Episode 13 of SHANE opens with a beautiful woman walking into Grafton’s General Store while Joey (Christopher Shea) is there looking at the candy jars. Since Joey doesn’t have a penny, she offers him one, which he immediately converts to 8 pieces of peppermint. She asks Joey his name, and when he replies “Joey Starett,” she asks back, “Is your grandpa, Tom Starett?” When Joey answers in the affirmative, this classy lady takes on the look of someone who has found what she’s been looking for. She takes a room at Grafton’s and tells Sam that someone will be joining her soon and that she’ll need a second room for when he arrives.

Back at the ranch that evening, Joey is telling Shane (David Carradine) and his grandpa Tom (Tom Tully) about the woman at Grafton’s. Tom immediately gets a troubled look about him when Joey tells him that her name is Lydia Montgomery (Joanne Linville).  Coincidentally, Shane knows Lydia Montgomery because he had worked for her husband Dave awhile back in Springfield, IL, which is where Tom had lived before moving out west to Wyoming to be with his son Joe & daughter-in-law Marian (Jill Ireland). Shane asks Tom how he knew Dave Montgomery, and Tom surprisingly reveals, “I had him hanged.” It turns out that Tom had been a judge in his prior life. Convinced of her husband’s innocence and blaming “Judge Tom Starett” for his death, Lydia and her hired gun Lee (Bill Fletcher) have come to Cross Roads to kill him on the 5th anniversary of the hanging. Even Shane may not be enough to stop them. 

After mostly playing the kind old grandpa up to this point in the series, Tom Tully takes center stage in episode 13. It’s actually quite surprising because it reveals things about Tom’s past that had not even been hinted at in prior episodes. Not only do we learn that Tom was a judge, but we also learn that he was a terrible drunk who escaped out west to be with his son and daughter-in-law and get away from the guilt associated with decisions he made from the bench. His entire countenance changes from the man we’ve come to know the moment he hears the name Lydia Montgomery, and we watch him go through several stages that are quite predictable for a man living with guilt. First, we see him get extremely defensive and start lashing out at his family as he tries to explain why he sentenced Dave Montgomery to be hanged. This is clearly a man who doesn’t feel good about the decision. Next, we see him go back to the bar to get drunk, something he hasn’t done in many years, in order to numb his pain and help him forget, if even for just a little while. We can see that he almost feels that he deserves whatever he gets from Mrs. Montgomery, and her gunman. And finally, when he’s confronted by Mrs. Montgomery again at the end, he’s arrived at the point where he can plainly state the truth of what happened, admit his own shortcomings in the situation and accept whatever fate comes his way. I won’t reveal the entire circumstances of the case that brought all of this about, but I will say that it definitely points out the shortcomings of the American justice system where justice and the law don’t always coincide. Tully does a good job of presenting a much more complex man underneath the hardworking and kind grandpa character we’ve been presented with thus far. Tom is like the rest of us, we’ve all got our different stories and some of them aren’t so pretty when you scratch beneath the surface. 

Guest star Joanne Linville is very good as Lydia Montgomery, the grieving widow who, in the years after her husband’s death sentence, has elevated him from being a mere mortal to a place of sainthood. Through her relationship with the gunman Lee Maddox, a man who clearly loves her, we learn that she has never come to terms with the reality of his life or death, and she certainly has never accepted that he’s really gone. Her obsession with taking revenge on one man, Tom Starett, has basically stopped her life in its tracks and she needs to deal with her emotions even more than Tom does. The rest of the cast doesn’t have that much to do in the episode, although there are a few good moments for them. Shane is mostly there to provide Tom some physical protection, while also questioning his decision on that fateful day from five years earlier. His interactions with gunman Lee Maddox are pretty good as they had worked together in the past and respect each other. They don’t want to have to go against each other, but they will if it comes down to it. Jill Ireland has a good scene as Marian where she confronts Lydia Montgomery about her plans to kill Tom. It’s a tense scene and the ladies go at it back and forth nicely. They don’t resolve anything, but it’s another effective way to beat home the moral dilemma the episode presents. 

Prior to watching Episode 13, the last thing I was expecting was an installment of the series devoted entirely to Tom Starett, and I probably wouldn’t have really wanted one. With that said, I enjoyed it for what it was and I’m glad to be able to see Tom as a more complex man. This didn’t really leave any time for longing looks between Shane and Marian, but we did get a brief look of love at the very end, and I’ll take it.