User Reviews

Bret meets Samantha Crawford in Kansas City, and there is the usual wit. They have dinner, and Samantha offers to stake Bret in a poker game. Robbers barge in and steal the money. Bret and Sam track one of them into Indian country. Diane Brewster as Samantha was a key character during the first two seasons. The shady ladies who followed were cast in her image. This installment begins with Sam telling Bret, "I was thinking of you the other day," and Bret asking, "How much did it cost me?" She asks about Bart, and Bret treats her to dinner. She later pretends to be Bret's sister. They head for Deadwood in a stagecoach, and I recalled how beautiful the west can be. Always chasing money! Pappyism: "Marriage is the only game of chance I know of where both people can lose."

That first scene between Bret and Samantha Crawford (Brewster) is a little gem. She's so cutely coy that it causes Bret's animal instincts to beat out his better judgment. If Bret's moral compass sometimes wobbles, hers positively staggers. So he knows she can't be trusted, but just can't help himself. It's a deliciously performed scene, playing to the light comedic strengths of each.

Anyway, Sam ropes Bret into being the fall guy in a high-stakes poker game, after which Bret's got to get back his reputation and outwit the wily Samantha, at the same time. It's almost classic Maverick except for veering off into the Indian sequence, which is not only poorly staged (phony backlot boulders, poor matching shots), but clumsily out of sync with the rest. Still, the Bret-Sam encounters alone are enough to carry several episodes. What a perfect foil Brewster is and a fine actress to boot. All in all, it's four-fifths of the classic Maverick brew.

Diane Brewster makes a third appearance on Maverick as card sharp Samantha Crawford. You'd think both the Mavericks would have learned to steer clear. But they both think with the male member where she's concerned and in this case Bret can't resist a high stakes poker game where she is bankrolling him $20,000.00 worth.

My problem with this story is we never really learn what Brewster's game was. What happens is 2 guys under the direction of a third rob over $100,000.00 from the millionaires who have allowed Maverick to sit in. The others think that James Garner the outsider has to be the inside man.

So to prove them wrong and make sure he's not blackballed from every high stakes game west of the Mississippi Garner has to get their money back.z Therein lies the story.

Always nice to see Diane Brewster, but some better care with the plot should have been taken.