The Guns of Will Sonnett: Season 02 (1968)

Most of the 23 episodes in Season Two of the peripatetic western series The Guns of Will Sonnett adhere to the formula established in Season One, with septuagenarian ex-Cavalry scout Will Sonnett (Walter Brennan) travelling throughout the west with his teenaged grandson Jeff (Dack Rambo, in search of Will's son and Jeff's father Jim Sonnett (Jason Evers), a notorious gunman. This season, Jim makes several sizeable guest appearances, beginning with the opening episode "Reunion" and continuing through the two-part "Town of Terror", wherein the Sonnetts are again reunited, smack in the middle of a deadly range war. Working in concert, the three Sonnetts settle the hash of a would-be hero coasting on a false reputation in the penultimate episode "The Man Who Killed James Sonnett". And finally, Will and Jeff convince James to forsake his gunslinging ways and join them as peacekeepers in the small town of Samson in "Three Stand Together". This last-named episode had been intended as the opener for the series' third season, but ABC decided to pull the plug on the show, and thus the episode aired as the series finale. Among the many guest stars during Season Two are future "Grandma Walton" Ellen Corby in the episode "Pariah", recent Oscar winner (for Cool Hand Luke) Strother Martin in "Joby", and Jesse Pearson, the actor who'd played Conrad Birdie in the 1963 movie version of Bye Bye Birdie, in "Join the Army." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi