Switching from black and white to color for its second and final season, the NBC western
Branded offers 32 more half-hour opportunities for disgraced ex-Cavalry officer Jason McCord (
Chuck Connors to prove that he did not run away like a cowardly rat from the infamous Battle of Bitter Creek, of which he'd been the sole survivor. The season opener, "
Judge Not", offers McCord the latest in a long line of moral dilemmas, with the life of one of the officers who'd presided at his court martial in Jason's hands. Subsequent episodes worth noting include "Now Join the Human Race", featuring
Burt Reynolds as a reservation-jumping Indian whom McCord must persuade to surrender lest a huge battle between the runaway's tribe and the Cavalry ensue; "I Killed Jason McCord", with
Larry Pennell as a blowhard who has built up a hero's reputation by claiming that he has shot down that yellow-bellied deserter McCord; and "Yellow for Courage", wherein McCord volunteers as a guinea pig for an experimental anti-diptheria serum developed by a female doctor (
Patricia Medina) who, like our hero, is a social outcast. Evidently to boost the series' ratings, the producers contrive to have McCord cross paths with a number of 19th century celebrities during Season Two, blithely ignoring historical accuracy and other such frivolities. "Seward's Folly" features {Ian Wolfe as a man who purchased Alaska for the United States in a story about McCord's struggle to prevent his maps of the new Alaskan territory from falling into the wrong hands. In "The Greatest Coward on Earth",
Pat O'Brien plays showman P.T. Barnum, who hires McCord to cash in on his ruined reputation as a circus attraction (and in case you're wondering, Barnum's partner Bailey is played by no less than
Dick Clark!).
Burgess Meredith appears as fabled journalist Horace Greeley, who after heeding his own advice to "go west" must rely upon McCord to keep him alive in "Headed for Doomsday". And in "This Stage of Fools", McCord accepts a job as bodyguard for a man who had been "branded" by default: actor Edwin Booth (played by
Martin Landau), the brother of Presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Several of this season's episodes are multi-parters, beginning with the two-part "Fill No Glass for Me", a flashback to days following McCord's court-martial and his rescue of an inexperience Cavalry officer, played by future Mission: Impossible regular
Greg Morris. In another two-parter, "
The Assassin", McCord operates undercover at the behest of President Grant to prevent a political assassination. And in the lavish three-part yarn "
Call to Glory", a subsequent undercover mission nearly places McCord smack in the middle of a certain famous dust-up at the Little Big Horn involving General George Armstrong Custer (
Robert Lansing) and Chief Crazy Horse (
Michael Pate). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide