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!

In this episode, Casey goes after a gun dealer.

Episode 1.30 “The Gentle Gun-Man”

(Dir by Michael Gordon, originally aired on May 5th, 1958)

After a man is shot dead while committing a liquor store robbery, Casey goes undercover as his widow.  The police don’t just want the man’s accomplice.  They want to know where the man got his specially-modified gun.  The accomplice turns out to be a rather gentle deli owner named “Knish” Levin (Ludwig Donath).  And the gun dealer turns out to be Mr. Johnson (James O”Rear), the same gun dealer who sold Casey her first gun.  (This episode implies that members of the police force have to buy their own guns, which sounds a bit odd.)  Needless to say, when Casey convinces Knish to introduce her to his dealer, Johnson immediately recognizes her.

This episode had a lot of New York location footage.  The scene where Knish leads Casey to Johnson took us from Wallstreet to the waterfront.  Indeed, the locations shots were the best thing about this episode.  The acting in this episode was, by Decoy standards, subpar, with even the usually reliable Beverly Garland struggling to sell her lines.  Unfortunately, this episode’s plot required Casey to make a lot of foolish mistakes, like going to see the gun dealer without proper backup.  I liked the fact that Knish wasn’t portrayed as being a typical thug but otherwise, this episode just didn’t work.