"Wanted: Dead or Alive" One Mother Too Many (TV Episode 1960) Poster

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8/10
An odd Custody-Battle Show
ccthemovieman-126 September 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This one will tug at your heartstrings a little as a nasty grandma tries to take "ownership" (custody) of a young boy, away from his real mom. The mother-in-law had tried to run her son despite him being married to a loving women. When he was killed in war, the older woman chased down the daughter-in-law, doing everything she could to make life miserable, take away her means of support and get judicial permission to raise the boy herself. In other words, if she couldn't run her adult son's life, she was going to make sure she'd run her grandson's. The mom would prefer, thank you. to take care of her own boy.

In desperation, that mom writes Josh Randall and then asks him - as a business deal to keep the older woman off her back - to marry her! Whoa! Josh is having none of that but he say he'll try to help her. He's up against a tough foe, especially after the "grandma-ma" takes the kid, because she's got money and power. How is Josh going to help this poor mom out? Overall, this was an odd episode, with an ending that left a question or two including a not-to-credible ruling by a judge. Even some of the guest actors were a little strange-sounding......but all of that is okay. That's one thing I have come to appreciate about this series, which ran three years - the unpredictability. All the episodes are different, and you make get a comedy or a melodrama or some bizarre story mixed in with the normal western fare.

You always get a quality effort, though, from star Steve McQueen who made this 50-year-old television western one that people can still enjoy today.
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7/10
A mother's love
scamper6719 June 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This is a difficult episode to watch, the unfairness of the judge presiding in the custody case is horrible, taking a child away from his mother on a rich grandmother's say.

What really galled me was near the end when the judge left it up to a little boy to choose whom he should live with, and telling the mother that if he chose her she would be on sort of a "probation" period of one year, but if he chose the grandmother the case was closed forever, that whole scene made me want to grab that judge up by his shirt collar and slap him around a bit, the whole thing just made me sick. McQueen once again played his role very well as he sympathized with his old friend's widow and faced the judge on her behalf.
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