festus is my favorite character on the show. This episode gives Ken Curtis a great chance to show just how great a character Festus is and what a great character actor Curtis is. Curtis is so related to his character in the minds of the general public it is easy to think of actor and character as one and the same. Outside of the two episodes of the show Russell Wiggins guested in I am not familiar with his work. Here, his character Billy, is not only my favorite of all visitors to Dodge, I think Wiggins turns in not only my favorite performance, but also the most complex and very best of all guests on the show. I wish he had been made a regular on the show. He should have been nominated for an emmy award. I think Wiggins projects the innocence of Sam Bottoms from the motion picture "The Last Picture Show", as well as the isolation of Timothy Bottoms from the same film. Wiggins as Billy turns in one of my all-time favorite performances. If you have seen Gunsmoke episode "A Town in Chains", you have seen another fine performance from actor Wiggins. In that episode he proves he was as good an actor as another of my favorites, Richard Thomas. His two guest appearances on this show are nothing alike proving that even if he did not go on to superstardom, Russell Wiggins was a sensitive, creative, complex, gifted and talented actor. Wiggins is just as great at his projection of being innocent as he is at portraying being deadly. The entire episode is well written, directed, timed and paced. I find something great in it that I have not noticed before every time I view it.
Review of The Deadly Innocent
