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50th Anniversary Viewing
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Mission: Impossible
"The Freeze"
Originally aired December 22, 1968
Wiki said:
A bank robber (Donnelly Rhodes) plans to wait in prison on a lesser charge until the statute of limitations expires on his theft; the IMF must convince him to retrieve the loot early, before his double-crossed partners get wind of the con.
The reused footage of a transparent eight-track tape in a station wagon said:
This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
According to the tape, they only had two days to come up with and enact this plan...that definitely stretches suspension of disbelief a bit far. I was always under the impression that they were taking a little offscreen time to set up these elaborate schemes. This episode blows that idea out of the water.
Portfolio? I smell a guest agent!
Two guest agents! We also see Jim sketching the design of the Fake Cryo-Chamber. Our first guest agent, Dr. Bowman (John Zaremba), is a doctor at the prison, conveniently enough. The other isn't at the briefing because he's a prisoner named Davis (Vince Howard) whose sentence has been reduced! I get the distinct impression that they're recruiting such mission-specific operatives as agents of opportunity, rather than using regular rotating members. And getting contacts like these two lined up is all the more reason why these things should be taking a little more than 48 hours from conception to completion!
Raymond Barret (Rhodes) is getting an exam when Cryo-Quack Jim comes in to have a discussion with Bowman about a prisoner who'd agreed to be frozen but has backed out. Bowman subsequently tells Barret that he has a terminal illness with no cure...that's gotta violate all sorts of rules of medical ethics! Barret is released to see Dr. Rollin (You're a new and better man / He helps you to understand / He does everything he can) and catches a magazine article in the waiting room about Cryo-Quack Jim. (Seriously, how long would it have taken to make a fake issue of a major magazine in 1968?) Dr. Rollin tells Barret that he's expecting a breakthrough in a few years, but won't attempt a cure now--richly citing malpractice!
So is Dr. Rollin's nurse yet another operative, or just a hired actress? And does she sell poppies from a tray?
Barret proceeds to see CQ Jim, who won't freeze him after he's technically dead because there'd be too much organ damage to deal with, so Barret insists on being frozen immediately. Jim doesn't want to do that either, but Barret learns that the Cryo-Quack is making payments to Blackmail Willy, gets ahold of Willy's fake evidence about Jim having frozen his wife alive, and uses it to blackmail Jim himself.
So Jim fake-reluctantly puts Barret in a tube custom-built by Barney Cryogenics. Barret comes to in Fake Future Room, complete with Fake Future Cars out the window and Fake Future Push-Button TV that shows tapes of guys flying with
Thunderball jetpacks as a competition sport. Well, they got flat-screen TVs right, at least. In come Future Doc Rollin and Nurse Cin, from whom Barret learns that it's now...wait for it...1980! And Holy Roddenberry, he also learns that they don't use money anymore in the future--at least not cash. So Barret uses the Fake Future Push-Button TV version of Google Maps to look up where he stashed his loot, tipping off the IMF as to its location.
But the plan hits an Intended MalFunction™ when Barret breaks the Fake Fourth Wall, learning that he's on a set, and sneaks out to find that it's still 1968...in fact, it's still August 1968, but the exact date is a Wee L'il Fake Future...one day in the story's future, just past the statute of limitations.
Meanwhile, Davis has been feeding info to Barret's outside accomplices about Barret's whereabouts and activities. They, too, make an intended discovery of the IMF's scam and force the team to take them to Barret. One of Barret's accomplices catches Barret retrieving his loot from a tombstone, there's a struggle, and the accomplice is slot. The police fly in to arrest Barret with 10 minutes left until the statute expires!
This one was kind of fun up to a point, but it really stretched credibility left, right, and center. I'm not even sure what the point was supposed to be of setting up such an elaborate Fake Future only to let everyone find out that it was fake as part of the scheme.
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"Should All Our Old Acquaintance Be Forgot"
Originally aired December 26, 1968
Wiki said:
Ann's plans to spend New Year's Eve alone with Donald are thwarted by her parents, most of her neighbors, their cousins, and people neither of them know.
This year
That Girl skips Christmas and does a New Year's episode. The setup for the title shot is a particularly cute bit of Ann introducing herself without actually saying the words.
Donald: I'm going to spend this New Year's alone with the most beautiful, the most talented, delightful, desirable woman in the world!
Ann: The heck you are! You're gonna spend this New Year's Eve with...[see screecap]
In the teaser, Donald's trying to get last-minute reservations by pretending not to know it's New Year's Eve. Donald's Dining Budget Update: He considers a price of $70 per couple (around $500 in today's money) to be unthinkably expensive...which, looking back, is consistent with his upper limit as established in
"The Face in the Shower Room Door".
Anyway, Ann's alternate plan is to spend New Year's Eve with a minimal cast on the existing regular set, which is not only romantic but frugal both for them and for the show. But this being a sitcom, things don't go according to plan. First the Maries drop by after 10:30 to check in on things, Mr. Marie having found out about Ann and Donald's plans in an earlier scene. Then a random neighbor invites Ann down to her party and, when she finds out Ann's already got something going on, invites up everyone at her party! Then more neighbors get wind of the party at Ann's place and start coming over with their own entourages.
Ann said:
Donald, you know what the song says, "Should old acquaintance be forgot?" I think so.
Meanwhile Ruth and Jerry, who were originally supposed to go out with Ann and Donald, are trying to have their own private night together next door with relative success, but Ann has to keep imposing on them in her effort to improvise appetizers for all the unexpected guests at her place. At one point Jerry gets so upset that Bernie Kopell nearly switches over to doing Siegfried. Minutes before midnight, the Baumans relent and come over to join the party.
Amidst all the chaos, Donald confronts a guy who's dancing on a table with a lampshade over his head and it turns out to be a glowering Mr. Marie!
Ann said:
Boy, it sure looks like everybody's having a good time...whoever they are.
As the revelers at Ann's place noisily ring in the New Year, we find that Ann and Donald have taken advantage of the opportunity to slip next door to the Baumans' now-vacated apartment and enjoy a little of that privacy that they were looking forward to.
In the coda, there's a joke about how Ann "blew it" because she didn't say something about 1968 having been a Leap Year. I had to Google it to clarify that they were referring to a tradition in which it was OK for women to propose to men on Leap Years. Anyway, Ann and Donald washing dishes after the party while Jerry comes over looking for an orange juice glass suggests that it's the next morning, which suggests that Donald was with Ann overnight...though I suppose he could have crashed on the Baumans' couch.
"Oh, Donald" count:
1
"Oh, Daddy" count:
1
"Oh, Ruthie" count:
1
"Oh, Jerry" count:
1
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Get Smart
"One Nation Invisible"
Originally aired December 28, 1968
Wiki said:
Max is assigned to protect Dr. Canyon, the inventor of an invisibility spray. Because Dr. Canyon has sprayed herself with said invisibility spray, Max has no idea she is a beautiful woman. This becomes a problem when Max has to protect Dr. Canyon at his apartment in the middle of the night. Returning home from assignment, 99 arrives back at the apartment just as Dr. Canyon's invisibility spray is wearing off. The title is a parody of the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States, "one nation, indivisible".
I love when the person who writes the Wiki descriptions feels the need to explain such an obvious title reference. At least they didn't claim that the entire episode was a spoof of the Pledge!
Cross-Reference Alert: Dr. Canyon's invisibility spray is described as having the ability to "cloud men's minds". The bar where Max meets Canyon has some pretty groovy-sounding distorted guitar music. Max only learns that Canyon's a woman (Lyn Peters) when he wants the two of them to escape some KAOS agents via the men's room. Alas, this is a TV-friendly, externally applied invisibility gimmick that affects the user's clothes.
Having used the last of the spray on himself, it falls to Max to sneak into a KAOS facility to get some documents. Confident in his invisibility, Max taunts the KAOS agents there only to find that the formula has worn off.
Max said:
Don't tell me I'm not invisible.
(You know how the rest goes.)
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Hogan's Heroes
"Man in a Box"
Originally aired December 28, 1968
Wiki said:
LeBeau’s small stature makes him perfect for smuggling into a research facility.
LeBeau is initially smuggled out in a garbage can to take pictures while undercover with a contact named Luise, and is believed by Klink to have simply escaped.
Klink: What interests me is the method of escape.
Schultz: Herr Kommandant, maybe a tunnel?
Klink: IM-possible! Why do you think I have you patrolling all over the compound? If there were a tunnel, the ground would collapse.
Hogan convinces Klink to let him go into town to look for LeBeau. Klink assigns Schultz to tail Hogan in civilian clothes, and then follows Schultz himself. Schultz looks anything but inconspicuous decked out in an off-white trenchcoat and hat.
Hogan: There he is, Sam Spade, the giant economy size. That's my shadow.
Luise: Is he following you?
Hogan: Yeah, he keeps losing me. I just stop and wait for him to catch up.
They smuggle LeBeau back into the research facility via the titular situation to follow up by cracking a safe, while Klink is still trying to find him. Hogan manipulates Klink into effectively covering LeBeau's escape from the research facility under the guise of negotiating with LeBeau to surrender and return to the camp.
I caught a
Night Gallery in the background the other day with Werner Klemperer in it. He was sporting a beard, which actually distracted me from focusing on his lack of monocle.
DIS-missed!
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Change of M.O. Advisory: Upon considering my options for including
Dragnet as Spring/Summer catch-up viewing, I've decided to discontinue watching/reviewing Season 3 of
The Wild Wild West in 51st anniversary sync, to save what's left of the season for grouping together with Season 2
Dragnet episodes in a few months. In the meantime, I'm planning to cover
Dragnet at the rate that Cozi's airing it (two episodes a week), to gain ground in that series and to sooner get it caught up with where we're leaving WWW. Of course, all of this is subject to change if I get a better idea and/or yet another show comes along in the meantime.
I'm thinking of also saving
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to roughly sync up with contemporaneous
Dragnet and WWW, though I'm still planning to cover
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as soon as I get to it.
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Its no wonder that Nixon--who campaigned on a promise to end the war--was invited to make that September 16, 1968 cameo on Laugh-In, as he--despite being one of the most hardline of Cold War Republicans (the polar opposite of the Hollywood Left) was seen in any favorable light because of that one and only thing the Hollywood left was most concerned with. Further, Laugh-In producer George Schlatter has said he thought the L-I appearance won the presidency for Nixon (suggesting the show's support also won over voters from other parties who may not have supported the Republican.
Ah...so there's a larger issue with
Laugh-In at play here. I don't think there was any conspiracy on the part of the show to take down LBJ and get Nixon elected. LBJ, as the incumbent President, was a legitimate subject of parody; while Nixon, as a presidential candidate, was--regardless of party--both a legitimate guest and a casting coup.
Whether that was true or not cannot be verified, but one cannot underestimate the fact Nixon's "end the war" promise was the reason he was invited to the show
I don't think we can assume that at all.
More than establishing it, Bullitt brought a level of adult realism to so many aspects of a police drama and the politics that was manipulating the streets of that time.
That layered character building made Chalmers as vital a character to the story as Bullitt, and the perfect, phony contrast to a man who as real with everyone as one can imagine, and reflective of the era's increasing distrust of politicians, the latter being a model for that kind of commentary in nearly every police TV series and movie since, right up to current productions.
This was no law enforcement officer--or politicians cut from the Jack Webb mold to be found here. In other words, you could not find a greater opposite to all things Bullitt than Dragnet or then-recently premiered Adam-12.
That was a unique, powerful characterization of one in law enforcement on film. Until this film, it was rare for any TV or movie cop to seriously doubt himself and whether of nor not he had been too consumed by the blood and brutality of the job, and what kind of human he would be.
What made the film was its naturalistic, bleak depiction of police and politics with McQueen perfectly bringing the "caught in the middle fighter" to life. While movies already had lone or unconventional cop/detective films, such as Harper with Paul Newman (Warner Brothers, 1966), Bullitt was one of film's major genre breakthroughs with an almost incalculable effect on TV and movie law enforcement productions. Put it this way, the detective/cop genre had been around since the dawn of film, with some classic films peppered among the lot, but then there was everything after Bullitt, which was a different animal ushering in the desire for realism, instead of the spit-and-polish still sold on TV and some of the movies predating it.
I found this insightful to appreciation for the film. What
Bullitt was bringing to the table was so commonplace by the time I started watching films and shows that would have been influenced by it that it had all become pretty cliche. And I still think that what
Bullitt was offering in these areas was more style than substance, and that some elements, such as Bisset's character, were underbaked.
not to mention his apparently racist demand that African American Dr, Willard be replaced for being "too--(any number of lies)" despite the nurse identifying him as one of the top physicians.
While the optics were bad, I wasn't under the impression that Chalmers wanting Willard removed was because of his race, but because Willard wouldn't tell him what he wanted to hear regarding Fake Ross's recovery.
Ah. Often considered the nadir of The Monkees as an entertainment force, but I've always felt that was a knee-jerk overreaction.
From what I've seen, I'd call it a fair assessment.
Magical Mystery Tour had no plot at all
Nope, it had a plot, however thin: "The Beatles and an assortment of colorful characters take a bus tour and strange things happen." Describe the story of
Head in one sentence.
Head was clearly about breaking the conventions of the group's origins and the greater artificiality of Hollywood as a business.
That's a theme, not a plot. It would have made nice subtext for an actual story.
Head is certainly not flawless, but the combined talents of the group made for a better experimental production (and window into a group changing beyond that which initially made them famous) than The Beatles' ill-fated Magical Mystery Tour or equally ill-fated Rolling Stones' Rock 'n' Roll Circus.
I haven't seen
Rock and Roll Circus (and maybe should look into changing that), but from what I've read and heard (on the CD), it was basically an all-rock variety show with a circus motif/setting, which is very straightforward and conventional compared to
Magical Mystery Tour or
Head...and thus lumping in
Rock and Roll Circus with either of the others is a case of apples to oranges.
1969 
