Third Son

Originally Aired: April 19, 1959 Gunsmoke #367, "Third Son," presents a tense struggle between a father's protective grip and a young man's desperate need for independence. When Matt Dillon locks up Rob Crandall for being drunk in the streets of Dodge, the young man's father James Josiah Crandall arrives at the jail with a grim mission. Having lost his two older sons to violence, one in the war and one in a barroom fight, James brought Rob west as a boy and is determined to keep him away from trouble by any means necessary. He promises Marshal Dillon that Rob won't be coming back to town. But Rob Crandall isn't content to live under his father's watchful eye forever. Despite his father's orders to stay away from Dodge, Rob returns to town and encounters two men who want him to join them in some kind of criminal venture. They mock him for being a "papa's boy" and taunt him about abandoning him when he got arrested before, but Rob refuses their invitation. When he returns home, his father is waiting, and Rob must confront the reality that he's a grown man still being treated like a child, torn between obedience and the need to make his own choices.