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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
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"Write Is Wrong"
Originally aired November 6, 1969
Wiki said:
Don writes a comedy sketch about their previous adventures being stranded at JFK Airport.
Ann and Donald are attending a party for the third season of
The Barry Forbes Show, which Ann has appeared on, and have a chat with the show's producer, Harry Cook (William Schallert), who's interested in having Donald write a script for the show based on the previous week's experience at JFK Airport, which he'd written up for
Newsview. Donald agrees on the condition that Ann plays herself.
And it looks like we have a new Ruth Bauman, Alice Borden. Ruthie wants to be in the story, even though she wasn't involved in the situation. In contrast, Mr. Marie threatens to sue if his role with the sandwiches gets in. Even Ann has her input about how Donald is writing the script when she finds out that she's been renamed "Cindy". Ann loves the final product, but the story editor thinks that it stinks, as it doesn't suit the comedy style of the show. It falls to Ann to tell Donald that they're completely rewriting his script, so of course she doesn't. The situation gets worse when the rewritten script not only includes the part about her father hoarding sandwiches (which had been in Donald's story on the incident, though he didn't identify who did the hoarding), but also makes Donald's publisher, Mr. Adams--whom he'd included in the story in a flattering manner--look like a fool.
Donald, Lew, and Mr. Adams (Forrest Compton--definitely not the same publisher that Don confronted during the water cooler incident last season) come to Ann's place to watch the show, and it turns out that Ann sabotaged the set by removing the plug from the cord. Lew fixes the plug, but they find that the show's been preempted by news coverage of another blizzard. Ann never does tell anyone about the script, and when the possibility of the episode being rerun comes up, she says that she'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.
"Oh, Donald" count:
5
"Oh, Daddy" count:
3
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Get Smart
"And Baby Makes Four: Part 1"
Originally aired November 7, 1969
Wiki said:
CONTROL has been looking for the location of the new KAOS headquarters for the last 4 months. A new lead has Max doing the surveillance of the bus station on the lookout for KAOS agent Simon the Likable (Jack Gilford), a dangerous operative who has gotten his nickname because he is so seemingly sweet and charming that he captivates everyone and anyone around him into hopeless avuncularity. Simon is to receive directions on how to get to the new headquarters covertly slipped into his trenchcoat while its rests on a coat hook in a coffee shop. Max receives a call from 99, saying it's time to go to the hospital to give birth. Max rushes out of the coffee shop, taking Simon's coat by mistake. Max had instructions on how to get to the hospital in his coat. Max and 99 wind up using the wrong map and end up at KAOS's new HQ, a sinister sanctuary, instead of the maternity ward.
Max is going through the typical TV schtick for expectant fathers. In the teaser, he races up to the front of his apartment, goes in and gets the suitcase, throws it in the car, takes off, then goes back to pick up 99. And that was only a practice run.
While Max and the Chief are poring over a map trying to determine the location of KAOS's current headquarters, Max is looking for shortcuts to the hospital instead. Did they always play up Larabee as being even more clueless than Max? Because I've just started noticing it this season.
Simon's likeability is treated as a superpower...e.g., the waitress leaves herself a tip for him. And I'm not getting anything out of the actor's performance that really sells it. He acts like a sort of unassuming nebbish.
The new KAOS HQ is a sanitarium, where the head doctor / KAOS agent in charge is Kruger (Dana Elcar). Kruger knows who Max and 99 are and figures out that they've come to KAOS's lair by mistake. Our "To Be Continued" drops as Kruger has just drawn a gun behind Max's back (while Max is looking in a mirror) and his nurse is about to give 99 a shot in another room.
The Chief is referred to by name as Harold Clark...have they dropped that name before? I seem to recall a name coming up last season, but that it was supposed to have been a fake one...and that might have been it.
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Hogan's Heroes
"Bombsight"
Originally aired November 7, 1969
Wiki said:
The already difficult task of sabotaging the new German bombs becomes further complicated when Newkirk is caught with his hands in Klink’s safe.
When Schultz doesn't want any of the prisoners looking outside to see what the Germans are working on, Hogan sends Newkirk outside to make sure that nobody inside is looking out. Burkhalter subsequently tells them a lot of what they need to know about the bombs, which are equipped with special radio-targeting systems, thanks to a bug in a vase of flowers that Hogan put on Klink's desk, but the flowers trigger the general's hay fever, so Klink tosses the vase out the window. Needing to get into the safe for the blueprints of the bombs, Hogan concocts a story of a thief among the prisoners to convince Klink to put Hogan's watch in the safe while Newkirk spies on the combination from outside the window. But when Newkirk takes a crack at the safe, Klink abruptly returns to his office and Newkirk is caught.
Hogan plays up the idea that Newkirk is the barracks thief, and uses follow-up on this issue in an attempt to temporarily swap the plans--which Klink has out for the demonstration of the bombs at Stalag 13 to German brass--so that Newkirk can photograph them, but Newkirk's attempt to develop the film is ruined by Klink checking on him. Finally the prisoners plants radios in various places to cause the bombs to hit off-target during the demonstration, which includes blowing up Burkhalter's staff car...which Klink has to pay for.
I thought that the subminiature espionage camera used by Newkirk looked like an anachronism, but a little Googling revealed that they do go back to the WWII era.
Dis-MISSed!
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Adam-12
"Log 63: Baby"
Originally aired November 8, 1969
Wiki said:
Officer Malloy asks the new girl in the office out on a date. Reed's wife goes to the hospital to have their child but Reed has a hard time keeping tabs on her over the phone while she's there.
If there was ever a subplot about Malloy asking the new girl out, there was no sign of it in this edit. I suspect that there may have been some confusion with the Season 5 episode "The Late Baby," which had Tina Sinatra in exactly such a role.
Reed comes in for his watch even though Jean is at the hospital and expecting that afternoon. Mac and Malloy both insist that he should just take the day off, but he plans to keep abreast of her condition and leave early when she's ready to deliver. He's describing in detail what an organized checklist system he's got going on when Mac and Malloy point out that he forgot to put on his socks.
Reed's system starts to go to pieces when he tries calling the hospital from a pay phone and is beside himself to find that they don't have a record of Jean having been checked in. Reed's conversation is interrupted when they get a call for a 390--a drunk in the middle of the road waving his jacket like a matador. They learn that he's celebrating having been given a parcel of land but overturned his car there.
Subsequent calls establish that Jean is at the hospital, but Reed still has trouble getting into direct contact with her. Even the woman on the phone and a gas station proprietor wonder why he didn't just take the day off. Reed's attempts are interrupted again by a call for a 211 suspect fleeing on foot. They catch the young purse snatcher on the grounds of a motel.
Back in the car, Malloy suggests calling in a code six so they can go to the hospital, but they get a call for a 459. A young man in a tree who knows his police codes (Michael Freeman) shows them the busted coin boxes of the apartment complex's washing machines while his offscreen mother has coffee with a neighbor. When Malloy's calling it in via the pay phone in the laundry room, he gets news that the station was called about Jean having gone into delivery. The officers have to wait for the special investigator to arrive, after which they make another run for the hospital, but Malloy has to stop the car suddenly for a young man crossing the street on a bicycle and finds that he's scraped the parked car next to them, so now they have to call AI and find the man who owns the car, whom the boy leads them to. By the time they're done with AI, Mac drives onto the scene and informs Reed that his wife has delivered.
The officers finally make it to the hospital and Reed is taken to Jean's room, where he meets his newborn son. I've seen this episode a couple of times before, but it touched me a little more in 50th anniversary immersive retro birthday week context. Happy 50th birthday, fictional Baby Reed! Our theme week isn't quite over, as we'll be getting the Baby Smart birth next week.
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Another sweet maneuver, assuming that was a deliberate move by Temple.
Why else would he open the spigot, drive the fuel truck into the building, and light the gas trail?
I saw pre-Batman Adam West playing a jackass small-town reporter on a Perry Mason episode yesterday. (Also confirmed that Mom still has This, so we can keep on watching Sea Hunt, which I have become completely enamored of).
Anything in particular about
Sea Hunt?
West was definitely trying to get away from his Batman image in his
Big Valley appearance. He played what initially appeared to be an upstanding, heroic cavalry officer (saving the Barkley ladies from being accidentally carried into a blasting range by out-of-control horses), who turned out to be a deranged serial killer of allegedly promiscuous women, whom he saw as his mother, who'd run a "boarding house" of ill repute when he was growing up.
