User Reviews

Ye of little faith need not watch this episode. Just kidding of course. The story relates how a young garage mechanic gets taken in by a faith healing preacher after Otis Jones (Sidney Blackmer) makes Aaron Menefee's (Andrew Prine) stomach ulcers go away. So indebted is Aaron to the older gentleman that he ups and quits his job in order to become a chauffeur for the preacher, his daughter (Maggie Pierce), and loyal associate, brother Fish (Olan Soule). As lovely as the daughter is, it's only a matter of time before she and Aaron become attracted to each other, although it's Emily who tries to initiate a romance, which her father immediately objects to. At this point in the story, it felt like there would be some kind of reckoning between Aaron and Jones, but instead, the young man accepted the father's wishes and backed away from the idea of marriage. Upon returning to Aaron's hometown, he pays a call to his old doctor friend (Robert Armstrong), right in the middle of a hostage scene in which the doctor finds himself threatened for stating there's no cure for the gangster seeking treatment for his paralyzed legs. Offering the services of Healer Jones, Aaron runs off to get him with a thousand dollar incentive for the preacher to come right away. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out that the so called healer was a phony as the door closes on the story, but if in doubt, Hitchcock in his usual inimitable manner spills the beans on the outcome of the episode. To which I would say something the preacher never did - Amen.

Gas station mechanic Aaron Menefee has an ulcer attack just as he's helping some people with car trouble who pulled into his station. The car has a chauffeur (played by Olan Soule, the choir director in Mayberry and a frequent lab technician on Dragnet) an older man and his young adult daughter, Emily. The man is known as Healer Jones and he travels about the country hosting meetings where he cures people's troubles.

Now the script stayed away from saying the words "God," or "The Lord" but they talked about "having faith" a lot. We didn't see anything to actually suggest Jones was a fraud. Aaron's ulcers never came back and we never got the hint that anyone else was a shill for the "Healer" at all. As far as we could tell, he was committed to helping people and perhaps through the power of prayer and/or positive thinking, did help them.

After several months, we saw that no relationship had developed between Aaron and Emily, although there was an attraction, Aaron took a lot of cold baths because he wanted to avoid anything sinful. Then one day when alone, Emily got more direct with Aaron, showing she had definitely fallen for him. Suddenly, she brought up the subject that there wouldn't be any sin involved if they were to get married.

Aaron insists on getting approval from her father. But he denied it, feeling there would be a better man to come along and take over his family business once he passed away-years from now. Aaron and Emily went back to just being friends-no further romantic scenes or talk, and months later, their tour brought them back to Aaron's hometown.

***ENDING SPOILER ALERT*** Aaron went to visit his old friend, a doctor, but was rejected when Aaron showed up. He kept talking through the door and the doctor reluctantly admitted him. The doc had two visitors, a pair of criminals, one now paralyzed from a police bullet. The doctor said nothing anybody could do would get the man to walk again.

But Aaron believed in Healer Jones and told the man he would bring him there. The man whipped out $1000 and promised more if the man could heal him. Aaron fetched Jones, who went in alone to try to help...

...And that's where the story ends. Hitchcock tells us that the criminal was caught but only after he disposed of Healer Jones. Nothing was said about any other matter.

I was greatly disappointed in the ending. I even paused my DVR before the doctor arrived to help the gangster. I said, "Well, I expect Jones won't be able to get him to walk and will get killed. But there HAS to be some sort of twist, like just when Aaron says "Emily, we can get married now," she reveals that she's changed her mind about him-or vice versa. It wouldn't seem like Hitchcock to learn that they did marry and Aaron had years of success doing just what his father-in-law had done.

But the abrupt ending just sort of leaves the whole show pointless. None of the major players was crooked or mean or anything. Jones sincerely believed Aaron was not the man for his daughter, and they never suggested doing anything evil. This would have been a 7 with a good ending. Instead, I drop it to a 4.