Most of the Shiloh regulars have a part to play in this episode about the complications of an arranged marriage, but what I liked most was the vignette featuring Randy and Trampas - in town to collect supplies - and Ryker. It begins with an embarrassed Randy struggling with a full size dressmaker's dummy outside a store. From him the camera pans to two pairs of booted feet resting on a hitching rail outside the Sheriff's office. It seems to be the boots speaking when a voice says, "Emmett, I've been meaning to talk to you about something." The camera pans left to reveal Trampas sitting on the sidewalk with Ryker. They are both idle and nursing mugs of coffee.
"What's that?" Ryker asks.
Trampas: "Your coffee. Are you sure you haven't been cleaning your gun in it."
Ryker, looking directly at Trampas, his voice level and gruff: "It's perfectly good coffee. As a matter of fact, exceptionally good coffee. You don't have to drink it you know. You could be giving Randy a hand over there with that stuff." (Gulager's delivery is so deadpan it put me in mind of Tommy Lee Jones in the brilliant 'Men in Black'. It's been said Gulager was an actor out of the same stable as James Dean. Not at all, He was a forerunner of Jones at his best.) The scene becomes a three-hander when Randy joins the two men, Trampas' laziness being the focus of the conversation. And despite the earlier deadpan delivery, there's a moment when both Gulager and Boone seem to have trouble keeping straight faces.
Review of The Dream of Stavros Karas
