The type that self-destruct one minute after you break the seal must be really valuable collector's items.
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?
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.
Imagine the IMF in 2017: "this txt will delete because reasons lol"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I evidently thought it was on my blog.
That was the first place that I read it. I think IMDb had a review that also identified it as such.
I think it's just that Crystal is performing the same routine both times.
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.
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50th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing Blowout Extravaganza
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What was going on the week our first batch of episodes aired.
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Batman
"Ice Spy"
Originally aired March 29, 1967
Xfinity said:
Mr. Freeze kidnaps a professor who has a formula for instant ice.
"The Duo Defy"
Originally aired March 30, 1967
Xfinity said:
Mr. Freeze turns his ice ray on the city.
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.
Chief O'Hara said:
It looked as though we were in for a long, cold winter, Commissioner. But now I think we're due for a sudden change in the weather.
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.
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Tarzan
"The Ultimatum"
Originally aired March 31, 1967
Xfinity said:
Seeking revenge against Tarzan, Madiline Riker and her goons threaten to destroy a village.
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.
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Get Smart
"Pussycats Galore"
Originally aired April 1, 1967
Xfinity said:
Max and 99 are caught and readied to be shipped behind the Iron Curtain.
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....
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Tarzan
"Algie B for Brave"
Originally aired April 7, 1967
Xfinity said:
Sir Basil Bertram recruits Tarzan and Jai to help him discover the location of a Communist country's nuclear detection equipment.
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.
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Tarzan
"Man Killer"
Originally aired April 14, 1967
Xfinity said:
Village members that employ hallucinogenic drugs complicate Tarzan's search for a killer.
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.
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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.
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