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50th Anniversary Viewing
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The Avengers
"Game"
Originally aired September 23, 1968 (US); October 2, 1968 (UK)
Wiki said:
An ex-soldier, thought to be dead, takes his revenge on Steed and three other former Army officers, who helped to Court Martial him, by trapping them into participating in a series of deadly games that invariably end in death.
Armor intro!
This episode's villainous scheme involves using life-size mock-ups of games to kill five people (not three): a racing set, a game of Snakes and Ladders (the actual original Indian name of the game, and also how it was titled in the UK), some sort of stock market game with dice in a cup for the stockbroker, a game called Battle Stations for the war game-playing Brigadier (disappointingly played on an oversized board rather than at full scale), and a vaguely Scrabblish game called Wordmake for the Professor. All the while the villain leaves the bodies on playground rides and leaves clues for Steed, the intended sixth, in the form of puzzle pieces.
Steed's game is "Super Secret Agent," played on a somewhat Batmanesque life-sized game mock-up with a variety of challenges and Tara trapped in a giant hourglass (albeit an unconvincing one...more of a clear box with an hourglass cutout in front of it). The villain is ultimately defeated when Steed uses a gun with one live bullet meant for one of his challenges to free Tara, then deflects an oversized, razor-sharp playing card back to the villain.
The coda has Steed conning Tara with a game of "Steedopoly".
Overall, a more entertaining than usual variant of the old "series of killings" formula, in that each killing has its own colorful motif.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 2, episode 2
Originally aired September 23, 1968
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Herb Alpert, Eve Arden, Arlene Dahl, Zsa Zsa Gabor, George Kirby, Jack Lemmon, John Wayne, Patrick Wayne
Judy gets a sock it to me from Herb's trumpet.
Pigmeat does "Tiny Tom".
Not included in the Wiki list, the Choir Director of the Beautiful Downtown Burbank Glee Club is apparently a Zappa associate called Wild Man Fischer:
Dan: Have you seen any of the shows on television this week?
Eve: No, this is the weakest one I've seen.
Patrick Wayne joins in on the running gag about his father:
Charlie Brill & Mitzi McCall seem to be regulars this season. Here they do a briefer, gender-swapped variation of the sketch they did on
Sullivan:
At one point somebody drops a reference to
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang.
- Laugh-In salutes old Mother Bell.
- "Saki to me".
- A gag about a man who got injured at the Democratic Convention.
Herb's about to start "A Taste of Honey" when he realizes that he's holding a trombone.
The episode closes with a line from Arte Johnson's German soldier indicating that Dr. Pepper commercials may have been imitating
Laugh-In at the time.
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The Mod Squad
"The Teeth of the Barracuda"
Originally aired September 24, 1968
Series premiere
Wiki said:
90-minute pilot (73 minutes without commercials): The secret origin of the Mod Squad. Greer puts his newly-formed squad to work investigating a cop killing, which the evidence suggests was the work of young people. Guest stars: Fred Beir, Brooke Bundy, Lonny Chapman, Noam Pitlik, Robert DoQui. Uncredited cameos by Harrison Ford and Richard Pryor.
The teaser has the trio being apprehended while acting all OTT hip only to reveal that they're already cops in training. There's a training montage after the credits, and the episode milks some drama out of establishing something about the backgrounds of each of the trio. The Squad is put into action to investigate the murder of a colleague of Greer's named Wheeler, who was seemingly killed by kids. To that end the Squad members use personal connections with some of the people in Wheeler's file. Along the way we're introduced to other fixtures of the show, including Julie's apartment and Pete's woody.
What's really going on turns out to be a scheme to blackmail a politician that involves photos of his LSD-using daughter (Brooke Bundy), who happens to be an old friend of Pete's. Sign o' the times: During the climax, Julie has to drive a mile to find a phone!
IMDb said:
The music in the go-go club scene is by a real band called The Other Half, which included Randy Holden who later played in Blue Cheer.
I didn't catch what the title refers to; nor did I catch Harrison Ford or Richard Pryor; if they were in it at all, their parts were very blink-and-miss-'em.
I got my
Mod Squad episodes from a Decades Binge that skipped quite a few, so the show won't be coming up every week. The next one I've got is the fourth-aired.
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"Sock It to Me"
Originally aired September 26, 1968
Wiki said:
Ann's opportunity to perform in a Broadway play opposite Barry Sullivan is jeopardized by her inability to slap him.
The story plays up Barry Sullivan like he's Ethel Merman or something!
Ann's ineffectual fake slaps are pretty funny. Meanwhile, Barry really gets socked, first by Mr. Marie and then by Donald, both due to misunderstandings when he's trying to rehearse with Ann.
Barry Sullivan said:
Why is it that you're the only one who can't hit me?
Ann finally comes through on stage, but her slap actually knocks Barry out and she has to deliver his lines for him.
"Oh, Donald" count: 2
"Oh, Daddy" count: 4
"Oh, Seymour" count: 2
"Oh, Mr. Sullivan" count: 2
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Ironside
"Split Second to an Epitaph"
Originally aired September 26, 1968
Wiki said:
After a melee with a thief, an operation seems possible to cure Ironside's paralysis - or kill him.
This originally aired as a double-length episode, split into a second for syndication.
This episode makes extensive use of origin flashbacks, which I suspect are footage from the pilot movie that I didn't see. I was always under the impression from the opening credits that Ironside was shot on the street, but apparently it was in his apartment.
After Ironside's run-in with a hospital pharmacy robber, he begins to experience feeling in his legs, but he's reluctant to undergo potentially fatal spinal surgery because the thief killed a guard, and the Chief is the only one who saw his face. Meanwhile, the thief and his accomplice, an inside woman at the pharmacy, make attempts on Ironside's life, including switching his medication with poison and planting an oxygen tank full of cyanide gas in his operating room.
The episode has its share of filler to pad out its length. Troy Donahue occupies a high place in the credits, but his Father Dugan is a fairly minor role; and there's a subplot about Andrew Prine as an expectant father whose wife / baby's mama dies unexpectedly that's just sort of there and doesn't really tie in with the main story.
More entertaining is Ironside's jousting with a nun at the hospital, who catches him smuggling in a bottle of whiskey and, in the coda, informs him that the staff has voted him the worst patient they ever had. And while Ironside's surgery proves unsuccessful, we get a feel-good ending from another, more recently handicapped patient, with whom Ironside had been bonding over smuggled whiskey, having better luck with his operation.
We find out (though it was likely established in the pilot) that Mark's offscreen pursuit of an education is a condition of Ironside's, and the Chief learns here that Mark plans to go to law school.
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Star Trek
"The Enterprise Incident"
Originally aired September 27, 1968
Stardate 5027.3
H&I said:
Captain Kirk becomes increasingly erratic and orders the Enterprise into Romulan space where the ship is captured by a beautiful Romulan commander.
See my post here.
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Adam-12
"Log 141: The Color TV Bandit"
Originally aired September 28, 1968
Wiki said:
Malloy and Reed track down a burglar whose specialty is stealing color TV sets. They also encounter a drug-addicted mother who uses her children to help her in maintaining her habit.
While trying to track down the titular perp, Malloy and Reed get a call from a concerned neighbor to check on two children who've been left in their apartment unattended, and discover the kids unconscious and a bag full of pills. The children's mother (Cloris Leachman) comes home, and vainly tries to hide the pills. Reed rolls off the penal codes that she's violated and Malloy reads Junkie Phyllis her rights...for what I think is the first time on the show, or at least I didn't notice Miranda popping up last week. JP won't admit to knowing how many pills there were so that the ambulance crew can figure out how many the children took, causing Reed to snap at her, which Malloy mildly reprimands later in the car.
Malloy gets to set an example for Reed when a VW with flower decals makes an illegal left a few cars in front of them at a multi-lane intersection.
Malloy said:
There goes ten minutes down the tube!
Malloy stays cool and professional while the sassy young driver (Melody Patterson from F Troop) tries to intimidate them.
Malloy and Reed think they've hit the jackpot when they find a car in an alley with a TV in the back seat, followed by a nearby suspicious character who flees upon seeing them. Reed chases him on foot through some back patios, over a wood fence, and into a pool on the other side. Back at the squad car, a group of kids gather whose tough-talking spokesman is future alternate Linus Stephen Shea.
Sign o' the times: At the station, the evasive suspect, Fenster (Ray Ballard), briefly explains to Reed how the photofax that they use to transmit fingerprints works. Some offscreen follow-up investigation by Sgt. MacDonald reveals that Fenster was telling the truth in that it wasn't even his car, though he was impersonating a gas company employee to steal people's valuables; and that the TV in the car was just being taken in for repair by its owner, an off-duty cop.
Capping off the episode, Malloy and Reed learn in the break room that two more TVs were stolen while they were engaged in all of this.
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Get Smart
"Snoopy Smart vs. the Red Baron"
Originally aired September 28, 1968
Wiki said:
KAOS has devised a new way of destroying the American potato crop, and Max and 99 have to find out how they're doing it. The trail leads to Siegfried, Shtarker, and an aerial dogfight over Twin Falls, Idaho — which is where 99's mother (Jane Dulo) lives. Max and 99 are torn between their desire to stop KAOS from taking over the world and...their desire to have Max make a good impression on 99's mother. A spoof of "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron".
Sign o' behind-the-times...
Max said:
The Russians may be way ahead of us in the Moon program, but we're ahead of them in rubber food.
Also, somebody needs to tell the Chief that potatoes aren't a vegetable.
The episode bends over backwards not to reveal 99's name, or her mother's.
Overall, this one was a little more so-so to me, compared to last week's outing.
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Mind you, if I were inclined to change that, I only recently gained access to the show via Me, and they're currently in the middle of Season 2 at a rate of one episode a week, so the option to sync it up with 50th anniversary viewing wouldn't be coming anytime soon.
Laugh-In is definitely the MAD magazine of television.
I was afraid that might happen sooner or later. Had I known, I might have watched ahead, at least for this season.
I forgot that MeTV even had episodes online. Some of the links on their revamped page don't even work, like The Invisible Man. No Sci-Fi on there at all.