I watched this video as apart of a DVD called "Classic Television, which has selected episodes of various 50's TV series. Why they selected this one, the second to last, I don't know.
This series is noted for being the first big break for a young actor named Burt Reynolds. Unfortunately, this episode was done after Burt, who didn't get along with star Darren McGavin, had left the show. He was replaced by Noah Beery Jr., later Jim Rockford's Dad. (Unfortunately, we don't see much of McGavin, one of my favorite actors, in this one, either.) The show itself was trying to mine the Maverick gold mine, being about McGavin's Riverboat and the adventurers they have up and down the Mississippi. The plot of this one is pretty good: Beery is assigned to accompany a reluctant crewman to the local doctor to get a tooth pulled. The guy convinces him to visit a bar first and they both wind up drunk. They stagger into the office of the doctor, who is away. Beery is then kidnapped by a couple of escaped convicts who think that he is the doctor because he's trying to remove his friend's tooth. They take him off into the swamps to tend to a dying comrade. The comrade asks to talk in private with Beery, telling him that he told his fellow escapees that he knew where a large treasure was buried so they would treat him well in prison and help him escape. But now he confesses that there was never any treasure. The man then dies. The convicts, (led by Charles Bronson), think he told Beery where the treasure is and try to torture him for the information. The old man who owns the shack they are in helps him to escape, along with his nubile daughter, (played by Stella Stevens a year before she became a Playboy playmate). They elude the convicts but the old man also thinks Beery knows where the treasure is and wants his daughter to entrap him into a marriage. It might have made a good Maverick episode but it's a lesser thing on a lesser show.
This series is noted for being the first big break for a young actor named Burt Reynolds. Unfortunately, this episode was done after Burt, who didn't get along with star Darren McGavin, had left the show. He was replaced by Noah Beery Jr., later Jim Rockford's Dad. (Unfortunately, we don't see much of McGavin, one of my favorite actors, in this one, either.) The show itself was trying to mine the Maverick gold mine, being about McGavin's Riverboat and the adventurers they have up and down the Mississippi. The plot of this one is pretty good: Beery is assigned to accompany a reluctant crewman to the local doctor to get a tooth pulled. The guy convinces him to visit a bar first and they both wind up drunk. They stagger into the office of the doctor, who is away. Beery is then kidnapped by a couple of escaped convicts who think that he is the doctor because he's trying to remove his friend's tooth. They take him off into the swamps to tend to a dying comrade. The comrade asks to talk in private with Beery, telling him that he told his fellow escapees that he knew where a large treasure was buried so they would treat him well in prison and help him escape. But now he confesses that there was never any treasure. The man then dies. The convicts, (led by Charles Bronson), think he told Beery where the treasure is and try to torture him for the information. The old man who owns the shack they are in helps him to escape, along with his nubile daughter, (played by Stella Stevens a year before she became a Playboy playmate). They elude the convicts but the old man also thinks Beery knows where the treasure is and wants his daughter to entrap him into a marriage. It might have made a good Maverick episode but it's a lesser thing on a lesser show.
