Gunsmoke

For the last couple of days, I've been getting my fill of Gunsmoke reruns. I like the show, it's trite and outdated but I like it. The characters are as black and white as the film it was recorded on. The bad guys are bad and the good guys good and you can spot them as they ride up the street or walk into the Longbranch saloon. No complex characters, just 2 dimensional ones. The plots and stories are simple and 2 dimensional too. Just basic entertainment, no deep thinking required.

What I like best is finding characters played by actors who later became stars or prominent character actors. They aren't playing major characters either, often just small roles. If you watch enough of these shows, you see some of these come back in other roles. One time as gunfighter, another time as a settler, yet another as a drifter, sometime later as an outlaw. Denver Pyle comes to mind, he had 14 appearances on Gunsmoke.

I have a little problem watching the show since I keep seeing car/truck tire tracks in the dirt roads, and wonder why there are no ruts in the streets of Dodge City. And then there's the ladies in their fine dresses with the zippers in the back. Zippers didn't show up until the 1890's. Yeah, I looked it up.

Still, it's fun to watch the old shows...