Pa Hack's Brood

After some good shows in this season, this episode was lacking in more ways than one. There was so many problems with the script and acting that it never gain any interest.

The main character was a man named Pa Hacker that was as nasty and lazy as any father had the right. He had three children in the name of Maybelle, Lonnie and Orville and they were just as bad as their father. Anyway Pa Hacker comes up on a farm house that is occupied by Mr Willis and his son Jeb. They have just taken in another young girl named Annie Montgomery after her mother passed away. It just so happens that Pa Hacker wants Jeb to marry Maybelle and he needs to get Annie out of the way. So he sends his son, Lonnie, to the Willis house to kidnap Annie.

Marshal Dillon is visiting and when Lonnie grabs Annie shots ring out. Lonnie has killed Mr Willis and Matt killed Lonnie. Marshal takes Lonnie's body back to Pa hacker and tells them to leave the area. Orville gets the heck out but Pa and Maybelle stay behind.

Later Pa Hacker returns to the Willis's farm with intentions of making Jeb marry Maybelle. But things happen that may ruin the plan.

This was not an interesting story. For whatever reason the story was weak and the actors suffered. With many good shows in this season it was bound to have a clunker in one of them.

Pa Hack is the kind of lazy, shiftless sociopath that is fairly common in Gunsmoke episodes -- see also Phoebe Strunk, Pa Ginnis, and any number of others. Hack, his daughter, and two sons travel around the prairie begging and stealing whatever they can.

When the Hack clan runs across a farm owned by a man named Willis and his son Jeb, they manage to beg some flour and coffee and steal a couple of chickens. Pa Hack immediately gets the idea of having Jeb Willis and his daughter Maybelle marry. Hack, being such a lowlife, reasons a marriage between Jeb and Maybelle will give him an opportunity to take part of the Willis farm where they can settle.

While Pa Hack is plotting his absurd scheme for getting Maybelle and Jeb married, young Annie McGovern has moved into the Willis house following the death of her mother. It seems the elder Willis promised to take care of Annie before her mother died.

The Hack patriarch is an idiot, along with being extremely lazy and lacking any sense of morality. This story is essentially just a series of bumbling attempts by Hack to get what he wants without doing much of anything or giving anything in return. Hack is such a degenerate, even his son Orville and his daughter Maybelle find his actions reprehensible.

In the end, I think Paul Savage's script lacks the bite and grit someone like John Meston, or even Kathleen Hite would bring to this kind of story. Pa Hack and his "brood" are more pitiable than evil. The Annie McGovern character, as played by the versatile veteran character actor Mariana Hill, is more or less wasted, as is James Hampton's Jeb Willis. (There may have been a more interesting story in the possible romance between Jeb and Annie.)

Most of the action in this episode takes place away from Dodge City, although there are a few scenes in Dodge near the beginning.

Unfortunately there isn't much to recommend about this episode. The story is simply not very strong, and the acting is just so-so for the most part. As was sometimes the case, there really isn't anything especially specific to Gunsmoke in this story. Matt Dillon is only involved because he coincidentally stops at the Willis farm on his way to Meade, Kansas to deliver some papers.

Look for a young Lynn Loring as Maybelle Hack. As a child, into her teen years, and on into young adulthood, Loring appeared in the CBS soap opera Search for Tomorrow. Despite her young age, she was already a television veteran when this episode was made. She would eventually become the president of a television studio in the late 1980s.

George Lindsey, who was best known as Goober Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show/Mayberry R.F.D., stands out in the limited role of Orville Hack. Lindsey was a talented actor, and it shows here. Lindsey appeared in a number of television westerns around this time, and he often played "heavies."

"Pa Hack's Brood" recycles some of the favorite themes of "Gunsmoke" writers of the early 1960s that were aired in the preceding two seasons: grown men cowed into submission by their fathers ("The Boys," "Harpe's Blood," and others) and shiftless folk who think the easy path to land and riches is to kidnap the unsuspecting prospect and force the person into marriage ("Root Down," "Phoebe Strunk," "Marry Me"). This episode combines the two plots with only so-so results. The final scene of the episode rings false (I was minded of the old line that the person would be likely to last as long as a cockroach in a hen house) and a significant element of the plot is left dangling. Still, I found the episode worthwhile because I was able to see George Lindsey, familiar to most watchers of old television as Goober in the "Andy Griffith Show," in a dramatic role. He's under-appreciated in such roles. To see him in a really chilling role, about as unlike Goober as one could imagine, catch him in the "Alfred Hitchcock Hour"'s "Bed of Roses."

Other reviewers did not like this episode very much. It wasn't the greatest but not that bad to me. Seeing "Goober" in a different role and the eye candy of Lynn Loring and Marianna Hill were a real treat too.

One of my favorite features of IMDB is the trivia and I had no idea this was the middle episode of 635. After all this is early in season nine, but they produced 39 shows a year in the first six seasons and fewer in the one hour years. As a Gunsmoke fan this is fascinating stuff. Given the show's huge success it still boggles the mind that it never filmed a finale particularly after the spectacular success of The Fugitive's last two shows.

This episode was fun due to Lynn Loring and Goober, the latter playing against his famous Andy Griffith Show persona. Loring, as a hillbilly, was eye candy, indeed.