Ye gods, did I fall behind in my viewing this weekend!
Nearly done with last week's shows, but I'll post in two parts for ease of posting
and reading.
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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 1)
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Mission: Impossible
"The Code"
Originally aired September 28, 1969
Wiki said:
In order to stop an invasion and shatter an alliance between two countries, the IMF team must photograph and break a code in a matter of minutes, by mounting a chosen-plaintext attack. First appearance of Leonard Nimoy as Paris. For this season, the series does not replace Cinnamon Carter with a regular female lead, but uses a succession of guest stars.
The reel-to-reel tape on a closed merry-go-round said:
This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
If we're getting a series of female guest agents, I assume the portfolio scenes will be coming back as a regular thing. The new usual suspects, already laid out on the table:
And this week's hand-picked female guest agent:
She's not at the briefing, already being out in the field.
Paris in Disguise (with Beard) as a revolutionary named El Lider hijacks a plane to force it to land in our Enemy Country of the Week, Tierra Nueva. Dictator Bravo (Harold Gould) takes the opportunity to nab Hay's character, Roberts, who's on the plane and whom they've been made to learn is an American agent. Major Lacerda (Nate Esformes) strip-searches Roberts on the plane and finds her IMF-planted coded contact lenses. We don't see much, but the whole sequence is played up for titillation and humiliation. And that's it for her role in the mission. The bad guys mention letting her go once their planned invasion of neighboring San Cristobal has commenced. Other than Paris being on the plane with her, we never see her interact with the rest of the team. The contacts are meant to feed a false intel message to Bravo and his liaison with the United People's Republic, Janos (Michael Constantine), so that the IMF will have an opportunity to see it being coded. (And if Jim Phelps is such a master operative that he can plan and execute these complex, highly detailed missions anywhere in the world on short notice, you'd think the guy on the tape wouldn't feel the need to parenthetically expand "UPR" for his benefit.
)
With the help of a local agent, Jim and Willy stage a diversion to swap out the limo taking Paris into Tierra Nueva for one that's got a custom Barney-smuggling compartment behind the back seat...but why are Bravo's people inspecting what they think is their own limo? In his meeting with Bravo and Janos, Paris plants a bug in the office so that Jim and Willy, ultimately manning the back of a van, can listen in as he wheels and deals his way into the invasion plan and sews the seeds of turning Bravo and Janos against each other. Meanwhile Barney does his thing, gaining access to the maintenance spaces and putting his rolling camera gadget into the pipes, complete with a drill for making a peephole over the cryptology room. There's a really lame mid-episode jeopardy moment when the hole leaks water droplets down onto the equipment, which the crypto clerk eventually notices but just wipes up.
Jim listens in as Janos offers El Lider more in San Cristobal than Bravo is willing to give. Meanwhile Bravo takes the blown-up microdots down to crypto and has them coded and chemically overlaid onto a photo of an outdoor city square with a clock tower. There's a little more false jeopardy when Barney has to hide while the janitor briefly comes into the maintenance room where he's been operating. There's some more effective jeopardy when Jim not only has trouble breaking the code, but hears that the courier's schedule has been moved up, giving him even less time than he'd planned on. He eventually gets the idea that the additional key needed is in the photograph itself, and zeroes in on the time shown on the clock.
Having done his part, Barney slips out and back into his comfy limo compartment, while El Lider accepts Janos's offer and sews some last seeds before being driven to the airport. Jim cracks the code and has Willy transmit the invasion plans to San Cristobal via telegraph. When the limo makes its rendezvous with the IMF van, we see that Barney and Paris have the driver and guard trussed up, and the reunited team listen as Bravo and Janos react to the news of the prepared San Cristobal defenses and turn against one each other (a bit unconvincingly). They hear a gunshot, and the episode ends on this cheery moment...
Jim: The alliance is broken.
Barney: Who fired?
Jim: What difference does it make?
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 3, episode 3
Originally aired September 29, 1969
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Sonny & Cher, Flip Wilson
There's an opening cocktail party with Sonny & Cher, which includes the first of a couple of plugs of Cher's new picture,
Chastity.
They do what looks like a spoof of the old Right Guard commercial with the two guys in separate apartments talking through a shared medicine cabinet. Didn't realize the commercial went back to '69 (and couldn't quickly find a confirmation that it did--as with my own memory, it's described as being from the early '70s).
Sonny & Cher introduce General Bull Wright.
There's a recurring gag bit with Arte and Sonny on the moon with a telephone.
Cher kicks off the news segment, and this time there is a video:
One Liners with a traffic/cars theme...and Sonny & Cher:
S&C introduce this week's Quickies:
A Robot Theater camping skit.
The Fickle Finger of Fate goes to the Surgeon General.
The Mod, Mod World of Status:
The Sonny & Cher Joke Wall:
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Love, American Style
Unaired pilot
Series premiered September 29, 1969
And now we come to the pilot episode that Decades showed back in 2017. It apparently originally consisted of four half-hour segments that were used in various aired episodes throughout the first season. Decades only showed three of them, but evidence of the missing segment was in the list of guests in the opening credits as well as the end credits, which included the segment's name.
First a note of interest about the opening theme...
Wiki said:
For the first season, the show's theme song was performed by The Cowsills. Beginning in the second season, the same theme song was sung by the Ron Hicklin Singers, also known as the voices behind The Partridge Family (based on the Cowsills), among others, featuring brothers John and Tom Bahler (billed as The Charles Fox Singers).
Our first segment is "Love and a Couple of Couples," which actually aired as part of the first broadcast episode on September 29. It opens with a song that sounds like it was also performed by the Cowsills. Gary (Michael Callan) gets an awkward visit from his ex-wife, Aggie (Penny Fuller) while he's cooking dinner for his fiancee, June (Yvonne Craig). Aggie's clearly still attached to Gary--the main thing she wants to talk about is their old bed. While he's out of the room she tries on the ring that Gary plans to give June that evening and can't get it off. So she stays for dinner, upsetting June with her tales of their former marriage. After a visit from Aggie's glee club, during which June leaves in a huff, the ex-spouses call a plumber to help them get the ring off. While he's trying at it, they have an argument in which she admits that she still has feelings for him, and he realizes the same, so they decide to leave the ring where it's at.
I think they were trying to make June a little unlikeable, but I still feel sorry for her.
"Love and the Single Couple," which aired in the fifth episode on October 27, opens with a brief narration. It features Tim (Michael Anderson, Jr.) and Katherine (Diana Ewing), a young, unmarried couple who seem to both want to stay that way, but are facing pressure from Katherine's parents (Don Porter and former room-maker for Daddy Marjorie Lord). Kathy feels strongly about staying unmarried based on her antiestablishment principles, to the point where she and Tim get into a spat when he's willing to consider her parents' argument. He goes out walking for the night, and when he returns, reluctantly reveals that on a trip to Mexico they'd made four months ago, he'd tricked her into signing a marriage certificate. The parents are a lot more pleased about this development that Kathy is, but Tim explains his reasons for doing it, and persuades her to accept the arrangement, along with his ring.
Tim said:
If our love is strong, Kat, it'll survive anything, even marriage.
This segment has a song in the middle; and before that the audio was briefly interrupted by an EAS test on my former Decades affiliate.
"Love and the Uncoupled Couple" wasn't aired until episode 20, on February 20, 1970. Mike (Greg Morris) and Dessie (Janee Michelle) are another unmarried couple. His mission, which he's chosen to accept, is to get married when he's through with his medical internship and can better support her as a husband. They have an argument over this which culminates in him leaving...and selling the big, brass bed that does indeed feature in every segment as I'd read on Wiki. Dessie pays a visit to Dr. Harris (Tom Bosley) because she thinks she's pregnant, but gives him a couple of false names, unable to keep them straight--"Palmer" and "Parker" (make a note of this for comparison with our unshown fourth segment). At the hospital where they both work (she as a nurse), word gets around fast that she's available and other interns start asking her out. Mike's fellow intern and confidant Ernie (Darryl Hickman) learns of her condition, and the news quickly gets to Mike. Now he wants to get married, but she doesn't want him to just for that reason. She subsequently learns from Dr. Harris that she's not pregnant after all, and Tim sticks to the new plan.
Burt Mustin makes an uncredited appearance as a patient in this segment. And there's another song in the story.
The unshown segment, "Love and the Wild Party" (from episode 8, aired Nov. 17), would have featured
Peter Palmer, Robert Reed, Jeannine Riley, and Francine York. Anyway, note the bolded name of the first actor who was supposed to be in the segment--a No-Prize to anyone who gets the connection.
And that, alas, is all the
Love, American Style that I have.
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"My Part Belongs to Daddy"
Originally aired October 2, 1969
Wiki said:
Ann is directing a play back at home in Brewster and has to tell her father that he's not getting the starring role.
Ann and Donald are in Brewster for the annual country club show when Ann gets hooked into directing it by her father. She subsequently learns that everyone at audition night already thinks that she's doing it. Mr. Marie's regular number is "Minnie the Moocher," which we see Lew Parker perform. In trying to back out of the gig, Ann accidentally volunteers to direct a play instead.
The play Ann comes up with is a version of
Hamlet updated to be about the generation gap. Lew doesn't take his audition seriously, while the performance of a Mr. Brooks (Ned Wertimer) for the same part impresses her. When Ann summons up the courage to tell her father, he takes it very well. We skip to after the play, to learn that Brooks forgot his lines and Lew covered for him by arising from onstage death to sing "Minnie the Moocher".
"Oh, Donald" count:
2
"Oh, Daddy" count:
2
"Oh, Father" count:
1 (while reading with Mr. Brooks in his audition)
"Oh, Harry" count:
1
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Kind of makes me wonder about the logistics-- did the boys drive them to the show or were they delivered on a flatbed? "Ed, can you sign for these hoodless hot rods?"
I have to imagine that sort of thing was strictly the show's bag.
Topo is a Yankees fan?
Looks like Topo got his wish...they were in the Series, but got beaten by the Cardinals, 4 to 3. Also looks like it was broadcast on NBC, so still wouldn't have preempted 12OCH, which was on ABC.
I remember seeing this, or perhaps another appearance.
Kinda doubtful they'd bring her on again outside of the context of just having won the pageant.
This sounds like a really good episode. Complex issues with no good answers and war is Hell.
If you're ever interested in checking one out, the ones that I'm currently watching are all on YouTube. I have to say, I've been getting a lot more out of these early episodes than I did the first time around.
You got it. Looks like 2018 is sold out, otherwise I could brag about my name on the cover. I'm not sure if I'll be on the cover this year, since I'm just in the "Honorable Mention" category (but people get to read it, and that's all I care about).
Yeah, I was wondering why your name wasn't on the cover of that one.
