Look, if you're on a show as long as Amanda Blake was on Gunsmoke, especially one with that kind of staying power, you've earned the right to have a few opinions about television.

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal, Blake shared her thoughts on the television industry and what she'd like to see from it in the future.

Her verdict wasn't exactly glowing. She called television "a bunch of garbage," pointing to Mork & Mindy and Laverne & Shirley as examples. "It's all junk," Bake declared. 

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Blake felt so strongly that television had lost its way that she seemed to take the decline personally. She wanted the medium to clean up its act.

"I'd like to see television get a little classier than it is now," Blake said. "There is room for a few little junk things, but to have the whole industry be nothing more than one big junk pile really hurts my feelings."

Of course, Blake had one show she could always count on to meet her standards: Gunsmoke. In an interview with The Buffalo News, she expressed a desire to play Kitty Russell indefinitely.

"I'd cry myself to sleep every night if I had to give up Kitty. I can't stand to think of it ever going off. I could do it the rest of my life," Blake said.

For Blake, the appeal of Gunsmoke wasn't just its action. It was also in the quieter moments, when a look could say more than a lengthy speech. That subtlety reflected the kind of classy television she wanted to see more of.

Even a show as enduring as Gunsmoke wasn't immune to recycled storylines, though. And Blake wasn't afraid to call those out, either. In a 1968 interview with the Associated Press, she voiced her frustration with one plot device that seemed to follow Kitty wherever she went: kidnapping.

"Good lord, have I been kidnapped! I'm sick and tired of it," Blake said. The writers, she explained, argued that Kitty couldn't be in danger while she was in town because Matt Dillon would protect her. Their solution? Keep sending her away. "So they keep having me kidnapped."

Blake may have wanted television to raise its standards, but even her beloved Gunsmoke had its share of familiar tricks. If the industry never quite lived up to her expectations, at least she could always return to Dodge City for a rerun.