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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 1)
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Mission: Impossible
"The Falcon: Part 3"
Originally aired January 18, 1970
Wiki said:
The IMF launch the last stage of their plan, but time is running out… This is the series's only three-part episode.
The drive-in theater speaker in the seven-minute recap said:
the same condensed version as it did last week.
As the episode commences, Fake Nicolai plants the list in the safe and slips away in time, as expected. Vargas finds his name on the list as Vinsky told him.
At the prison, Jim commences his fake interrogation of Prince Stephan, and Sabattini is called back to the palace by Vargas before Jim has obtained any fake results. Meanwhile, a simulated gas leak and some phone-patching trickery has gotten Barney into the prison as the gas man. A more-extended-than-usual sneaking around and breaking into places sequence ensues. Well into his truly unsuccessful fake questioning, Jim whispers his true motives in Stephan's ear, but Stephan loudly refuses to believe him before Jim convinces him to just keep his mouth shut. As the fake interrogation continues, Stephan begins to see bits of Jim's plan coming together...like Barney drilling a hole from the other side of a wall to extend a device behind an archway where the guards can't see it.
Buccaro has a clock delivered to (Fake) Nicolai that's really a bomb meant to kill him and Sabattini. Vinsky learns of it and is emphatic that Nicolai must live. They keep us hanging for a commercial break as Vargas tries to call Buccaro to cancel his manual triggering of the device...and surprisingly, the device actually gets triggered! It was a lousy assassination attempt, as both Fake Nicolai and Sabattini survive...but in the aftermath of the explosion, Paris is unmasked. Tracey slips away and gets a phone call to Jim at the prison to let him know everything's gone to hell. Jim in turn calls Willy to cut off communication lines to the prison while he also distracts the guards and remotely deploys the projection curtain gimmick (consisting of vertical blinds) that was demonstrated in Part 1's briefing and included in this week's recap, which makes it look like Jim is interrogating Stephan while they work at their escape from behind the curtain.
Having learned that Francesca isn't in her tomb, Sabattini attempts to question Paris and Tracey and begins to put it all together, ultimately realizing that Jim is working with them and plans to free Stephan. Sabattini heads for the prison despite his injury, and Paris signals Willy to release his secret weapon: Lucifer! Heading straight for Paris's device, with the help of an open window he attacks one of the guards and Paris overpowers his captors.
Meanwhile Barney has managed to cut a hole in the wall between the shaft and Stephan's cell, despite regular interruptions from the elevator, during which he has to stand very snug against the wall on his tiny ledge (you know he loves it). But as Sabattani's elevator comes down, one of Stephan's cut chains snags on something, so he and Jim have to flatten themselves underneath the car. Sabattini tries to shoot Rear Projection Jim and eventually hits the projector in Jim's briefcase. Inspecting behind the curtain, Sabattini succumbs to his injuries. In the meantime, Barney, Jim, and Stephan blow their way out via charges that Barney had set earlier and get picked up by Willy in his gas van. Paris and Tracey manage to make their rendezvous with the van, and we find the trio they were trying to rescue--Nicolai, Stephan, and Francesca--reunited in the back of the Willymobile. Mission: Accomplished.
I have to say, that may have been the best "unforeseen kink in the plan" moment yet. The last 20 minutes were pretty damn good.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 3, episode 18
Originally aired January 19, 1970
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., David Frye, Peter Lawford, Ed McMahon
This week's Quickies:
Ernestine calls a "Mr. Milhous":
The News intro song is stripper-themed.
The Fickle Finger of Fate goes to the Farmers Home Administration:
A salute to women:
Not sure what the painting theme is about here.
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"That Metermaid"
Originally aired January 22, 1970
Wiki said:
Don's new boss and Ann relate a story about Ann's summer job back home when she was younger and worked as a metermaid.
It turns out that Donald's New Boss of the Week, Lewis M. Franks (Dennis Weaver), is very casually friendly with Ann...going back to when she met him five years ago when she was still living in...Fenwick? This is now said to be where the Maries lived before they moved to Brewster. Never mind that we know she went to high school in Brewster. I'm sure there were plenty of other references that linked her childhood to Brewster and the family's home there, and I'll certainly be on the lookout for them in the future. I suspect that they just made up another town (which appears to be completely fictional...and looks like it's in California) to avoid any problems with the real Brewster in New York state, given what the story gets into.
In her flashback story, Ann is so reluctant to write out her first ticket that puts another coin in herself. She's more eager to call a tow truck for a car parked in front of a hydrant. But it turns out to be the mayor's car, so the police don't want to cooperate with her. Ann gets all worked up when she learns about the corruption in the system that lets all levels of city officials get out of tickets...then she gets fired and takes her story to the local weekly paper, which Lewis publishes. He prints her letter to the editor, which gets Mr. Marie in hot water, though he stands up for her. The paper also loses a major sponsor, a department store that the mayor owns. Ann forces her way into the mayor's (Tol Avery) office to confront him about the matter.
Supposedly Mr. Marie's Fenwick restaurant subsequently went out of business and that's why they moved to Brewster. And the mayor is said to have gotten voted out of office in the next election.
In the present, Ann, Donald, and Lewis decide to go to lunch and Ann makes a comment that if Donald's buying, there's a nice little hamburger place they could go to!
"Oh, Donald" count:
0
"Oh, Daddy" count:
2
"Oh, Lewis" count:
1
"Oh, Mr. Franks" count:
1
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Ironside
"Beware the Wiles of a Stranger"
Originally aired January 22, 1970
Wiki said:
A waitress who played a part in a robbery picks Mark as a fall guy.
Candy (ex-"
the movie star" Tina Louise) is working as a cocktail waitress in a gambling den that gets robbed. It turns out that she's actually an accomplice, and tasked with finding "a body" to take the fall for the robbery. She's subsequently picked up while hitchhiking by Mark, who's heading back to Frisco from somewhere.
Mark and Candy have trouble getting checked into a hotel together even though they're asking for separate rooms; and more trouble getting waited on in a coffee shop. Meanwhile, a couple of mob types from the group who were robbed are on their tail--the actual robber, Fred (John Ericson), who was wearing a mask for the robbery, and Bryce (former substitute Artie Charles Aldman). They're waiting in Candy's hotel room when Mark and Candy return from a day of shopping.
The plan had been to make it look like Mark was the robber, but alone with Fred, Candy seems to be having second thoughts about it. Mark overpowers Bryce and he and Candy make a break. Mark calls the Ironsidecave--a full halfway into the episode, which is the first we see of the rest of the team. Pretty sure they haven't done that before. The pair continue running, and Mark has by this point figured that she was setting him up, noting how she went out of her way to draw attention to the two of them everywhere they went. She shares with him that the plan was for Fred to send him over a cliff in a burning car. Bryce tagging along with Fred was an unanticipated complication, so he now plans to off him in the same crash. Mark figures that Fred was planning to off Candy as well so he wouldn't have to split the money. When Fred and Bryce find them, Mark tries to tell Bryce what the score is. Bryce listens, so Fred tries to pull a gun and gets himself shot. The loot is retrieved but Bryce wants to take Mark and Candy to his boss so he can decide what to do with them.
The Chief doesn't make the scene until the last quarter of the episode. Liaising with local law enforcement, he finds Fred's body. When Bryce, Mark, and Candy arrive at the boss's gambling den, the Chief and the police are there, having found the place with the help of a long-distance call that had been made from the hotel. Mark won't help Candy cover for her role in the affair, but Ironside thinks they'll go easy on her for turning state's evidence.
The front credits are back and Louise and Aldman are in them. William Boyett appears uncredited as a policeman blocking a closed road.
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I think it would have been better to really explore how superstition affects people in wartime and combat situations.
A Black Sheep episode did something like that. IIRC, it was an episode about a pilot nobody wanted to fly with because he had a reputation for being a jinx. There was a scene that had Pappy pointing out the good luck charms that everyone was carrying with them.
Yikes. That's not good, and also weird-- I wonder if MeTV was taken by surprise. There's been nothing in their emails about schedule changes. Two hours of Three Stooges is a lot, especially since the show really is out of their usual wheelhouse. I wonder if it's getting better ratings than Wild Wild West did, or if they're just getting paid a lot to air it.
The Three Stooges will gradually consume more and more of Me's schedule until it becomes ThreeTV.
Crap, crap and more crap!
You should have said: "The Crapper".
). Not just the incredibly clever and creative lyrics grabbed me, but the distinctive and diverse music throughout-- every song as catchy as a hit single.
I wasn't sure what you'd think of this one, given its subject matter!
