Cimarron Strip (TV Series) The Search (1967) User Reviews

Terror in Cimarron

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 14 April 2020]

I've seen nearly all the Cimarron Strip episodes and Marshal Jim Crown has to get some kind of iron man cowboy award. He gets shot more than any other western hero out there. But he always comes back to finish off the bad guys.

Never more so than here where Stuart Whitman is badly wounded in a shootout on the trail with Jim Davis's two sons trying to free the third one. The third one winds up dead.

With Whitman missing on the trail, Davis and the other sons come into town establishing a reign of terror in Cimarron. Only Jill Townsend is concerned the rest of the town. She has only two allies of sorts, jaded Doctor Joseph Cotton and itinerant peddler LQ Jones who's missing a whole suit from his deck.

Jones steals every scene he's in and Whitman gets iron cowboy award.

As I watched, my wife kept yelling at the screen, telling Dulcey to "just shut up!!". Apparently, she was not a fan of this episode!

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 25 March 2022]

"The Search" is not among the better episodes of "Cimarron Strip" and I think the main reason is that the entire episode rests on Dulcey's shoulders...and she was always a poorly written character on the show. It was so bad that after a while, my wife started yelling at the TV...telling Dulcey to "just shut up!!"!

When the story begins, Marshall Crown is shot while gun battling against a baddie. The Marshall isn't dead...but is severely injured. When his horses bring the wagon back to town without him and with blood all over it, it's up to Dulcey to try to get help. The problem is that she is 100% ineffectual. Instead of going to the nearby Cavalry fort (this was established in two prior episodes), she asks all sorts of townsfolk to help. When they eventually and reluctantly respond hours later, the Vardeman clan arrive and announce a bounty on the Marshall's head AND kill the leader of the search party...and all the townsfolk sheepishly run home. In the meantime, the show's equivalent of Larry, Daryl and Daryl (minus one of the Daryls) find the Marshall. But they, too, are apprehensive to get involved. So what's to become of the Marshall and the murderous Vardemans?

First the good. The episode is reasonably original. Otherwise, it's mostly bad. The two brothers (who I refer to as Larry and Daryl) are VERY broadly written and are not the least bit subtle and seemed really out of place on a serious western. Dulcey also is a mess here...whining and acting upset...but doing little else. Overall, a very, very weak episode which should have been better and might have been if the Marshall wasn't unconscious for 95% of the episode.