Peter Whitney, who specialized in being a despicable father in several episodes of various television shows of the 1950s, returns to abuse his newest TV kids and his wife.
In this story Whitney does a great job of beating on his kids and his wife in a very well choreographed and realistic manner. It was creepy and disturbing to watch him yelling at his family, shoving them around, and slapping them.
His two step-children, Heller (what a weird name for a girl) and David want revenge and relief from the beatings. They make a plan to steal a gun from Cora's store, and kill their step-dad.
The story itself spends an uncomfortable amount of time on Whitney verbally abusing his family. He also gets abusive to the townfolks.
Considering all the times that Lucas has shot people to death for any number of reasons, the first time I saw this episode I was surprised Lucas had not taken a page out of the Bible to justify bringing the hammer down on Whitney.
The children are played by Don Grady, who later was one of Fred MacMurray's children on "My Three Sons." What a great upgrade from Peter Whitney! Heller is played by Gigi Perrou, who played the daughter of Philip Carey (Dr. Simon Battle - also an upgrade over Peter Whitney) in the next season (episode 33, Death Trap).
Those kids really deserved Justice in this episode. Lucas tells them that by humiliating Whitney, he has been punished, but I disagree. I never liked that the wife and kids stayed in the same home, and nothing really changed.