I Think About Stupid Stuff Too

I know I've mentioned here before that my favorite TV show is the original Maverick series, which I remember fondly from when I was a kid. Every ten years or so, it would pop up again in syndication, and I'd become reacquainted with Bret and Bart, and such recurring characters as Dandy Jim Buckley, Samantha Crawford, and Gentleman Jack Darby; but those revivals were always short-lived. When I upgraded my cable service earlier this year I was thrilled to discover that among the new channels I'd have access to was Encore Westerns, which airs episodes of Maverick three times a day in their original order. I've been burning the episodes to DVD, so that when it inevitably goes off the air again, I'll still be able to get a regular fix (I just need five more episodes, all of which are scheduled over the next week!). Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is that I've been watching episodes in the morning while I ride my stationary bike, and I've become somewhat obsessed in trying to figure out which of the Maverick brothers-- Bret, Bart, or Brent-- was older. There are plenty of episodes where Bret and Bart both appear (they generally rotated appearances), and at least one where Bart and Brent are together (I'm not considering Beau, because he was a cousin), but not once have I detected a single clue, through dialogue or anything else, to signal which is the elder sibling. To me, Jack Kelly, who played Bart looks a tad older than James Garner (Bret) and Robert Colbert (Brent), but that's hardly definitive. Likewise, since Garner preceded Kelly as the star of the show, there's a perception that he's older, but again, hardly compelling proof. I'm tempted to check the actors' ages at the Internet Movie Database, but that seems a cheat. If the evidence is there in the show, I want to find it... as if I needed another reason to keep watching.