Of course, instead of riding back to Dodge to check things out first, Dillon just spontaneously arrests Pa Pickett, and all hell breaks loose.
Pa's inbred family of road agents and hoodlums start tracking Dillon, and shooting the horses out from under Chester and Dillon, and soon the trio are on foot. Pa Pickett never misses a chance to tell them that his kids are going to kill him.
Later on they lose their water, because Chester, in mistake number two for him, puts the three big canteens filled with water on a branch where they had to be the clearest target on the whole prairie. The Pickett kids shoot through the canteens, as Chester stands near them and says "Golly gee."
Some more gun-play happens, Dillon sends Chester to Dodge for back-ups, and they finally come back, and Dillon is still alive. Chester brings back the wanted poster, and it is for the wrong man. Dillon screwed up by arresting the wrong man. Four big mistakes in one episode. It is a miracle that Dillon and Chester only lost their horses, and not their lives.
Pa Pickett was played by Trevor Bardette, who was usually a back-stabber, weasel, villain, and all around bad guy in most Westerns. Bardette was on Gunsmoke five times. He played Old Man Clanton as a recurring villain on The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp, and was also on Cheyenne, Bonanza, Wagon Train, and many other TV shows and Western movies.