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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
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Ironside
"No Game for Amateurs"
Originally aired September 24, 1970
Wiki said:
Ironside rides a draft dodgers' railway to find a killer.
50th Anniversaryland's new favorite top-billed guest, Martin Sheen (now clean-shaven), is playing a guy named Johnny, who leaves a very pregnant girl (Pamela McMyler) in the lobby of a building to go up and run an errand: using a janitor's closet to assassinate Richy Bolton (Carl Reindel), a grand jury witness coming out of the courthouse across the street. Then he calmly walks out with the girl while the police storm the building. The Chief is, of course, involved in the case and on the scene, and Officer Edwards (another former
Dragnet regular, Lew Brown) explains that the man and woman in question couldn't have gotten down the building that fast as heavy with child as she was. Johnny made the hit on behalf of the underworld figure against whom the witness was testifying, Arnie Lane (Tony Brande).
Officer Edwards later makes an off-duty visit to the Ironsidecave to show the Chief a picture of the girl, Nancy O'Dwyer, that he spotted in the paper--which identifies her as an activist whose husband was killed in Vietnam; and an eyewitness confirms that she was alone in the lobby at the time of the shooting. The team goes to question Nancy, and learn that she thought she was helping Johnny to avoid the draft. Nancy's hooked Johnny up with a girl named Peggy and a guy named Phil (Casey MacDonald and Michael Greer), who are hiding a number of prospective dodgers while arranging to get them north of the border. Phil's system involves the dodgers having draft cards, which Johnny doesn't, saying that he burned it, so Phil goes to a bartender friend (Ken Drake) to get one made up for him. While Barbara Smith performs a folk song, Mark enters the bar and approaches Phil, saying that Nancy sent him. But when Phil walks outside with him, he learns that it's a bust.
The team takes Phil to talk to Nancy to convince him to help them out. He agrees to cooperate in a plan to bust Johnny at a gas station stop to pick up another passenger (actually an undercover cop). But Johnny gets suspicious when he learns that Phil will be driving the dodgers to the state line, as it doesn't match up with something that Peggy said to Phil when Johnny first arrived; and more so when he sees that the tank is almost full. The undercover cop gets in an accident at the last minute, so Mark volunteers to take his place. But at the station, Johnny pulls his gun to take control of the situation, making Phil avoid getting the gas so that Mark has to come to them. This spoils the plan and makes the team and Inspector Rees (Johnny Seven) have to pursue Phil's car. Johnny's photographic memory triggers again when he remembers seeing Mark with Ironside outside the courthouse. Meanwhile, back at the Cave, the Chief has Nancy call a dodger who's already made it to Canada to get details about the pipeline. They set up a roadblock made to look like a highway accident and get the drop on Johnny.
In the coda, we learn that Johnny's testified against Lane, and Phil and Nancy drop by the Cave to turn themselves in. The team all agree that they don't have enough on the duo to press any charges, but Ironside tells Phil that he will have to report his activities to the feds. (Apparently the poor other guy who was being taken across the border [Michael Christian, I presume from the credits] went and got drafted in the aftermath.) When the Chief asks Phil if he plans to quit railroading, Phil answers, "No. We just moved the station."
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The Odd Couple
"The Laundry Orgy"
Originally aired September 24, 1970
Series premiere
Wiki said:
Oscar and Felix have a disastrous date with two English sisters.
This is another one of those shows that I wasn't that into as a little kid, but used to see on the same night as
Mary Tyler Moore (by the time I was old enough to remember seeing it). Apparently my sister and I were routinely sent to spend the night with Grandma (who lived in the same house as the aforementioned uncle) on Saturdays, because I only remember seeing these shows (and
Bob Newhart) there. I'm now thinking that maybe I should have covered the 1968 Jack Lemmon / Walter Matthau film when it came up.
Apparently they didn't start using the narration in the opening credits until mid-season. There's no origin story here, though it's made clear that Felix is the more recent dirvorcee, as he still misses his ex, Gloria.
Oscar has secured a date with the Pigeon sisters who live upstairs, so he plans to come up with an excuse to break up their weekly poker night early, though Felix is reluctant to go against the usual routine. Apparently all of the poker guys are recurring, though Roy (Ryan McDonald) is only in the first half of Season 1. Vinnie (Larry Gelman) and Speed (Garry Walberg) will each appear in several episodes over the course of the series. But Murray Greshler (Al Molinaro), will be much more frequently occurring, appearing in 73 of 114 episodes--third in number of appearances only to the show's costars, Randall and Klugman.
After various little ploys of Oscar's during the game fail, he comes up with the idea of turning the heat up real high, ostensibly for Felix's sinuses; but the sisters, Cecily an Gwendolyn (Monica Evan and Carole Shelley, whom I read played the same roles in the play and film), finally arrive; so Oscar has to come clean with the guys and ask them to leave...but Felix nixes the idea, feeling that it's unfair to them.
Oscar and Felix finally resolve to take the sisters out while the guys continue the game, but when they're discussing what to do, Felix brings up doing the laundry, and the girls actually jump at the idea. So they decorate the laundry room and dance to Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles" (charted Nov. 26, 1966; #57 US; #14 AC)...at one point, Felix and his date sit on a love seat watching the washing machine like a TV. Then Murray comes down and announces that the guys voted to break up the game early so that Oscar and Felix could have their apartment back for the date.
Once back in their pad, Oscar is trying to get the girls to loosen up, but Felix obsesses over tidying up after the guys, and the girls join in. Oscar takes Felix aside to express his displeasure, and ends up airing all of his grievances with Felix's habits; Felix, in turn, demands to be allowed to clean up Oscar's pig sty of a room. The girls end up leaving, tired from cleaning, and Oscar's immediate reaction is to tell Felix to pack his bags...but they quickly start to each admit to their own faults, which ends with Oscar declaring that they can help each other to change. On that note, Felix dumps an ashtray on the floor...but has to turn his head while doing so.
In the coda, Oscar agrees to let Felix clean his room the next day as he heads for bed...then Felix sneaks out and picks up the ashtray mess.
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The Brady Bunch
"The Dropout"
Originally aired September 25, 1970
Season 2 premiere
Wiki said:
After winning a baseball game, Greg's ego runs amok after a compliment from Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team pitcher Don Drysdale. When Greg decides to dedicate his whole life to the sport and forgoes any thoughts of the university, Mike invites Drysdale over to talk about the drawbacks of life on the road, making sure Greg overhears. However, this backfires as Greg accepts all potential drawbacks, still convinced Major League Baseball is calling. When the Pony League team gets slaughtered in a 12-run shellacking and Greg gets blamed for losing the game, only then is sobered back to reality, deciding to get serious thinking about college instead.
I learned that they changed the theme song several times, and I'm not crazy about this version. In future seasons the male cast members will sing about the girls and vice versa, but in this version they're all singing in unison the entire time, which sounds too loud an atonal.
Don Drysdale, the episode's only credited guest, is having a house designed by Mike, who brings Don out back to meet the boys. Don gives Greg some pitching advice, showing him his "secret slider". Of course, Greg starts taking his prospective career too seriously, refusing to do anything that might injure his fingers, and waking up the adults by lifting weights at 5 a.m. (Any opportunity to show Alice in her robe and curlers.) Then he foregoes his regular homework to study a baseball encyclopedia, causing Greg's history teacher to call Carol about his neglect of schoolwork.
When Greg makes it known that he doesn't plan to finish high school, Mike and Carol talk to Don about it. Don tries to tell Greg about the downside of his career, but Greg just convinces himself that he'll be too big to let those things happen to him. Then the game comes--or at least a little stock footage of one--and Greg comes home dejected, having been pulled from it. Peter and Bobby are happy to see their big-headed brother get his comeuppance, but Mike goes in and has the customary dad talk with him, convincing him that he doesn't have to give up baseball, he just needs to strike a balance.
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The Partridge Family
"What? And Get Out of Show Business?"
Originally aired September 25, 1970
Series premiere
Wiki said:
When their mother (Shirley Jones) fills in for a sick singer, The Partridge Family is born. Danny (Danny Bonaduce) persuades Reuben Kincaid (Dave Madden) to manage them and they play their first performance, which might also be their last.
Cameo appearance made by: Johnny Cash
There's another new fake TV band in town!
The episode opens with the family driving their bus into L.A. for what appears to be a gig on
The Johnny Cash Show, which was airing Wednesdays on the same network, ABC. Cash's brief, close-up intro appears to have been filmed separately from anything else in the scene. The group performs "Together (Havin' a Ball)"; for pilot purposes, the cast credits are played over the performance in lieu of the usual series opening credits.
Shirley then narrates a flashback relating the band's rise to success. Six months previously, she was recently widowed and working a job in a bank while her kids were putting together a band in the garage. Their female singer couldn't make it, so they persuaded Mom to sing "Let the Good Times In".
Danny tries hocking the tape to Kincaid, then a big-city DJ passing through their town, and eventually gets him to listen to it in the airport restroom. Describing the shrewd and entrepreneurial Danny as a "40-year-old midget," Kincaid is convinced to secure a record contract for the group. (Danny's said to be 10, and Danny Bonaduce actually was only 11 by the time this aired.)
Weeks later Shirley hears their single on the radio. After a family conference, they buy the bus, paint it, and hit the road for Vegas, where they have a gig at Caesar's Palace. Shirley's the one who's nervous beforehand about performing onstage, but after the curtain rises, it's the kids who are frozen in the spotlight. As she apologizes frankly to the audience and tries to coach the kids to perform, the audience takes it as a comedy routine. Finally they start playing, doing abbreviated versions of both songs.
Back at home in their shag-carpeted living room, Chris (Jeremy Gelbwaks) wants to quit the band when a young girl named Debbie (Debra Pearce) demonstrates her skill on the drums, bruising his ego.
I was never really into this show, but I did see it as a kid (probably in syndicated reruns), and always strongly associated it with the immediate post-'60s vibe of my earliest memories in the early '70s. In addition to the band being inspired by the Cowsills, they're obviously going for a Brady Bunch vibe here, but the two younger kids, Chris and Tracy (Suzanne Crough) always seemed way too young to be playing in a band, and unlike their Brady counterparts, never seemed to have much in the way of personalities or screen presence.
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That Girl
"Counter-Proposal"
Originally aired September 25, 1970
Season 5 premiere
Wiki said:
Donald finally asks Ann Marie to marry him and takes his buddy's advice to buy the ring second-hand.
Yeah, I recorded this season from Antenna earlier in the year, so the episodes are no longer in my Xfinity app buffer, and thus no title frame screen grabs.
This season Marlo switches to longer, parted hair, and the opening credits (still showing the old footage of her bangs) switch to a Squiggy-approved version of the show's theme:
The episode opens with Don picking out a ring. His new Buddy of the Week, Bob Howard (Ronnie Schell, who'd previously appeared a couple of times as one of Ann's managers), convinces Donald to buy his own ring from a broken engagement.
Ann also has new recurring gal pal, Marcy (Reva Rose), whom she shows the tie pin that she bought Donald for their four-year anniversary. Ann and Donald's tradition is to have dinner at the site of their first date, a place called Citrus City, which serves orange crazies and hot dogs. Donald presents her with the ring there, and guess what she says when she sees it (three times)?
Donald: There's been a lot of "Oh, Donald"s, but I haven't heard one "Oh, yes" yet.
She also goes into a little slo-mo fantasy sequence.
Ann's high is busted when Bob comes to her place wanting his ring back because he got back together with his ex. Ann's in tears over the situation, but is still reluctant to give up what she sees as her ring. Because she doesn't want to know how much it cost, she has Bob cash the check he was going to give Donald and give her the money. She goes to Jerry Bauman's jeweler uncle, Mr. Franklin (Avery Schreiber), with the money in an envelope, not having looked at it, and picks out an identical ring--even haggling over the price that she won't let him tell her! She then takes the cash back to Bob with a note from Franklin telling him how much the difference is, which he offers to give her as a engagement present. But when Donald comes back from Washington, he comes clean about how he bought the old ring, and presents her with a new one.
"Oh, Donald" count:
11
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Love, American Style
"Love and the Father / Love and the Motel"
Originally aired September 25, 1970
Season 2 premiere
For this season only, the show as originally run switched to a half-hour format, so there will only be one or two segments per episode. And we're now at the point where I'm watching segments from the reedited-for-syndication episodes shown on Decades, so where I have segments from an original episode at all, I'll usually only have one of them.
In "Love and the Motel," Woody (Harry Morgan, out there having to learn his lines again) and Carol (Barbara Rush) are having a clandestine rendezvous in a room at the titular location--which has a brass bed, of course. They're both married to other people and both nervous about who might know where they are or that they're together. First they're stymied by realizing that they accidentally parked their cars next to each other blocks away; then about each of them receiving calls from a friend who knows where they are, but not why; then Woody gets uptight when he learns that he's been attracted to Carol a lot longer than she's been to him. Finally, Carol gets a call that one of her kids fell out of his bunk bed and may have injured himself, so she leaves. Woody makes lemonade from the situation, calling his wife and arranging for the two of them to get away from the kids by meeting at the motel.
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Another little black book.
Well, he's a general--he's gonna have his maps and tank battalion inventories and such.
This is a nice little character moment for LeBeau, which seems unusual for this show.
It was played with a bit of comic flair--he stands straight and proud, head tilted up, while "La Marseillaise" plays.
What did the AMA do to deserve the Finger?
So we probably don't know what the AMA did to deserve the Finger.
Yeah, I've usually relied on the video clips to do the talking. Think it was something about spinning some statistics.
At first I thought it was Nancy Wilson of Heart, but obviously that couldn't be.
This Nancy Wilson...she's come up before in the chart posts and on
Sullivan:
Yeah...I didn't buy how easily he got away with that.
Does it have a skull-and-crossbones on it?
But of course.
Wow, that's pretty early for a high-profile guest like that.
He had a string of hits under his belt by the fall of '67, but he was still a pretty new artist.
A few episodes later you could see Mannix visit a hippie club where Buffalo Springfield is playing. IIRC Neil Young stays far away from the camera, like he was maybe not into it.
This show's starting to sound more interesting. And yeah, Neil reportedly had the same attitude about being filmed at Woodstock, as I recall.
