User Reviews

After a dispute at cards James Garner winds up in Sheriff Richard Garland's jail, but pretty saloon girl Karen Steele bails Bret Maverick out and gives him a job in the saloon watching for card cheats.

But Steele who is from St. Louis doesn't quite seem to fit in this jerk water town and possibly that's why she's got men panting all over for her. One of them is bank teller Michael Connors who is in with Steele on a plan to rob the bank.

These two also have fitted out Garner for a prime role as a patsy.

All I'll say is you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Bret Maverick as he slowly slips into his well known character as someone who just can't quite take life too seriously.

Garner shooting Michael Connors is just a sideline to this one. Karen Steele (whose last guest TV role was ironically on Mannix in 1970) is the woman who becomes torn between Connors and Garner. She is plenty good looking and I bet in real life she could have handled both of them.

Molly (Steele) is involved in a bank heist of $100,000 dollars. She gets some really good embraces from both guys. Meanwhlle, there are several twists in the road including the planning of killing Maverick by shooting him in the face and passing him off as the other man (Connors) so that he and Molly can run off with $100,000 dollars togther.

Then things get complicated and finally, a really solid script and guest cast lead us to the good guy, Maverick, winning the day. While the formula would stay the same during the series run, this second episode is a really good start.

"Point Blank" sees Bret arriving at the Golden Chance Saloon after eluding a posse. He falls in love with Molly Gleason. Molly and her bank teller lover try to use Bret in their plan to embezzle money. Bret and the sheriff fight over this bad girl. Karen Steele plays Molly, and she has a perverse interest in Bret from the get-go. She serves him breakfast, and he takes a job in the saloon. Right away, he spots some card cheats. Bret and Molly ride out of town. They talk, and Bret admits to being a drifter. They kiss! Three men want Molly, and she is definitely a hottie! Molly wants Bret and the stolen money both. But Bret is an honest man despite making a living by playing cards. He gets the reward and pins a thousand dollar bill inside his shirt.

Producer Roy Huggins apparently intended this to be the viewer's first introduction to Bret Maverick. Warner Brothers decided to put on the lighter and weaker episode of "War of the Silver Kings" before broadcasting this one. I would say that Huggins understood the character and series needs more than the execs at Warner Brothers.

The opening shots of the lone rider Maverick being chased by a posse of fifty men shows the usual great sense of humor that the series always had, but here the humor is quickly balanced by more suspense and sharp and surprising plot twists.

It is also enhanced with a wonderful acting performance by Karen Steele as Molly Gleason, a woman who can't decide between Maverick and banker-criminal(and future Mannix actor) Mike Connors. It is rare that a woman character gets to be as indecisive as here. Both Maverick and the audience isn't sure if she's ruthlessly evil or just helplessly caught in a bad scheme by her lover Connors to rob a bank. It could go either way right up the very end.

Usually James Garner is better looking than the women he meets in the series and they're not really a match for him acting wise. However, here Steele looks more than a little like Marilyn Monroe and acts with Marilyn's kind of heart-on-the-sleeve vulnerability that was popular at the time. She actually out-acts Garner in a couple of scenes. Catch the wonderful bit at the end where Maverick says that he has come to say goodbye and she just reacts by immediately and coldly saying "Goodbye." Her contempt for Maverick is expressed clearly and strongly in that one word.

Steele is strikingly out of place in the small western town, as Maverick repeatedly tells her.

Besides Steele's outstanding performance, watch for Peter Brown's quick appearances as a deputy. He went on to star in a great Western series "Lawman" the following year, where he also played a deputy. He starred in a second excellent Western series called "Laredo" in the 1960's, which was probably the closest series to "Maverick" in spirit.

Again, I see this as the great pilot episode that introduces us to the best Western series and character ever on television.