User Reviews

In a town without guns (not even sold at the general store!), Paladin enters the saloon to find lots of hand fighting going on. As one person prepares to set a drunk (Philpotts) on fire, Paladin intervenes, and encounters Danceman, who vows to kill Paladin the next morning, because Paladin is a gunfighter. Danceman had not intervened to save Philpotts, suggesting anti-gun was not equal to anti-murder or even anti-violence. Danceman's hold on the town appears to arise from the belief he can tell the future. The town (Temple City) adopts "gun control" out of fear rather than from rational thinking.

Though somewhat overdone, the episode aims at the offbeat. In the usual San Francisco opening, Paladin has his fortune told in Tarot cards by blonde French woman (Vincent). The cards foretell an encounter with death with a key intervention by a Phoenician (an ancient seafaring people). Unimpressed, Paladin brushes aside such occult metaphysics, that is, until he visits Temple City.

The barroom scene in Temple City is about as loud and energetic as first-graders at recess. Note too, the over-age saloon "girls", a nice touch. Now, I thought that with Danceman (Kelley) we were going to get the paradox of a strong man enforcing peaceable ways in a violent manner. But the screenplay gets a little murky at that point or maybe it's just me. Still, I never did figure out his hold over the town. Then too, those overdone thunder & lightning effects outside the stable likely suggest a supernatural moment or is the resulting vision simply Paladin's imagination. For an otherwise naturalistic series, it's a questionable move (without giving the effect away).

Overall, the effort at weaving hints of the supernatural into the story has its moments, but seems not very well worked out. Still, it's an offbeat half-hour.