Awesome / Gunsmoke

• Chester is the closest thing to a Butt-Monkey in the radio series, known mainly for his excessive eating, loose lips and general incompetence, but on two instances, Chester has proved that when he absolutely has to, he can answer the call. First in the episode "Doc Judge", Chester is tasked with protecting Doc from a vindictive man who had mistaken Doc for the Judge who sentenced him to prison. Another example is in "Ex-Urbanites", Doc is shot by a Wolfer in the middle of nowhere and Chester has to not only doctor the doctor, but feed him, as well as protect him from his persistent assailants, all without Matt. He actually pulls this off with a strong air of badass around him, although he does cheat a little.
• Episode one definitely sets the precedent for the rest of the series. The fact that it starts off with the John Wayne giving it an introduction, where he says that he thinks Gunsmoke is a great show, is very high praise coming from him. And as we know, Wayne was notoriously hard to please. (Wayne may have been doing this as a favor to James Arness, who had co-starred with him in multiple films and was a personal friend.)
• Any episode in which Chester got to be the badass- he was not only a good shot but could be quite lethal in a fist fight if necessary. A fine example was the episode "Quint's Trail" in which Chester manages to track down a con artist, ropes him and drags him to the ground, and when the guy tries to fight back, Chester takes a shot as a warning NOT TO TRY THAT AGAIN!. He not only gets the money back but also hauls the man to jail, while Matt failed to track the man down at all.
  • In "Marshal Proudfoot", Chester's uncle comes to town, believing that Chester is the Marshal thanks to Chester exaggerating in his letters home. Chester spends the whole episode hiding in his uncle's room in the Dodge House, but when two criminals try to rob it, Chester ends up shooting one of them and wrestling the other one to the ground, restraining him very effectively. Matt even says if Chester keeps this up, he'll have to give him a raise.
• One episode featured a female Haggen- Festus' cousin- visiting Dodge. She's raped by an outlaw and Festus hunts him down and kills him without hesitation. Matt has to arrest Festus but implies that the trial jury will let him go. Obviously, they did.

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