The BEST episodes of Gunsmoke season 3
Every episode of Gunsmoke season 3, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Gunsmoke season 3!
Marshal Matt Dillon keeps the peace in the rough and tumble Dodge City.
#1 - Crack-Up
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/14/1957
Gunman Nate Springer arrives in Dodge with the obvious intention of committing murder, but his nervousness and unpredictability make Matt determined to find out who hired him and why he seems so different from his steel-nerved reputation.
#2 - Amy's Good Deed
Season 3 - Episode 31 - Aired 4/12/1958
Amy Slater gets to Dodge and tells Matt she came to die. He suggests seeing Doc Adams, she says she's not sick but that Matt could help. When asked how, she says "you're going to kill me." Learning the truth, he decides how to handle it.
#3 - Never Pester Chester
Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/16/1957
Matt sets out with a vengeance to capture two trouble-making Texas cowhands who dragged Chester and left him near death.
#4 - The Big Con
Season 3 - Episode 34 - Aired 5/3/1958
Mr Shaneways wants Mr Papp at the bank to loan him $20,000 for a poker bet. Doc gets kidnapped.
#5 - Laughing Gas
Season 3 - Episode 29 - Aired 3/29/1958
When town bully Cloud Marsh experiences public humiliation during a laughing gas show, he and his surly brothers assault proprietor Earle Stafford and attempt to molest his kind-hearted wife.
#6 - Cows and Cribs
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/7/1957
An impoverished but hardworking woman's plans to adopt an orphan baby are jeopardized when Matt discovers that her improvident husband is involved in cattle rustling.
#7 - Jesse
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/19/1957
Young and likable Jesse Pruett teams up with an unlikely "partner" in the person of Bill Stapp, a murderous former Quantrill raider. Stapp has promised to lead Jesse to the man who killed his father so he can avenge his death, but the young man is tragically unaware of Stapp's true intentions
#8 - Gun for Chester
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/21/1957
Chester claims the new stranger in town is really there to kill him and Matt investigates, but remains skeptical even after Chester is shot in the arm by an unseen person.
#9 - Texas Cowboys
Season 3 - Episode 30 - Aired 4/5/1958
A headstrong Texas trail boss is determined to prevent Matt from learning which one of his men was responsible for murdering another by shooting him in the back.
#10 - Sunday Supplement
Season 3 - Episode 22 - Aired 2/8/1958
"There's no law west of Dodge." Two writers in from New York want to see if that's true. When a Pawnee Indian uprising seems to be brewing, they may have found their story.
#11 - Romeo
Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/9/1957
A powerful landowner threatens to wipe out Dodge when his daughter falls in love with the son of his archenemy. Matt has to find a way to stop it.
#12 - Kitty Lost
Season 3 - Episode 15 - Aired 12/21/1957
Kitty takes a buggy ride with a dandified stranger. When he makes a pass, her spirited rejection of it results in her being left alone on the prairie.
#13 - Twelfth Night
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 12/28/1957
A feud begun between two families when they lived in the Ozarks continues with fresh bloodshed, and Matt gets caught in the middle.
#14 - Bottleman
Season 3 - Episode 28 - Aired 3/22/1958
There's a new Faro dealer at the Long Branch. When the town drunk, the meekest man in town, tries to attack him, the dealer swears he'll kill him if he ever tries that again. But he also swears he "never seen him before in his life."
#15 - Buffalo Man
Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/11/1958
Doc finds a half-dead man on the side of the road and tells Matt. Matt and Chester ride out to a buffalo hunter's camp but before they get far, the occupants show up not treating them much better than the man the doc found.
#16 - Joke's on Us
Season 3 - Episode 27 - Aired 3/15/1958
A horse thief is headed for a rope. At least that's how his friends see it. They find out too late they may have the wrong man. The joke may be on all of them now as someone is killing them one by one.
#17 - Carmen
Season 3 - Episode 37 - Aired 5/24/1958
When an Army payroll is stolen and two soldiers are murdered, the commanding officer of Fort Dodge threatens to put Dodge City under martial law unless Matt can capture the perpetrators within 48 hours.
#18 - Ma Tennis
Season 3 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/1/1958
A strong-willed, shotgun-wielding matriarch helps her son escape from Matt's custody, but the Marshal is equally determined to see the young man tried and sentenced for killing an unarmed man.
#19 - Potato Road
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/12/1957
An addled and desperate prairie family lures Matt and Chester out of town as a preliminary part of their plan for attempting a violent robbery of the Dodge City bank.
#20 - Mavis McCloud
Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/26/1957
On her way to Dodge to marry, Mavis McCloud sends a telegram to the Marshal of Dodge City. Chester and Doc want to know "Is she coming here to marry Matt" or is something else going on?
#21 - Blood Money
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/28/1957
When Harry Speener learns that the man who saved his life is a wanted fugitive, he kills the man for the reward, then finds out that the people of Dodge don't like those who kill for money.
#22 - Fingered
Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/23/1957
Losing his first wife when she disappeared, Jim Cobbett tries marriage again. All seemed fine until she turned up missing too. Did he have something to do with her absence as some think he did with his first?
#23 - Claustrophobia
Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 1/25/1958
Matt and Chester find a man shot in back in his lonely cabin and the immediate suspects are two men who have been trying to force him to sell his land.
#24 - Joe Phy
Season 3 - Episode 17 - Aired 1/4/1958
Matt and Chester travel to the small town of Elkader to arrest would-be killer Kerry Post, but find they must first expose a bogus U.S. Marshal in order to lure him into town.
#25 - Dirt
Season 3 - Episode 25 - Aired 3/1/1958
The only man who didn't treat Beulah like dirt is marrying another woman, whose brother doesn't want him in the family. When the groom is shot leaving the church, everyone suspects the new brother-in-law.