Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958.  The show can be viewed on Tubi!

This week, Casey deals with two brothers who may or may not be guilty of a crime.

Episode 1.22 “Reasonable Doubts”

(Dir by Teddy Sills, originally aired on March 10th, 1958)

An office is robbed and the manager is shot.  As Casey Jones tells us in her narration, the difference between this robbery and countless others is that someone got a good look at the robber.  Lawrence Osler (Joe Warren) is arrested for the crime.  However, Lawrence’s sister, Julia (Anna Minot), is convinced that Lawrence is innocent and she thinks that Lawrence’s younger brother, John (Thomas A. Carlin), can prove it.  Casey agrees to go undercover as a friend of Julia’s who has agreed to pay Lawrence’s bail.  Her assignment is to get John to talk.  Julia thinks that Casey is going to exonerate both the brothers but, in reality, Casey is trying to put John in jail with Lawrence.

“It wasn’t very nice,” Casey ruefully tells us.  But, Casey goes on to note, neither is robbing an office and putting a man in the hospital.

Casey discovers that Lawrence is innocent.  It was John and his shady buddy Oscar (Edward Walsh) who robbed the place.  John was willing to let Lawrence take the fall because he thought Lawrence would be acquitted in court.  But now, Oscar is trying to frame Lawrence.  Will John take responsibility for his own actions?

This episode probably sounds more interesting than it is.  With only a 30 minute running time, there’s not much room to generate any sort of suspense as to which brother is guilty.  Lawrence is obviously innocent from the start and John is obviously guilty.  It doesn’t take Casey long to figure this out but she can’t really do anything about it until Oscar shows up unexpectedly and casually reveals that truth about what happened.  This is one of those episodes where the viewer feels like Casey just got lucky.  As well, most of the action too place indoors so there weren’t any of the 1950s New York location shots that so often added life to this series.

That said, Beverly Garland was great as always.  Her regret over manipulating Julia added an extra dimension to the story.  As Casey said, “It wasn’t nice.”  In the end, Julia saves one brother but loses another.