This is a sharp and hilarious episode that has a number of unexpected plot twists and great acting. There's a double plot here. The first plot involves Maverick winning at poker against nasty gambler Tony Cadiz. Cadiz has Maverick beat up and tossed in a river, and steals his money back. We wait in anticipation for Maverick to get his revenge. The second plot involves Maverick meeting up with an old friend, a conman named Dandy Jim Buckley. Buckley cons Maverick into helping him retrieve some buried stolen money.
One of the delights of Maverick is seeing actors noted for other roles playing quite different characters. Here Efrem Zimbalist Jr. known as the strait laced detective in "77 Sunset Strip" and even straighter laced FBi Agent in "The F.B.I." plays the conman Dandy Jim Buckley. He is surprisingly good at it, straddling the borderline between somewhat charming and miserably deceitful. The good thing here is that Bret Maverick is onto him and can easily frustrate his designs. Maverick helps him to recover $40,000 in stolen money, but then forces him to turn it in for an honest $4,000 reward.
Also making the episode enjoyable is sexy comedian Joan Shawlee. Shawlee is best remembered as the orchestra leader Sweet Sue in "Some Like it Hot," but she was all over television in the 1950's and 1960's, notably a number of times on "the Abbott and Costello Show," "the Betty Hutton Show" and "the Dick Van Dyke Show." Joan was one of the few women who could act sexy and funny at the same time. Here she plays "Madame Pompey" who seems to really be a brothel madame, although the tame 1950's television moral code has to make her just the leader of a group of showgirls. What is nice about her character is that she doesn't develop the expected love attachment with Maverick, but falls for another minor character, a gentle nature-loving muscle man. Shawlee brightens every scene that she is in, which was true of just about any appearance she made on television.
This may be the funniest of the early episodes. Don't miss it.