I have *never* underestimated Brian Keith's acting talents! He has always been one of my favorite actors!
Several of the commenters have mentioned the small amount of the extortion/blackmail and how Brian Keith played a low-paid forest ranger. That is true, but don't you think that the extortionists/blackmailers would keep coming back for more? They know that they wouldn't get a lot at a time (but back then, $6,000 was a good chunk of change); however, it would have been an ongoing racket and added up for the bad guys. These guys were not big-time nor big-brained criminals!
Also, the information about the girl's parentage would have been a lot bigger deal back then, but even now the girl's psyche would be affected by this, it would have affected her schooling and grades and the stigma would have stuck on her and affected her friendships (kids can be very cruel). Brian Keith was a good father very understandably wanting to protect his daughter from the trauma of knowing and the rest of the town from finding out and from paying the price of her father's actions.
Jim and Linda were Anne's adoptive parents, *not* stepparents. And, I believe a commenter meant that nobody expected that this episode would be an Emmy-winning (not Oscar-winning) Hitchcock classic, as this was TV and not a movie.
Several of the commenters have mentioned the small amount of the extortion/blackmail and how Brian Keith played a low-paid forest ranger. That is true, but don't you think that the extortionists/blackmailers would keep coming back for more? They know that they wouldn't get a lot at a time (but back then, $6,000 was a good chunk of change); however, it would have been an ongoing racket and added up for the bad guys. These guys were not big-time nor big-brained criminals!
Also, the information about the girl's parentage would have been a lot bigger deal back then, but even now the girl's psyche would be affected by this, it would have affected her schooling and grades and the stigma would have stuck on her and affected her friendships (kids can be very cruel). Brian Keith was a good father very understandably wanting to protect his daughter from the trauma of knowing and the rest of the town from finding out and from paying the price of her father's actions.
Jim and Linda were Anne's adoptive parents, *not* stepparents. And, I believe a commenter meant that nobody expected that this episode would be an Emmy-winning (not Oscar-winning) Hitchcock classic, as this was TV and not a movie.