Carl Reindel, who had all the charm of a bag of rocks, returns as Cale. Apparently Gunsmoke was looking for another recurring character, and Cale looks like he was going to be the character that later became Quint Asper when Burt Reynolds joined the show.
Unfortunately for Carl Reindel, his "rebel without a cause" persona came along in 1962, and the 1950s were over. In all of the roles that I have seen Carl Reindel play, he always had a chip on his shoulder, and a bad attitude. I wonder if that is the only type of character he learned to play in acting school? Carl comes across as arrogant and very anti-social in both episodes where he played Cale.
Doc Adams, Dillon, and Miss Kitty try really hard to build up Cale as the really cool and interesting new guy in town, so it is obvious that the producers had plans for Cale. Fortunately for Gunsmoke, they gave up after this second appearance where Cale is just the rudest jerk on the prairie again.
Ford Rainey plays Tate, a guy whose son died, and he left his son's horse at the livery stable because he did not want the horse to remind him of his dead son. At a dollar a day, keeping a horse at the livery stable for a couple of months was a lot of money in The Old West economy. So of course, the day Rainey decides he wants to pick up his horse, Cale is riding it out on the prairie. Rainey literally goes nuts and runs to see the Marshal and accuse Cale of stealing his horse. Talk about over-reacting?
Rainey usually played a jerk character, and was often in the role of informant, accuser, victim, or a guy trying to take advantage of someone else. He was usually a shady character who could flip into a total weasel at the drop of a hat. A perfect pal for Cale, as we will see.
Cale, like Chester, is dysfunctional in addition to having no social skills. So Cale falls off his horse and hurts his back, and gets a big attitude about it when Marshal Dillon finds him. Dillon loses his horse too, and getting Cale back to Dodge becomes a gigantic mission.
At some point Dillon is looking for help, and he finds Virginia Gregg, whose entire family just died from cholera. Virginia Gregg was never great at inspiring compassion or sympathy, . She usually played cold-hearted characters. However, Dillon does not show her an ounce of compassion, and just walks away. A lot of the time when Dillon, Chester, or Doc Adams deal with the prairie folks, they are incredibly rude to them. The only character that always went out of her way to be nice to everyone was Miss Kitty.
Finally, Dillon, Doc Adams, and Cale all get to the home of Ford Rainey, whose main concern is that his horse came to the farm on its own. Rainey does not want to tend to Cale, who he thinks stole his horse, but Doc Adams yells at him and takes over the guy's house.
After several days of nursing the kid back to health, Rainey breaks down and tells Cale how his son had just died, and he was afraid to get too close to anyone, but offers Cale a job on the farm. Carl Reindel, in what became his only acting style, responds as rudely and nasty as possible. He tells Rainey that Cale is not his son, to get over it, and that he just wants a job, and could care less about Rainey and his dead son. What a great guy Cale is. No wonder that his character never returned to Gunsmoke.
Carl Reindel had no control over the script he was given, except in the manner he delivered the lines, and how he interpreted his character. Some of the guest actors on Gunsmoke could make lemonade out of lemons, but Carl Reindel was not one of them.
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