Gunsmoke: Early Episodes (30 min) or Color Episodes (1 hr)

[Doug.38PR]

For years growing up in the 80s and 90s I saw the hr long color episodes from the late 60s and early 70s on every station in syndication from UHF to TV Land.  They are good.  Good stories.  Worth watching.  But they are kind of slow, overdramatized, leftist political statments of the 60s and 70s, drawn out, Matt looks like a prune and can barely move and Kitty looks like a circus clown she has so much fake red hair and makeup.

THEN, I bought the first few seasons on DVD recently.  I had to ask: What in the world were the producers thinking when they went to 1 hr and went to color?
The early 30 minute episodes are A LOT better.  The stories are more realistic, grittier, Matt is a lot tougher and Kitty a lot prettier.   Matt even wears a realistic holster instead of the typical low "hollywood type belt and holster" that you see him using later and he actually wears a different set of clothes throughout the episode instead of the color version's usual hat, pink shirt and vest.   I particularly like the stroll he makes through the graveyard with the more realistic wooden headpieces (instead of stone) and the almost diary read narration relating to the story.     Chester is a better sidekick than the....almost cartoony Festus.


I've seen a few B&W hour long ones and they are better than the color ones but it's almost like when they went to 1 hour they tried to take 30 minute episode scripts and stretch them into hour long episodes.