Time travel in "Gunsmoke"

[Kaleva]

In the very early episodes, one can see dates on tombstones from the early 1880's. Years later, Kitty makes a remark that the Civil War had ended 10 years ago making that year 1875. In an episode aired shortly before the show was cancelled, Festus is talking about the end of the cattle drives which would have been around 1886-1890 so time jumped forward again.

For much of the show, the good folks of Dodge City were stuck in some kind of time warp where it took 20 years to get out of the 1870's decade.

[lastlib]

1. Not only that--

If you watch the opening title scene in slow-motion and freeze the picture right where Matt Dillon's gun fires--you can see that it hasn't cleared the holster yet! Matt Dillon shot himself in the foot every week for twenty years!!

(So why did Festus walk with a limp???)

[Kaleva]

2. LOL! Maybe the bad guy laughed himself to death?

[Kaleva]

3. Went to youtube to find opening scene of Gunsmoke...

and saw this alternative scene. Laughed my ass off!

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

4. It was Chester that limped

aka Dennis Weaver

[CBGLuthier]

5. Bonanza did a little bit better

They usually followed the 100 year ago rule. Some episodes are very clearly pre civil war and some of them are very clearly post. There are none that seem to actually take place during the war but it was Nevada after all so hard to tell.

There is an excellent post war episode with Dean Stockwell as a drunkard winner of the Congressional medal of honor. Good episode with a nice twist at the end.

[Kaleva]

6. Matt Dillon was much more of a bad ass in the early episodes.

Watched some youtube episodes of Gunsmoke last night and in one, Matt executed a guy(played by Charles Bronson) who he couldn't legally arrest for murder because Bronson's character claimed it was self defense.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. I remember one where Dillon just decided to beat the crap out of some bad guy.

[jobycom]

7. Maybe so much happened in the 1870s it took 20 years to tell you about all of it. nt

[Gidney N Cloyd]

8. In Bonanza each week they always traveled back to the start of the clean laundry cycle.

[Denninmi]

10. "Continuity Errors" are common in tv shows and movies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_(fiction)

[Art_from_Ark]

11. Then there was this episode of The Big Valley

which is supposed to take place in the 1870s. Jarred, who appears to be in his mid- to late-30s, meets up with an old college pal. While in college (which would presumably have been late 1850s or early 1860s), they cut a silver dollar into two jigsaw pieces, and agreed that they would fit the two pieces together when they met again. The only problem was, they had two pieces of a Morgan dollar, which was first struck in 1878. No wonder they didn't show the date of the coin.