This story poses a strange mishmash of an ethical dilemma, which is seemingly settled to everyone's satisfaction when Doc shoots the would-be avenger (Ramon Bieri) in the back with a shotgun. I've seen Doc be gentler with guest star Steve Forrest playing psychopaths who enjoyed shooting anyone or anything that talked, walked or crawled. The avenger had been twisted by having "everything he lived for taken away" on the betrayal by a wife-beating poor-excuse-for-a-human-being (William Windom) and simply wants to have it out with him man to man, western style. When the snivelling cpward finally agrees to it the avenger gets the whole town to a man against him trying to shoot him down in what was supposed to be a one-on-one gunfight. William's wife Katherine Helmond somehow construes the relationship with her husband to be "sacred" unlike a friendship between men.
Review of The Judgment
