At the ten minute point of this episode, Amada Blake starts what may well be the best soliloquy in Hollywood TV history. She tells the story of how she arrived in Dodge City and hated the place, and then -- the man walks in! The poignant part of the narrative she provided in character is that no other TV series could have referenced something that happened, "seventeen years ago to the month," without that statement being fiction. This episode was taped in the seventeenth season, and so it was literal fact!
This unique reality is what gives the soliloquy such power. The audience can go along individually and recount the details of entire episodes brought back by brief references in the two minute soliloquy. The short rejoinder given by Arness at the end, in character, is priceless, and must be seen in the context of the scene to be enjoyed.
The scene brings a tear to one's eye simply because of how fresh it remains in the timeless nature of film, but uttered by two people who both passed away years ago, Amanda Blake before James Arness. The mortality of two people, brought together to form Hollywood history in an immortal TV series, is laid before us.
Seventeen years is a long time in anyone's life, and the words spoke in character might just as well been a symbol of their own lives in reality, especially given that this three-part series was the first return of Milburn Stone from his medical hiatus due to heart bypass surgery.
The story of Matt and Kitty is laid out plain to see in a short two-minute scene, and it isn't merely that it's the only TV series in history that could have laid down seventeen years of real life behind it, but that the story sums up how life's simple moments often form the basis for all other things so much more complicated and meaningful.
A man walks in, and eats his "eggs and biscuits," and the life of a woman is forever altered, so that life without the man seems impossible to ponder, for both her and the man, but also for the audience who grew up over the course of two decades watching the story unfold!
And what a beautiful story it was!