_______
50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
_______
Ironside
"Too Many Victims"
Originally aired November 12, 1970
Wiki said:
A captain sets out to take down the dealer who gave his daughter marijuana.
The episode opens with recently promoted detective Milt Stein (Forrest Tucker) enjoying a celebratory chili dinner with Team Ironside. At the same time, his daughter, Barbara (Kathy Lloyd), is driving home under the influence of pot and has an accident that hospitalizes her, placing her in the care of Dr. Paul Carr. At her bedside, dear ol' Dad chastises and yells at her, demanding to know the name of the guy she was smoking with. Eve pays her a more friendly and supportive visit, and Barbara opens up a bit about how she went to a party and succumbed to peer pressure, but doesn't seem to want to give Eve the name of her supplier. Nevertheless, we cut to Ed questioning a high school football player named Pete (Alex Kravett), who won't even admit to having been supplied...at least in the locker room. Later he calls Ed and gives him the name of his supplier: Marty Beale (M. Jonathan Steele), who has a record.
Barbara's home and being visited by Eve, who gives her a groovy but non-Squiggy-approved record as a present, and attempts to explain to Barbara where her old man's coming from. Having borrowed Beale's police record from a narc detective named Frank (Andrew Rubin), Captain Stein stakes out Beale. Later Detective Frank visits the Ironsidecave and informs Milt that he just brought Beale in on a charge of possession with intent to sell...but Ironside expresses doubt concerning Beale's guilt. At Beale's pad, the Chief is told how the super found his stash under a leaky sink while he was on one of his trips to Mexico. Bob and Frank both think it was too sloppy for Beale and more likely a frame. The Chief determines from the way the stash was packaged that it's more likely from the Midwest than Mexico, so he looks for potential suppliers who get their stuff from that region. Confronted by the Chief, Stein admits to having framed Beale...off the record...and tries to convince the Chief that his vigilantism was the right thing to do and that Beale needs to be kept off the streets.
In a moody moment as a heavy nighttime rain falls on the Cave, the Chief, heavy with the burden of weighing his options, tells Mark about his history with Milt from when they were partners in Homicide years back...and Cozi cuts to one of their damn late-night dating hotline commercials in the middle of the scene. When we come back, Barbara's popped by to plead on her father's behalf. When the Chief stands by his principles, despite Milt being less than a year from retirement, she freaks out on him. The next day the Chief visits Milt in his office, where he's cleaning out his desk while facing a suspended sentence. He tells Bob that if he could, he'd do it all over again. Cut to Ed coming out of a courthouse to reveal that Beale has been released, and the Chief vowing to put him away, feeling that he owes it to Milt. He'll bring Beale to justice in the same episode that Jeanine Duvalier visits Frisco.
This one was more of an atmospheric drama than a mystery. I couldn't really get behind Beale's motivation given that the drug was pot. If somebody has an accident while driving drunk, do you go on a revenge spree against the liquor store owner?
_______
The Odd Couple
"Oscar the Model"
Originally aired November 12, 1970
Wiki said:
An ad exec directs Felix to use Oscar in a big cologne campaign. Albert Brooks guest stars.
Felix's client Rudy Mandell (Albert Brooks) wants a "now" face for Mandar cologne ads, and sees a portrait of Oscar in Felix's office (as well as a file cabinet drawer full of pills).
Felix: I've known Oscar for fifteen years and he wasn't even "now" then.
Well that handily contradicts the origin episode, which had them meeting seven years earlier.
Felix: You have a groovy, "in" look--you're what's happening.
Oscar: You been watching Mod Squad again?
Rudy probably has been--he's sporting a very Pete look.
Oscar is afraid that working with Felix will stoke up the tensions between them, but agrees when he finds out there'll be female models involved. As expected, Felix proves to be a stern taskmaster...
Felix: At home I'm a lot of fun, I'm a barrel of laughs. But this is a place of business, we don't waste time messing around!
Loretta (Timothy Near), a model who's cynical of Oscar's lines, cracks that he must have picked up a lot of girls on V-J Day.
Oscar walks into the dark room door and Felix fires him, but Rudy intervenes, threatening to keep Oscar and fire Felix. Oscar is mad at Felix for yelling at him at the studio, but Felix tries to woo him over, comparing his plain look to Abraham Lincoln and Humphrey Bogart...the latter comparison giving Klugman an opportunity to slip into an impersonation.
Rudy's client, Mr. Whitehill (Peter Brocco), visits the studio for the shoot, for which Oscar's dressed in a bullfighter outfit. The tensions get to Felix, causing sinus issues and a blowup in which he insults Whitehill, after which Whitehill fires him, and takes the models with him, still in their costumes. Oscar tries to stick up for Felix, but it does no good.
In the coda, it turns out that Mandar used Felix's shoot, but put a blurb over Oscar's face.
_______
The Brady Bunch
"A Fistful of Reasons"
Originally aired November 13, 1970
Wiki said:
A bully named Buddy Hinton teases Cindy about her lisp ("Baby talk, baby talk. It's a wonder you can walk."). Peter tries to defend Cindy, but backs out of a fight with Buddy, and Buddy tells everyone at school that Peter is "chicken". Mike tells Peter to reason with Buddy, but instead Peter ends up with a black eye. Mike and Carol try to talk to Buddy's parents, and they turn out to be bullies themselves. Mike tells Peter that he can defend himself and Peter goes into training. The next day, Peter and Cindy are again teased by Buddy, but this time Peter punches him, which knocks Buddy's tooth loose. Cindy starts to tease Buddy, and everyone laughs. Buddy runs away to go to the Brady house to ask to borrow Cindy's tongue twister book.
Guest stars: Russell Schulman as Buddy Hinton, Paul Sorensen as Ralph Hinton, Ceil Cabot as Mrs. Hinton
Note: Eve Plumb (Jan) does not appear in this episode.
Cindy comes home from school crying, and won't come down for dinner. The parents go up to talk to her and learn what happened. They have her practice reading tongue-twisters to try to get rid of her lisp. Alice finds that she can't do "she sells seashells" herself. Even the boys chip in to help Cindy practice. Then comes the confrontation between Peter and Buddy at school. Back at home, the other boys encourage Peter to fight Buddy, but Mike disagrees, believing in reasoning. Following his father's advice, Peter tries talking with him at school and gets slugged during the comedic edit. Mike goes to talk to Mr. Hinton, who doesn't care what his son did and takes exception to Mike trying to tell him how to handle his son. Mike backs off, and back at home declares that Peter can defend himself. Carol disagrees and pays a visit to Mrs. Hinton, who agrees with Carol but, clearly intimidated by her husband, won't get involved in "man's business".
When Peter seems reluctant to engage in a rematch with Buddy, Mike agrees to teach him to fight, which he does with Greg's help. This sequence gives us the opportunity to see Alice in boxing gloves. At school, a bunch of kids follow Peter and Cindy in anticipation of the fight. Buddy goes into his routine, Peter tries to talk first, then puts up his dukes and gets in a lucky punch, for which he's sorry. Buddy finds that one of his teeth has been knocked loose, for which Cindy and the other kids tease him, but Peter puts a stop to it.
Buddy comes over in the coda, acting repentant. When Mike asks him if he's learned anything, he responds that Peter's got a good left hook.
We learn in this episode that Carol is from Swampscott, Massachusetts.
_______
The Partridge Family
"But the Memory Lingers On"
Originally aired November 13, 1970
Wiki said:
The Partridge Family is about to leave a different kind of lasting impression on their audience after a skunk hitches a ride on their bus and leaves them...and all their clothes...covered with the unpleasant scent.
Songs: "I Think I Love You", "Brand New Me"
The episode opens with the family on a picnic stop, accompanied by the show's debut of "I Think I Love You". After the family drives off, the kids discover their stowaway and toss it off the bus. Laurie tries putting perfume on everyone, which doesn't mask the odor, so they make an unscheduled stop at a motel to bathe. Shades of 50 years later, the family all have their mouths covered with bandanas, so the clerk calls the police. They end up moving on to the nicer hotel that they'd booked, to the consternation of the staff and guests. At check-in, they try what will one day be known as social distancing. As they head up to their room, everyone else gets off the elevator, including the operator. Reuben's booked them a last-minute benefit gig for children at a hospital, so Shirley coordinates everyone's bathing and discarding of their clothes. Of course, because they didn't know to pick up some tomato juice, the smell doesn't go away.
Reuben does thinks of tomato juice, and orders 40 cans via room service, which is brought up in a large number of individual glasses stacked on trays. It works, but the family then finds that the smell got into the clothes in their suitcases, so Reuben and Danny wearing one of Reuben's suits go out to try to borrow clothes from people. The family end up in an odd assortment of ill-fitting outfits, including a cocktail waitress outfit for Shirley, pajamas for Keith, and a circus outfit for Laurie. But when they pack into a cab, a kid puts their dog, Simone, in with them, re-exposing everyone to the odor. They end up doing a distanced benefit show at the hospital by performing in the surgical theater, with the kids up in the viewing area.
In the coda, the family returns to the hotel, having gotten decontamination and changes of clothes at the hospital...but Reuben has since picked up the odor himself, and they clear the elevator for him.
This was a pretty amusing episode.
_______
It does continue to have some relevance.
So Quon or Tigner tracked down Julie, and even located her at the airport where she was meeting Nick, without ever figuring out that she was living with Nick under an alias?
I'd guess that Tigner was figuring things out, but didn't have a chance to report.
If she was waitressing at Quon's private gig, she may have been involved in underworld stuff before.
She was being played as more of a scared innocent.
Why in the world is Quon riding shotgun in the Five-0 copter?
That was the McGarrettmobile. The chopper was their eye in the sky, tailing the car for them.
The writers kind of went off the rails a bit with this touching tale of a hitman in love.
Marianne McAndrew will do that to ya.
It's too bad he doesn't have a girlfriend in Canada to fly down and ease his burdens.
