Shoulda closed with that...it totally distracted me from the rest of the post! Hardly--Look at his work on the house! But they never play Patterson as a threat. There's never a "Patterson is getting too close to the truth" beat. Barnabas can expect that the local authorities will investigate assaults on women and livestock being drained of blood, but he can be thankful that Patterson remains completely clueless as to what's really going on. But I've read that they'd done a seance episode before (and Josette spoke in French), so they do have some experience with that sort of thing. I was a teenager in the '80s...it holds no terror for me. The couple at Dark Shadows Before I Die make a strong argument that he's basically being Hoffman's tool at the moment...giving in to her every unreasonable demand. But that just serves to enable the story...I know what's in store for him generally. The episode that ends with the cliffhanger of Barnabas confronting him in his office is the last in the block of episodes that Decades runs (so it'll be my departure from the show as well). IIRC, they said that Windcliff is 100 miles away, so not too close, but in the same general area...and she'd know the name of the town. So her reaction to the name isn't unreasonable, but it seems off. Seems more likely she'd ask if they were important people in the town than act like the name had never come up before.
Before and after the series, most characters & fans only refer to him as Alfred, so its not as though the character is missing anything by never having a surname mentioned. All for a pointless gag with Romero. Ehh, Diana Ivarson was a terrible non-actress. Offering nothing to this forgettable episode, it almost seems she landed to job either as a favor to a relative from the producer, or by other means, because its clear her "talent" had nothing to do with it. Batman and Robin are not the only Gotham residents who are trained to defend themselves. Bruce would be no different than other rich guys who take a self defense class as they see themselves as potential targets. The series was running on fumes--from a completely empty tank. The death trap was inspired by similar traps seen during the Golden Age of comics (and not just in Batman stories), but its design (to insure no harm came to Burt Ward) failed miserably--like the rest of this plot. I think I will need to consult Martin Grams' encyclopedic THE GREEN HORNET: A History of Radio, Motion Pictures, Comics and Television, which is supposed to be very thorough in its coverage of the TV series' origin, run and ratings.
Sad, but true. Yeah, some things have staying power, even if they don't start out so strong. It really is an amazing song. That's so sweet!
For What It's Worth is by the Buffalo Springfield. Written by "rejected" Monkee, Stephen Stills who would later form Crosby, Stills, Nash ( and sometimes Young) with former Byrd, David Crosby.
Kung Fu "Arrogant Dragon" Production no. 166220 Originally aired March 14, 1974 Caine encounters a kinder, gentler Tong in this episode, led by Clyde Kusatsu. Richard Loo and James Hong also return as new characters. Caine isn't above showing off his tattoos like an American Express card to get what he needs from the apothecary. "The Nature of Evil" Production no. 166221 Originally aired March 21, 1974 This is Serenity Johnson's second of three appearances. The actor must be related to someone.... The flashbacks in this case are mostly to a previous episode, Serenity's first appearance. There's more mysticism in this one...Caine goes to a town because he feels a disturbance in the chi or somesuch. And there's lots of mysterious build-up for the bad guy, making him seem supernatural. I might not have recognized him as Morgan Woodward if not for the credits, at least until he started speaking. And he comes bearing a gift... At long effing last--Caine's Fugitive Premise is back!!! "The Cenotaph: Part I" Production no. 166222 Originally aired April 4, 1974 Opening with expository onscreen text about Old Ironsides, this two-parter is effectively two separate episodes with scenes alternated to form a two-parter. One story takes place in the show's present, the other in China...a harbinger of the full China episodes to come in Season 3. The overall tone of both stories is pretty lighthearted. Oddly enough, the thing that links the stories together is that Stefan Gierasch is playing a central role in each, one as McBurney, the other as warrior Kai Tong in the China flashbacks. Like the Season 3 China episodes, this flashback story feels less grounded and more like fantasy. The China story features young adult Caine who's been outside the monastery for just over a month. Carradine does a good job portraying Caine as a fully trained Shaolin who's a bit cocky and still somewhat more naive than in the show's present. Yet he's already pretty clever...for example, getting permission to break Kai Tong's sword and then deliberately breaking it. And of course, the story centers around the first time that Caine...y'know...boom-chicka-BOW-WOW! Of course, the McBurney story plays pretty larger-than-life, too. Now I thought it was pretty obvious that a wife being carried around in a box wouldn't be alive, so I was surprised when that came up as a revelation. Though there's still more to it than her simply being a corpse, as I suspected from the size of the box. "The Cenotaph: Part II" Production no. 166223 Originally aired April 11, 1974 Guest-starring Ned Romero as Indian chief Lame Dog in the "present" storyline. This time around, I found the bumbling bad guys who were after the coach and quick cuts between periods to be a bit annoying. Contemporary Caine dons his gold fighting togs between scenes to fight for McBurney. Meanwhile... I had a sense from her first scene that Mei Lee was playing games, and Caine was getting caught in the middle. She was definitely too much of a material girl to entertain the notion of getting into a long-term relationship with a monk. Still, she's obviously sad when she drives him away. And I saw the beat of burying Mei Li's stone with "Mrs. McBurney" coming, as they've done that sort of thing before. Add the stone to the list of mementos that Caine's been carrying around in his bottomless pouch all this time. He's a regular walking museum! _______ And that concludes Season 2. On to some Mission: Impossible. Looks like Decades will be doing a Daily Binge in a couple of weeks that covers some episodes I'd been missing--the last two of Season 1 and the first of Season 2. _______
Never leave home without them. I wonder if that's literally true. Either testing the waters, or they wrote a full-China episode and got cold feet. Would have been funny if she turned out to be a vampire. Talk about mysticism.
She turned out to be a big, woman-shaped rock! _______ Mission: Impossible "Pilot" Originally aired September 17, 1966 Our first mission briefing is given via phonograph... Some guy on his blog had a theory that this meant not that Dan was coming back from a sabaatical, but that he was a former spook who was reentering the spy game by setting up the IMF. I like that idea. It's cute that we meet the IMF team playing penny poker. Yeah, Willy's job in this one is to lug around the bombs...and Wally Cox. Such a mimbo. The plan suffers a substantial setback with Wally's character gets his fingers broken. They're leaving a lot of witnesses in this one, too...even telling them their real names. And the team barely escapes with the local army in hot pursuit. The IMF's plan relies on the convenience of cosmetic gags that magically prevent their captives from so much as grunting through them. On that blog guy's speculation about how they pulled off Rollin as Briggs...I think it definitely looked like Hill, but maybe they made him up to look more like Landau. That seems simpler than making such a convincing mask for Landau to wear. "Memory" Originally aired September 24, 1966 Early Installment Weirdness... A really unusual opening for the show as we know it--Briggs gets written info from a contact, with no recording involved. The show also feels more anthology-ish at this early point, with this and coming weeks featuring plans that center around a one-shot guest agent with a particular talent. The story involves two plans...the original, which goes off successfully a little over halfway through, and the one they have to improvise to take advantage of an unforeseen opportunity. The question is, what was the original plan for the guest infiltrator? To let him be executed? He volunteered for that? What was his motivation? I thought that Landau wasn't going to be in the episode despite credit...he doesn't come into the story until halfway through. So Willy's from Indiana, eh? Does this mean I'm supposed to like him? Hoosier pride only goes so far. TOS guest: Gene Dynarski in a minor speaking role. Spotted in the ficitonal Eastern European country of the week: THE CLOCK! Interesting tidbit on the IMDb page: "Operation Rogosh" Originally aired October 1, 1966 Early Installment Weirdness: A date on the screen telling us it's October 1966...though I guess the plot gives them a good reason to make the actual timeframe clear, especially for future viewers of reruns. Also, one of the "photos" that's chosen is a bill for an entire acting company who play the prison personnel. We get our first taped message, but it's not reel-to-reel. So that was an eight-track tape? I've never seen what one looks like on the inside. In this case, that's a nearby furnace. More substantial setbacks: Rogosh's colleagues on the outside discover the fake prison; and Rogosh discovers the con. "Old Man Out: Part I" Originally aired October 8, 1966 "Old Man Out: Part II" Originally aired October 15, 1966 And finally, our first reel-to-reel tape... We can surmise that Dan was directed to drop it into an ash tray, where it would burst into flames. We get some unusual touches, such as the guest agent, the trapeze artist, getting a colorful recruitment scene. But overall, this story feels really padded to fill two parts. I didn't go back to be sure, but I'm pretty sure that late in the second part, they reused circus footage from earlier in the episode. Some of the trapeze shots looked strikingly familiar. No wonder it always seemed like they were doing the same thing when I'd previously had this two-parter on in the background. The story centers on the premise that the most inescapable prison in Eastern Europe is in an open, airy public place right next to a park. And they don't do a good job of selling the prison's vaunted impregnability beyond that. A smuggled lockpick and a few guard distractions and you've got the run of the place. TOS guest: Joseph Ruskin (Galt, "The Gamesters of Triskelion") as a suspicious colonel who doesn't know enough not to enter tents with strange clowns. _______
Ooooh, a Golem. We don't get half enough Golems. They've made a comeback. Interesting bit either way. I wonder why they included that point without follow up on it-- just to give the episode the feeling that it was a beginning? Imagine the IMF in 2017: "this txt will delete because reasons lol" You don't like Willy?!? Sadly, I have. Maybe he was just expecting something different.
I believe that what I said on my blog was that it was Hill in the close-ups and Landau in a Hill mask in the long shots, or something like that. The best way to do a special effect is to mix up different techniques in different shots so it's harder for the audience to catch onto the trick. Wagon Train to the spies! I wish they'd stuck with the anthology approach more. It makes more sense to recruit a different team for each mission than to use the same people every time. The first season did have several main-title regulars, but none of them were in every episode. Did they say he'd be executed? I don't quite recall, but maybe the plan was just to have him be imprisoned until they could arrange a later extraction or diplomatic release. I evidently thought it was on my blog. I liked how the early first season delved more into the personalities of the agents and how and why they were recruited. It's too bad they decided to move away from that. Yes, but it's such lovely padding... I think it's just that Crystal is performing the same routine both times.
The type that self-destruct one minute after you break the seal must be really valuable collector's items. Something like that. Adam-12 did something similar with Malloy ready to quit the force in the first episode. I guess introducing a character with a "new beginning" is a way of having your cake and eating it too if the character also needs to be experienced at their job. I thought we'd established that. I guess I prefer my characters to have more agency than "Duh, yeah boss, I can lift dat for ya!" Yeah, he has his roles in the missions, but his skill set doesn't look so impressive next to invaluably talented players like Rollin and Barney. Not exactly...went back and checked, you said that you thought it was Landau in the hotel check-out and the escape. I was definitely under the impression that it was Hill in at least the close-ups in those sequences...but they did seem to be doing things to make him look "off"...and specifically, a bit skinnier in the face...which is probably easier to achieve via tape and whatnot than a full face mask that looks fairly convincingly like another actor in close-ups. But...I didn't go back and reexamine the scenes before it disappeared from my bin, so I'm not 100% about it by any means. Too soon for me to tell if I prefer the guest character of the week approach...but they did sort of achieve the rotating team effect in the long-term with all of the recastings over the life of the series. That's the thing...they never said it outright, but at the same time, it was clearly indicated that a for-real escape attempt wasn't part of the plan...and he was scheduled to be executed in the short term. I wasn't watching closely enough the first time, such that after I read what was going on, I had to go back and rewatch just to catch it all. There is an air of fatalism in the training scenes. Being disavowed if you're caught is one thing...but deliberately sending IMF agents on certain suicide missions just seems so off. That was the first place that I read it. I think IMDb had a review that also identified it as such. There was at least one pretty distinct shot of her face in close-up while she was hanging upside-down on the trapeze...I was fairly certain that it was the same one they'd used in an earlier sequence. Certainly it's possible, though, that they got multiple takes of the same act being performed the same way and used different takes in those sequences. _______ 50th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing Blowout Extravaganza _______ What was going on the week our first batch of episodes aired. _______ Batman "Ice Spy" Originally aired March 29, 1967 "The Duo Defy" Originally aired March 30, 1967 This two-parter not only features TOS guests Leslie Parrish and Elisha Cook both in prominent roles, but even sitting together in the first scene. As for the main villain's casting--Holy musical Mr. Freezes! I think this may have already been the case with the second Freeze, but his gimmicks are definitely more simplified and less threatening than they were in his first appearance...no helmet, no dramatic hot/cold zoning in his hideout. (Was the latter in the first appearance?) And Super-Thermalized Bat-Skivvies and some other unseen gadgets let the Dynamic Duo effortlessly shrug off any danger from them. Holy prophetic song reference! The Bruce/Batman phone conversation was a good gag...though I think that West was deliberately differentiating them a tad more here than he normally did...playing it more as radio than TV. The bit with the fish in the utility belt was also good. He may not be doing much of an accent, but Cook's character is pretty badass in his refusal to talk in the first part...and entertainingly zonked in the second. It's kind of odd that the Anti-Eavedrop Bat-Plug is a smaller and less conspicuous gadget than the sci-fi-looking voice gizmo that Reid used on his phone's mouthpiece on TGH. Considering that they used to have to go back to Wayne Manor and use the Batpoles to change outfits, the Dynamic Duo sure did change quickly outside the commissioner's office! The sea of icebergs has mountains in the background--Not exactly looking like the East Coast there. And it doesn't make any sense how the rifle-scale instant freeze gadget freezes specific objects indoors at a great distance. Yeah, the business with Bruce/Batman insisting on referring to Glacia as Emma Strunk does seem pretty odd by the time that they have him go there for the third time...especially considering how he routinely deals with all sorts of colorfully monikered bad guys. I have to think that it was intended as a sort of variation on the show's tired "repentant moll" schtick...in this case, the moll was less repentant, so Bruce was effectively "punishing" her for it. Yeah, with two references to Barbara late this season, they definitely seem to have been conceiving Batgirl at the time. And that's the end of Batman's second season. Season 3 reviews will commence in September as part of my regularly scheduled 50th anniversary viewing. _______ Tarzan "The Ultimatum" Originally aired March 31, 1967 One of our bad guys is a hunter named Karnak (no, not that Karnak...or that one...), who goes into the jungle with only a rifle and no supplies, claiming he doesn't need them. Seems like drinkable water should be an issue....But he's actually answering a call for employment from our Number One villainess. A group of no-name villains assembles to take on Tarzan? Bad guys get picked off one by one by deadly means? Yep, pretty samey-same. It took me a while to realize, but this is a sequel to "The Deadly Silence". Riker is the revenge-bent sister of the main villain in that one, who was known as the Colonel. And the native chief, Metusa, is also a returning character from that episode, but recast. It's really hard to tell with this series because they're always giving one-shot guest characters backstory that involves past dealings with Tarzan that we haven't seen. There are more blackface disguises in this one...this time used by the bad guys infiltrating an outpost at night. At one point Metusa asks Tarzan where his elephant Tonto is--a deliberate joke? A Google for Tarzan and Tonto just turns up lots of SNL-related hits. Trapped by his ambushers in Metusa's village, Tarzan summons an elephant stampede. I've been waiting for him to do something like that on this show. Alas, he has to send them back when they're threatened by dynamite. The tribesmen pull a Trojan Horse, hiding in the elephant idol with ruby eyes that they bring Tarzan tied to per the villains' demands. But it's pretty suspension of disbelief-challenging that the bad guys are so put off by this trick that they somehow manage not to slaughter Tarzan's allies with their guns while the tribesmen are busy getting out and untying the Lord of the Jungle. In the climax, Riker seems to die of a heart attack or something, exacerbated by the death of Karnak, with whom she'd been fostering a tough-love relationship throughout the episode. If Jai was in this one at all, I missed him. It seems like Cheeta's been AWOL for a bit at this point as well. _______ Get Smart "Pussycats Galore" Originally aired April 1, 1967 There were a couple of good gags in this one: The overly complicated, coin-operated front door mechanism at Max's apartment; and Max revealing his true identity to the bad guys and expecting to be recognized. And Angelique Pettyjohn's return as Charlie Watkins was good for some giggles. It's not clear how the informant Pussycat knew who Smart was or where he lived. This week's noteworthy guest villain is Ted Knight, playing a German with an accent good enough to make his distinctive voice practically unrecognizable. The remaining episodes of Get Smart's second season were the "A Man Called Smart" three-parter, which I covered upthread on their 50th anniversary weeks. So all we have left of the synchronized Catch-Up Viewing are the last two episodes of Tarzan's first season...and as I got around to watching the other shows in advance of H&I's Batman airings a few weeks back, there's no reason to save them for later, so.... _______ Tarzan "Algie B for Brave" Originally aired April 7, 1967 What was going on the week this episode aired. Our latest Jai-centric installment, which also features the return of Cheeta. This episode features another orphan who's been temporarily rendered mute by the trauma of losing a parent. This time, the orphan is Sir Basil's grandnephew. Jai gets some nice moments being compassionate to his guest friend. Basil seems a little more gruffly likable this time than in his first appearance, in which he just came off as an asshole for too much of the episode. He even refers to (the apparently male this episode) Cheeta as "old chap"! There's a really odd bit at the beginning where a major plot point is about what the boy's father's last words on the radio were...and what we're repeatedly told he said is something that we didn't actually see him say in his on-camera death scene. And at one point, they also dub a line into Sir Basil's mouth that clearly isn't Maurice Evans's voice. _______ Tarzan "Man Killer" Originally aired April 14, 1967 Shrooms! Now the '60s are coming to the jungle! What was going on the week this episode aired. This earworm has also since been added to my collection, thanks to Music Choice playing it in regular rotation: "The Oogum Boogum Song," Brenton Wood (#34 US; #19 R&B) This week features TOS guests in two prominent roles: James Gregory (Dr. Tristan Adams, "Dagger of the Mind") as an ol' jungle doctor who establishes a pattern of giving food and drink to people who subsequently suffer from hallucinatory spells, and Lloyd Haynes (Alden, "Where No Man Has Gone Before") as a guy he's brainwashed into becoming a Leopard-Man serial killer. There's an odd bit in the middle of this episode in which Tarzan is saved by a mute white man who's living primitively in the jungle. His brief appearance isn't followed up on, and the actor doesn't get a credit. This Season 1 finale features neither Jai nor Cheeta. _______ Less organized catch-up business will continue with my viewing of the first half of M:I Season 1, as well as the last two episodes of that season, scheduled to air on Decades soon. In addition, H&I just came back around to the beginning of Tarzan this morning, so I now have the complete first episode to watch and revisit. And I probably shouldn't make any promises, but Antenna is coming back around to the start of The Monkees this weekend. I've never been a great fan of the band or the show, but with all that recent talk about them, I realized that I had been missing a 50th anniversary viewing experience in which the TV and music aspects of the era that I've been covering overlap...so I've set the DVR and decided to give it a whirl, even though, at the rate of two episodes a week, it won't be catching up with my regular 50th anniversary viewing until sometime well into the show's second and last season. (OTOH, if I keep up with them as they air, they won't be clogging up my DVR, either.) So apparently the pilot episode was aired tenth in the season...Antenna is playing it before the premiere episode. As I'm not synchronizing the viewing of this show with anything else, I'm not sure if I should stick to airdate order or go with Antenna's airing order. _______
That's funny, I reloaded before I posted just in case you had already fixed it, and your fix didn't show up for me. A pilot script is as much about explaining the premise to the network as explaining it to the viewers. Starting out, they had to define just what the situation was here. It seems to me that the IMF was originally intended to be an off-book, unofficial black-ops agency with no official standing, so that the government could deny any involvement in their actions if they were caught. So it follows that it would be run by an experienced spy who was officially retired. This got increasingly ignored over time as the IMF got more and more cooperation from official government agencies, particularly in the last two seasons when it became almost exclusively a domestic crimebusting unit with routine police and federal cooperation, making the whole "secret tape drop" openings completely redundant. And of course it was even more egregiously ignored in the movies, where the IMF is overtly a CIA subdivision with offices in Langley and so forth. In later seasons, Willy gets to stretch more and involve himself in the roleplaying, especially in the last two years where the team size is reduced and there's no dedicated male disguise-artist team member. They try to phase Willy out in season 5, alternating him with Sam Elliott as a doctor named Doug, but Elliott was no better an actor than Lupus at the time and was awful at foreign accents, even by M:I's cheesy standards. It still would've made more sense to have multiple disguise experts that could be brought in to impersonate different-looking people. As it was, it's astonishing how many bad guys and endangered innocents in the first 3 seasons happened to look similar to Rollin Hand. (Paul Stevens was cast three or four times as characters Rollin had to impersonate because he looked so similar to Landau.) Well, they are called the Impossible Missions Force. The idea was supposed to be that they only get the most extreme missions, the ones far too dangerous or sensitive or illegal to be carried out by normal methods. Now, normally that meant things like staging heists or con games or arranging indirect assassinations by tricking the villains into turning on each other. (The show was inspired by Topkapi -- it's really more a sting/heist show than a spy show, but censors at the time would never have allowed a show with criminals as protagonists, so it made them patriotic secret agents committing their crimes against enemies of the free world.) But it stands to reason that their brief might also include suicide missions from time to time. The whole core premise is that they're completely on their own -- if caught, they'll be disavowed. The US will refuse to admit that they were committing their actions under orders, leaving them subject to execution as criminals or terrorists, with the US just sitting idly by and letting it happen. (In real spycraft, this is called non-official cover or NOC -- a concept featured in the first M:I movie.) Crimefighting techniques must ever march forward so the defenders of law and order can stay a step ahead of the underworld, old chum! Are you sure he didn't say Tantor? That's the Mangani name for elephants in Burroughs's books, and in the '70s Filmation series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantor
Could be my refresh was behind, but I did literally fix that within a minute of posting it. I always go back and read the live post right after I post it and make odd edits along the way. In this case, I noticed the blunder immediately. Ah, now that's a distinct possibility and makes a lot more sense...but as I recall, I double-checked by turning on the CC'ing at the time, and whoever's responsible for that also thought they heard "Tonto". OK, so I just went to manually set those additional Season 1 M:I episodes to record...and my cable guide is showing completely different programming on Aug. 18 than the Decades site's schedule still shows. I just set the DVR to record all episodes of M:I from Decades again to make sure I don't miss ones that I need...I'll just have to manually delete the ones that I don't need whenever they record. (They're often playing episodes from later seasons, and my practical interests at the moment don't include anything after Season 4.)
^ No doubt. _______ Last Week's 50th Anniversary Viewing _______ Dark Shadows Episode 286 Originally aired July 31, 1967 The week begins with a recap of Barnabas inviting Victoria to stay in Josette's room. The episode continues with Vicki asking who'd been chasing Josette on the night of her suicide...and Barnabas asserts that it was Jeremiah Collins (though it was obviously Barnabas, particularly in light of Barnabas's justification of the pursuer's motivations). As Vicki curls up in bed with her sweater on, downstairs Barnabas and Willie discuss whether somebody might have gotten into the house, given the ball that Willie found in the basement near Barnabas's coffin. Meanwhile, [insert first part of episode description]. Vicki then goes downstairs so that Willie has something to fret over. He offers to escort her back to the Great House, but she insists on staying. As he starts to tell her that she's making a mistake, Barnabas pops up with his usual timing, delivering a veiled threat of punishment. Vicki relates how she heard the singing. After Vicki goes back upstairs, Barnabas emphatically insists to Willie that there is no little girl. Barnabas then starts acting strangely, betraying his conflicted feelings about taking advantage of his guest while flubbing a line or two along the way. Sending Willie away, he goes upstairs and [insert second part of episode description]. Sarah is credited for this episode, though we only hear her singing. Episode 287 Originally aired August 1, 1967 Barnabas gets that "Wait a minute, what am I doing?" look and quietly sneaks back out of the room without causing Victoria to stir. From the way he looks at Josette's portrait, is it possible that he's found a woman to rival his old obsession's place in his undead heart? The next morning, Vicki relates to Willie how she felt like somebody had been in the room with her, though she seemed completely obvlivious to the waking world at the time. At the Great House, Elizabeth tells Undercover Hoffman about the madman who's been on the loose, and is relieved to discover that Vicki was safe for the night with good ol' Cousin Barnabas! In the background, Hoffman rises out of some bushes wearing a vintage German helmet and spectacles.... Liz says that she'd like to cooperate with Hoffman's research, but she's just soooo busy for somebody who only recently left her house for the first time in eighteen years. Vicki somehow manages to make it All About Josette, and Hoffman babbles cryptically about the importance of her research in a way that means more to the audience than to Vicki. Ultimately, Liz decides to cooperate with Hoffman in the hope that learning more about the family history will break the romanticized bubble that Vicki's been in. Back at the Old House, we get (actually onscreen for the first time) the dream scene of Willie trying to kick out the nosy and knowledgeably suspicious Hoffman. It was worth the wait. The heartbeat-mimicking drum motif lets us know when Barnabas is about to enter the scene. In contrast to Willie's signature uptightness, Barnabas puts on the charm for his visitor while politely declining to cooperate...but she piques his curiosity by enigmatically claiming to know things about his family history that may be of interest to him. Hoffman meeting Barnabas and Willie for the first time...seems more like a Friday than a Tuesday.... Episode 288 Originally aired August 2, 1967 David finds Vicki daydreaming, and says that it frightened him because she seemed like somebody else. If that somebody else is Josette, you'd think that he'd like that. David shows Undercover Hoffman the album of family portraits and is himself surprised to see the portrait of Sarah for the first time, noticing the similarity to his playmate and openly speculating that she might be a ghost. Hoffman seems particularly interested in anything surrounding Barnabas. When Vicki sees the portrait, she makes the connection to the sketch that she saw. I was wondering about Barnabas and mirrors! There haven't been any in evidence at Collinwood--Fortunately for him, mirrors are an inconvenience to shooting television shows as well as to vamp...er, to people who are dead, but walk at night. There's a bit of a plot hole when Hoffman says that she saw an engraving of the Old House that showed mirrors in it...when her suspicion has been partly fueled by how Barnabas couldn't know what the Old House used to look like back in the old days. At the Blue Whale, Burke Devlin and the Whining of Doom goes into his wet blanket routine about Vicki's interest in Hoffman's research and her night at the Old House. Which is where Hoffman visits next, to be received by Barnabas. While he looks through the album with his back turned to her, Hoffman slips out her compact to verify that Barnabas doesn't do reflections. As she leaves, he gets that same look on his face that he does when it's time to reacquaint Willie with his cane. Episode 289 Originally aired August 3, 1967 This looks like one of those kinescope episodes. Vicki shares her concerns with Carolyn that somebody's standing in the shadows outside her bedroom window...and sure enough, it's ol' Peeping Barnabas. Sometime later, as Vicki sleeps, Barnabas appears in her bedroom, and [insert first part of episode description...or the beginning of Tuesday's episode, take your pick]. After he leaves, Carolyn pays another visit to Vicki's room because of a blackout caused by the storm that's raging outside. She finds Vicki alarmed that somebody had opened the music box while she was sleeping. As Vicki and Carolyn go downstairs by candlelight, they find Undercover Hoffman burning the midnight wax over her research. Hoffman questions Vicki about her interest in Josette and finds that it all leads back to Barnabas Collins. Upon hearing the music box and a description of Josette's perfume, Hoffman makes the connection with the melody and fragrance that Maggie remembered. Eventually Vicki gets upset by Hoffman's line of questioning and goes back to bed. As dawn nears, Hoffman goes to eavesdrop outside the Old House, where Willie and Barnabas happen to be conversing loudly near a window. When Willie leaves to do some early shopping, Hoffman waits to make sure that the sun in high enough, then breaks in and heads downstairs, where Barnabas had told Willie he was heading. [Insert second part of episode description]...and as one might have gathered by now, she doesn't seem very surprised. Episode 290 Originally aired August 4, 1967 After a recap of Hoffman discovering Barnabas in his coffin, she's back at the Great House, where Doc Woodard is threatening to withdraw Maggie from her care if she doesn't share her results with him...so she claims to have made no progress. As Woodard's leaving from his conspicuous visit, Barnabas drops by, and Vicki relates to him how she's become frightened of losing herself in the past. Barnabas convinces her not only to keep the music box, but to listen to it even more so that it doesn't disturb her so much...all while he struggles not to flub his lines as some loud noises that sound related to set construction reverberate from offstage. Dr. Hoffman teases Barnabas with an offer to mutually share information, and the two arrange a meeting at the Old House the next day. As Hoffman gets ready for bed, she gets a visit from Vicki. They compare notes about how each of them deals with the past, then Vicki gets freaked out by the howls of an approaching "dog". At the stroke of 2 a.m., Barnabas sneaks into the window that Hoffman deliberately left open and approaches her bed, only for the doctor to step out of the shadows, fully awake and waiting for him.... _______ 50 years ago this week: New on the charts: "There Is a Mountain," Donovan (#11 US; #8 UK) "Gimme Little Sign," Brenton Wood (#9 US; #19 R&B; #8 UK) "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," Jackie Wilson (#6 US; #1 R&B; #246 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) "Reflections," Diana Ross & The Supremes (#2 US; #4 R&B; #5 UK) "The Letter," The Box Tops (#1 US the weeks of Sept. 23 thorugh Oct. 14; #30 R&B; #5 UK; #363 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) And new on the boob tube: Dark Shadows, episodes 291-295 _______ ETA: I've had Decades' Alfred Hitchcock Hour Binge on in the background this evening. Spotted in the "Where the hell do I know that guy from?" department: Barry Nelson, the first guy to play "Jimmy" Bond (in an Amercanized 1954 TV adaptation of Casino Royale). Spotted in the "Yep, that guy was typecast!" department: William Boyett (Sgt. MacDonald, Adam-12) as--you guessed it--a cop. _______
They come with their own little urn. Eh, he's the Babe. He's a nice guy who does the heavy lifting. I think I remember reading that they tried to dismiss him at one point, but the audience would have none of it. George Harrison is very underrated. "This is my brother Karnak and this is my other brother Karnak...." Karnak and Metusa...? Magic mushrooms in those days. I'm pretty sure shrooms is contemporary lingo (although I've been surprised before). Hmm, I do remember this now that I hear it again, and it's kind of reminding me of "Forget You." This guy's other song in the next post is much more memorable, though. I find this very interesting. An homage to the less eloquent Tarzan of the Weissmuller era, perhaps? I love Donovan. I think I've mentioned before that he was a major influence on my writing as a kid. This catchy little koan comes straight from Buddhist writings. Yeah, this is a good one. A nice minor classic of the era. Another catchy classic of the era. And a major classic of the era. And another classic of the era. Good week! Me, too. I wish I had time to sit down and watch. I've got all the half-hour episodes, but there's a lot of hour episodes that I haven't seen.
And just now spotted in the "Holy crap, look who it is!" department: David Carradine, 1964! (And I didn't recognize him, but the star of the episode was Donnelly Rhodes, Doc Cottle from BSG.) Maybe...I was just using my own lingo...but "shrooms" goes back to at least my own youth, so even if it wasn't in use in the '60s, it goes back nearly as far. [ETA: A quick Google says 1970s, so pretty close.] Not after you've had "The Ooogum Boogum Song" stuck in your head for a couple of days.... Not a very Tarzan-ish character, more of an gangly, odd hermit type, wearing a hat with a feather in it and whatnot. As do I (but not in that glossy autographed photo way )...his stuff always brings a smile to my face when it comes up in my playlists. "Sunshine Superman" has been a particular favorite of the era since I first heard it in my teens. ETA: And this hour on AH, it's Christopher Lee! ETA: Now I know why the voice in the recording was welcoming Dan back in the first episode of M:I--He'd been off doing Alfred Hitchcock. ETA: And a couple episodes later, Martin Landau...so we know where Dan got his team. Frank Gorshin was in the same episode...why wasn't he in the IMF?
And now to revisit... Tarzan "Eyes of the Lion" Originally aired September 8, 1966 My original review post from March. It seems that I wasn't missing much here first episode-wise...there's nothing particularly piloty going on as far as introducing the characters and setting is concerned. This reinforces my prior suspicion that the fourth-aired episode, "A Life for a Life" (September 30, 1966), with its bits of exposition about the backgrounds of Tarzan and Jai, was probably shot as the first episode. I suspect they aired this one first because it has a girl running around in a jungle outfit. This one, however, doesn't begin with the spoken intro that several of the earliest episodes had. But it does have elements of the other early episodes that I've become sorry they discarded--the regular setting of the settlement; regular "also starring" characters Jason Flood and Rao; and generally more expensive-looking outdoor shooting, wildlife footage, and episode-specific animal work. OTOH, we also get more comic beats of Cheeta being effectively useless. We first see a clothes-wearing Jai investigating the mysterious blind girl with Jason Flood; meanwhile, Cheeta's running around with Tarzan. The duos don't meet up until about the point that I started my previous viewing, two-thirds into the episode. Ned Romero's character Oringa could have been played sympathetically, as we see him lose his father to the bad lion...but he isn't just acting irrational and vengeful, he's portrayed as being completely unreasonable and unlikable. At the end, Tarzan convinces the girl to go back to civilization with the promise that he'll take care of her seeing eye lion, Sultan. Typical of episodic TV of the era, I'm pretty sure that we never see him again. Don't touch that dial--Coming up next on NBC: _______