User Reviews

The plot of a beautiful rich young lady being in on her own kidnapping has been tried a lot in TV and film since the 1950s so the plot may seem familiar now but it is well done and sensible as an ep.

I will fill in on few provable points the script apparently did nor deal with. The rich girl and the bayou singer/ fake kidnapper probably did not know each other that long prior to the fake abduction job that becomes the real thing soon. Also, the policeman Bart punches out in the dark probably never realizes it is Bart Maverick who was the assailant. The lawman probably blames his beating on one of the dead-by-the end kidnappers.

I first saw this rerun with my grandparents, I will never forget seeing the Maverick brothers and loved how the two brothers were together. Bret and Bart were always fun to see both together and apart. The chemistry together in this episode in particular was great, both were great together and apart, I know that Roy Huggins thought that that Kelly didn't do funny, but that wasn't true, because he was funny as well you could tell.

Anyways this episode features Bart who is very amusing as he goes out of his way to look for his brother Bret both of them broke unfortunately having lost their 1000 dollar bills and having to work (something no respecting Maverick would do as Pappy Maverick would be ashamed of lol if they didn't have money) they finally set on a scheme to make it so they can ingratiate themselves with a wealthy Creole aristocrat only for his daughter to be kidnapped by idiot amateurs who have no idea what their doing.

In order to get out of the situation, Bret goes undercover with the daughter while Bart returns to try and get the money pretending to be a go-between, he also uses black powder in an envelope having hidden the money, though things are complicated by a lawman (who was played by the same guy who also played the leader of the Clantons (Old Man Clanton) in Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp starring Hugh o'Bryan Trevor Bardette) who after finding out from an informant who sold him the black powder interrogates him forcibly beating him until the aristocrat monsieur Devereaux sees the error of his ways and releases Bart from the chair he was in.

Bart goes to where Bret and Devereaux's daughter are being held for the inevitable showdown are being held and the explosion occurs, he as well as the daughter and Bret are saved but the villains are dispatched along with the crooked lawman of course. Eventually the brothers as guests of Monsieur Devereaux and his daughter are onboard their steamboat whiling away their hours playing cards and having the time of their life much to their enjoyment, and the irritation of others.

This is one of the best episodes I thought, right up there with the first episode of the series, and the opening one with Gerald Mohr's wonderful portrayal as Doc Holliday.

I imagine that there was some kind of panic at Warner Brothers when they realized that they were falling behind in their shooting schedule and needed to quickly introduce another hero lead. An episode like this appears to have been written solely for Bret Maverick as the hero, and quickly rewritten to add in his brother Bart.

As such, adding a second hero just seems redundant and causes all kinds of plot holes. For example. when both heroes see the girl kidnapped into a store, Bret goes in after her while Bart stays outside. If Bart was a poor sidekick, one could see this, but if you want to show him as the hero, why take him out of the action in this way? Then they switch roles and Bart goes to get the ransom money and plan out a rescue, while Bret is left in the sidekick role of just being a hostage with nothing to do. If this had been a normal episode, Bret would have bamboozled the three dumb kidnappers and been making love to the girl by the time Bart had picked up the ransom money and returned.

Here, the fact is obvious that nobody thought out in advance the character of Bart Maverick and how the two characters should differ. The feeling isn't so much that you have two brothers, but you have the same character being played by two different actors.

Ultimately, Bart's trick of using black powder to make a bomb to bluff the kidnappers into releasing their hostages isn't very clever or satisfying. It is hard to see why he didn't just draw his gun in advance to get the drop on his adversaries.

This episode is average for television Western at the time and no where near the higher quality episodes of "Maverick." This was a harbinger of things to come. While nobody has expressly said so, as far as I know. James Garner got most of the well written and well done episodes, while Jack Kelly seems to have gotten the inferior ones. While the episodes with Kelly are not bad, they rarely reach the quality of writing, production or direction that the James Garner ones do.