Mike and I have gotten totally hooked on watching Gunsmoke. It’s funny because prior to this, I had never watched an episode of Gunsmoke in my life. It’s the last thing I ever would watch, being the peace-loving hippie that I am, and more than that, being someone who is so upset by unwholesome movies that I don’t watch anything that is even suspenseful, let alone violent. But Gunsmoke is our evening comfort activity, and it is truly saving us!
Every episode is a morality tale, as Mike says. For me, there is so much wisdom and goodness in how Marshall Matt Dillon conducts himself. His authority, bottom line, is based on his being such a fast and accurate shot that he can outshoot almost anyone, and being good with his fists. But he always exhorts and almost begs the bad guys and the merely misguided to not draw, to not do anything stupid that will get them killed. They usually do anyway.
Matt uses such creativity to solve all the constant murders and crimes, that it’s really fascinating. We always joke that Matt Dillon’s main activity is burying the dead, and that it’s a wonder that Dodge City has any inhabitants left!
The Chester Goode character is also fascinating. At first glance he seems lame, and lame-brained as well. But he is actually a good shot with the rifle, and is fearless, maybe simply from his loyalty to Marshall Dillon. Matt clearly feels he can rely on Chester to take the prisoners to jail or anything else that needs to be done. Although Chester drawls on endlessly, it often ends up serving some purpose, and he is an integral character in everything that happens.
That all being said, we have some questions and observations, for any other Gunsmoke loving folks out there. Well, maybe only two questions. Are those bar girls prostitutes? All of them? Why don’t Matt and Miss Kitty get married?
Observations:
• Everything in the show is historically accurate. There was one show that had a character whose parents were killed by a group called Quantrill’s raiders in an anti-slavery uprising in Lawrence, Kansas. We looked it up and such an incident did happen.
• Marshall Dillon has many “friends” that we’ve never heard of, but they come back into his life … usually in time to have somehow changed and now be trying to kill him.
• Matt Dillon does get shot sometimes, and it seems like it’s always in the left shoulder. We wonder how his shoulder has held up at all!
Most exciting moments:
• Finding out where Marshall Dillon got his horse! As a horse nut, I always noticed that Matt rode a buckskin horse. But nothing was ever said about the horse. Then we watched an early episode in which Matt saved the life of a white boy who lived with the Indians. Someone had stolen a bunch of horses that the boy was watching, and shot the boy, and the horses were in Dodge City. The boy recovered, and snuck out, taking the herd with him … all except the best horse, a buckskin, which he left for Marshall Dillon! Matt has ridden it ever since!
• Another exciting thing is that we own a rental in Pueblo, Colorado. It is an odd town that I had always avoided, because I read such bad things about it on the city-data.com forum, which is a great source of information. But once we went there, we found out that, despite its weirdnesses (general low level of education and difficulty getting anything done right), it is a very old steel town, and has tons of the Victorian, brick and Craftsman houses that I love. Anyway, characters in Gunsmoke are always going to or from Pueblo.
• Lastly, I am excited that Gunsmoke is the longest-running TV show in history – It ran for 20 years, from 1955-1975. So it will be awhile before we run out of episodes to watch!
If you watch Gunsmoke, pay careful attention to the opening, in which Marshall Dillon is often walking around Boot Hill, where the bad guys are buried, and making some philosophical observation or another.
Sometimes I have to take a break from Gunsmoke – I can’t take any more bad guys! They are so cruel and horrible. But then I recover and go back for more. Despite all the great TV shows out there, this is all we want to watch. Maybe someday we will go to Kansas and visit Dodge City … after the pandemic is over!
Daria Doering 
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