Episode 331: The Cisco Kid - "Renegade Son" (November 14, 1950)
Cisco and Pancho save an innocent woman by committing several crimes
What I watched: Season 1, episode 12 of The Cisco Kid, a Western drama starring Duncan Renaldo as the eponymous Cisco and Leo Carillo as his sidekick Pancho. "Renegade Son" guest starred Pamela Blake, Pierre Watkins, Nelson Leigh, and Fred Kohler Jr, which is the exact same supporting cast as “Railroad Land Rush” three episodes ago. This episode was written by Betty Burbridge, and was directed by Derwin Abrahams. This episode has an air date of November 14, 1950, although as a syndicated series exactly when it aired would have varied by market, and it is currently available on Tubi.
What happened: Cisco and Pancho are hanging around in jail when they see a woman named Joyce (Blake) being put in the cell next to them, teary-eyed. She’s been convicted of murder, but Cisco thinks she’s too hot to be executed. As soon as the old guy sheriff (Watkin) lets the heroic duo go for whatever misdemeanour they committed, they shove him in the jail and set the woman free. A posse chases after them, but Cisco and Pancho lose them.
Joyce tells us her story: that her Uncle Jim died after she gave him medicine, and she was accused of giving him an overdose. She was the sole benefactor of his will, due to Jim disowning Jeff, the titular renegade son. Our heroes bring her back to the sheriff they just assaulted, and after a little bit of arguing they convince her that she’s innocent.
Cisco finds a journalist, and threatens him into printing the story he wants: that it was him who killed Uncle Jim. We quickly cut to our villains for the first time: Jeff Henry (Leigh), reading the paper and being confused. Cisco and Pancho even rob a stagecoach to help draw attention to their location on “the panhandle.” Does this make Cisco a Florida Man?
Our heroes lay down a trail of blood for Jeff to follow. The outlaws (the bad outlaws, not the good ones) walk right into the trap, but still end up holding Cisco and Pancho at gunpoint. Our heroes get face to face with Jeff, and claim that Joyce paid them to sign a confession. Jeff offers to pay them double to retract the confession. Cisco says that if they’re killed Joyce will never be seen again, and Henry lets them go, but sends his goons to follow them.
Jeff goes to the jail and finds Joyce in a cell. (This family loves J names.) He basically confesses to the crime, and of course the sheriff was listening. He wants to hang her by her scarf and make it look like a suicide, but Cisco and Pancho intervene. Once Jeff is safely in jail, they ride away, fleeing the amorous attentions of Joyce.
What I thought: As I snarkily noted in the “next on” segment, this is another episode of The Cisco Kid where our heroes must defend an innocent person convicted of murder. (To be fair, I can’t remember if this is a plot this particular show has run a lot or just one that has run a lot across the three Western shows I watch weekly.) The main difference this time is that the accused is a woman, who Cisco has some nominal flirtation with, but this isn’t really that much of a difference, as Joyce is mostly off-screen after the first ten minutes. Even the cast is a retread of earlier episodes.
If I had to pinpoint something that separates The Cisco Kid from The Lone Ranger and The Gene Autry Show (and this project is all about comparisons based on a limited amount of data), it would be that this series allows its protagonists to be antiheroes a bit more. Gene and the Ranger have broken out of jail plenty of times, but I don’t think they’d ever do a real stage coach robbery in the way that Cisco does here. Cisco is also very willing to break the law purely on the hunch that Joyce is innocent, although that goes back to my long-standing point about these heroes’ real superpower being the ability to detect good and evil.
The willingness to make the protagonist a bit crazy and dangerous is part of what makes this episode fun, and probably one of the better Cisco Kid episodes we’ve seen. However, the plotting does get somewhat rushed and very convenient at the end, with Jeff rushing headlong into danger and being sure to confess his crime before trying to kill Cisco. I guess that there’s really nothing much new under the sun.
Coming up next: It’s finally time for “The Bohemian Girl.”