The WORST episodes of Gunsmoke
Every episode of Gunsmoke ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Gunsmoke!
Marshal Matt Dillon keeps the peace in the rough and tumble Dodge City.
#1 - Kitty's Love Affair
Season 19 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/22/1973
Kitty and Matt are off for St. Louis, until Matt is summoned back on business. Upset with him, Kitty sets off for herself meeting a gunslinger on the stage who ends up saving her life. He goes back to Dodge with her and proceeds to court her. Kitty has a hard decision. Leave Matt after 18 years of a relationship or stay with Stambridge.
#2 - Trail of Bloodshed
Season 19 - Episode 21 - Aired 3/1/1974
Buck Henry Woolf is on the trail of his uncle, who killed his father, stole their money, and wounded him. Festus is on the same mission and also to stop the young man from taking the law into his own hands.
#3 - The Good Samaritans
Season 14 - Episode 24 - Aired 3/10/1969
Matt is taking a signed confession paper to a Judge that will hang a man, the man has put a reward on the paper causing two bounty hunters to shoot Matt in an effort to get it. Meanwhile, Matt is taken in by a group of freed slaves heading West, and now being pursued by the hunters.
#4 - The Gun
Season 16 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/9/1970
After a young man kills a gunfighter he becomes the victim of publicity.
#5 - Tara
Season 17 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/17/1972
Newly falls in love with a woman who could put him in danger, once her past is known.
#6 - The Hiders
Season 20 - Episode 15 - Aired 1/13/1975
When a young teenager from a group of squatters decides he can do better than stealing, he changes his ways. But the leader of the squatters will try to manipulate the young man with the people that has treated him the best.
#7 - Jubilee
Season 18 - Episode 14 - Aired 12/18/1972
A man neglects his family in favor of raising his prize possession: a race horse
#8 - The Wreckers
Season 13 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/11/1967
With a well earned vacation disturbed by the arrest of a hardened criminal, Matt and Kitty head back to Dodge. The stage they are on is sabotaged and end up wrecking. Kitty is quick witted enough to switch identities between Matt and the prisoner before the outlaws get to them. Thinking Dillon is dying and Matt is really Monk Wiley, they go on planning to extort money from Dodge to get Dillon back alive.
#9 - O'Quillian
Season 14 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/28/1968
Leary O'Quillan kills a card cheat in self defense and is pursued to Dodge by the man's brother, Clay Tynan.
#10 - The Goldtakers
Season 12 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/24/1966
A group of outlaws murder soldiers of a gold transport, put on their uniforms, then commandeer the blacksmith's shop in Dodge to extract the gold from its alloy.
#11 - Mail Drop
Season 12 - Episode 19 - Aired 1/28/1967
A young boy comes to Dodge looking for his father. What he finds is that his father is a wanted outlaw on the run.
#12 - Honor Before Justice
Season 11 - Episode 24 - Aired 3/5/1966
The Osage Council has found Two Bears guilty of murder. His daughter rides into Dodge seeking Matt's help but he's out of town chasing horse thieves so Thad tries to help. He finds out that he and Matt are really riding the same trail.
#13 - Nitro! (1) (Tiger by the Tail)
Season 12 - Episode 28 - Aired 4/8/1967
A gang hires a jobless man to extract nitroglycerin from dynamite, so they can much more effectively blow open safes.
#14 - Women for Sale (1)
Season 19 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/10/1973
Matt becomes involved in investigating the disappearance of female settlers and travelers in the region. He links it to a band of renegade Native Americans, who plan to sell the women as sex slaves to a band of ruthless white mercenaries.
#15 - Island in the Desert (1)
Season 20 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/2/1974
Festus, in the desert hunting escaped killer Gard Dixon is wounded by the outlaw. He is found by Ben Snow, a half-crazy hermit who has been living in the desert with his gold for many years.
#16 - Bad Seed
Season 6 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/4/1961
Matt rescues teen-aged Trudy Trent from a life of isolated poverty with her incestuous and alcoholic father, but he subsequently learns that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" when he rejects her misguided romantic overtures toward him.
#17 - Shadler
Season 18 - Episode 17 - Aired 1/15/1973
Just before he's to be hung, stage robber Shadler busts out of jail, by slugging his last rites priest and donning the robes as a disguise. While burglarizing an uninhabited farm, the escapee helps Deputy U.S. Marshal Newly elude hostile lawmen quarantining a nearby outpost struck by a mysterious plague. Newly believes his pursuers are actually a ring of vultures waiting to loot the dying settlement. When Newly heads back to the besieged town, the fake padre insists on riding with him to minister to the dying citizens.
#18 - My Father, My Son
Season 11 - Episode 30 - Aired 4/23/1966
Fast gunman Jim Barrett kills a man in self defense. Now the man's father and brothers are gunning for him, in addition to a young man who wants Barrett dead for a different reason.
#19 - Old Faces
Season 6 - Episode 26 - Aired 3/18/1961
Hot-headed Tom's new wife used to be a river-boat girl, and when a gunman from her old life recognizes her, a battle between the two men is brewing.
#20 - The Bobsy Twins
Season 5 - Episode 36 - Aired 5/21/1960
Two brothers have decided that it is their mission to rid the West of Indians.
#21 - The Bullet (3)
Season 17 - Episode 14 - Aired 12/13/1971
Festus and Newly try to delay the robbers from leaving with the gold to give the conductor time to get the train moving towards Denver again.
#22 - The Boys
Season 7 - Episode 34 - Aired 5/26/1962
The market for snake oil is on the decline, so a peddler and his sons expand their con game with murder.
#23 - Outlaw's Woman
Season 11 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/11/1965
After a risky train robbery and with two posses on their trail, four men hurriedly ride to some fresh horses. Dillon wounds one of the gang carrying the stolen money and it turns out to be a young woman.
#24 - The Angry Land
Season 20 - Episode 18 - Aired 2/3/1975
After Matt finds a young girl on the prairie whose parents have been killed, he takes her to her only relative, an aunt that has troubles of her own and wants no part of her niece's life.
#25 - Bohannan
Season 18 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/25/1972
A faith-healer comes to Dodge. Doc is skeptical.