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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
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Love, American Style
"Love and the Contact Lens / Love and the Doctor's Honeymoon / Love and the Motel Mixup"
Originally aired December 31, 1971
In "Love and the Contact Lens," April (Michele Lee) has her mother (Eve Arden) over to meet her boyfriend David, a pharmacist. April loses a contact lens, so she insists that they take their shoes off, which Mother is uptight about; and Mother insists that April should not let David know that she wears contact lenses. When David arrives (Hal Buckley; the character is misidentified as "Bud" on IMDb), April has to come up with an excuse to get his shoes off, and tries to get him to stay on the couch, but has to distract him while Mother crawls around on the floor looking for the lens. Eventually David sees Mother on the floor and they make an excuse. Then April sneezes, loses her other lens, and can't make out her mother or David. April wants to tell David, and the matter is decided when he loses his contact lenses too.
"Love and the Doctor's Honeymoon" opens with Coast Guard lieutenant Kevin Douglas (Don Galloway), on a three-day leave, and Dr. Casey Douglas (Jo Ann Pflug) seeing off wedding guests from her home and office. They're leaving for their honeymoon when Casey takes a call that the doctor who was subbing for her broke his leg. They decide to have their honeymoon at home so she can be on call. As they're about to enter the bedroom, she gets a call for a maternity case. Kevin returns home to find Casey's handyman, Harry (Mickey Shaughnessy), who was a guest at the reception and was supposed to be working on the place during the honeymoon, and his spanking-new "fiancee," Gladys (Barbara Nichols), enjoying the leftovers. Harry comes back the next day to work as planned, and Casey returns to find the setting less than romantic. She informs Kevin that she should have a replacement that night, so they can start fresh. Kevin comes home again to find the place full of waiting patients and staffed with a nurse (Jean Inness). By the time Casey's done, Kevin's fast asleep.
Harry comes back over to work the next morning, and Kevin sends him on his way. Casey takes another call, which turns out to be for Kevin, who gets called in for a hurricane alert...which also means that Casey has to report to the hospital. The Coast Guard cancels its alert when the storm heads in another direction, but the hospital doesn't, and Dr. Andrews (Arthur Malet) won't let Casey off duty. Casey's about to leave anyway, but Kevin makes a show of agreeing with Andrews. Then Andrews gets a call that the condition has been raised, Casey is sent to man a shelter, and finds Kevin there, who phoned in the alert. The couple find themselves alone at last.
In "Love and the Motel Mixup," Alan (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) and Shari (Heather Menzies) are nervously trying to check into a hotel pretending to be a married couple. Lacking a vacancy, the clerk (Bryan O'Byrne) gives them a room that's being held for a Mr. Devring. Alan goes back to a restaurant to get the purse that Shari left there. When he returns, he can't remember the room number, or the name that he checked in under, and there's a new clerk at the desk (Mary Treen). He goes to a phone booth in the lobby and calls the desk to try asking for himself under names that he might have used, and the other clerk comes back and says hello to him by name. Alan ends up having to take the last call he made, because he blurted out the name. The female clerk gets suspicious when Alan hides from a woman (Florence Halop) whose cabin window he went to while looking for his room, and who's reported him as a sex maniac. The clerk then finds Shari's purse, which he dropped, and checks her ID. When Shari returns, Mr. Devring (Bill Quinn) also arrives with his wife for their anniversary. When Devering is told that his room has been taken, Alan offers him the room key.
Note how when unmarried couples try to check into hotels, it never works out.
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All in the Family
"The Elevator Story"
Originally aired January 1, 1972
Wiki said:
Archie gets stuck in an elevator with a black lawyer, a ditzy secretary, and a Puerto Rican janitor and his heavily pregnant wife. When she goes into labor, the group must help her deliver the baby.
I know they're doing it AITF style, but I was under the impression that this plot was already considered cliche in this period...I recall
That Girl specifically making fun of the pregnant woman element in its elevator episode.
The family meet at an Italian restaurant at the kids' treat for Edith's birthday. Archie doesn't see a need to make a fuss about the occasion, and when Edith finds an overdue insurance payment in her coat, he rushes out to hand-deliver it to the office, which is five blocks away. In the office's building, he enters the elevator with Hugh Victor Thompson III (Roscoe Lee Browne), and Angelique McCarthy (Eileen Brennan) rushes in after them. Carlos and Serafina Mendoza (Hector Elizondo and Edith Diaz) are already aboard. Shortly after, the car stops. The well-spoken Thompson verbally spars with Archie. Carlos, who turns out to be the building's janitor, assures Archie that the elevator temporarily breaking down is common. The neurotically gabby McCarthy starts acting hysterical. Carlos tries the trap door but can't reach the next elevator door, and Serafina starts having labor pains.
Back at the restaurant, Edith downs several glasses of red wine, and ends up drunkenly and gigglingly telling stories about when she was dating Archie. Back in the elevator, Thompson exhibits similar prejudices to Archie's regarding the Mendozas, though Archie doesn't embrace the two of them being on the same page. To counter one of Archie's preconceptions about the Mendozas, Thompson informs Archie that he pays more in tips than Archie does in taxes. Mike goes to look for Archie and makes vocal contact with him. Serafina starts to deliver, and while the others attend, Archie's too squeamish to watch. Once the baby boy's out, he finally turns to look.
Back in the restaurant, Archie tries to make the others think he was more helpful to the delivery than he was; and finally tries to be polite to Edith only to learn that she's blasted. As he's about to pay the bill himself, Archie finds that he forgot to deliver the payment and rushes out again.
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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"The Five-Minute Dress"
Originally aired January 1, 1972
Wiki said:
Mary's new love interest, an assistant to the governor, keeps breaking their dates.
Oddly for an episode premise that sounds like it would involve the regulars going somewhere and meeting guest characters, cast- and set-wise, this is a bottle episode. In fact, the episode proves to be rather conspicuous on the issue, avoiding showing the character even when it seems forced, and never even dropping his name.
When she learns about after-work activities that the others at the station are engaged in, Mary looks for something to be involved in, and Phyllis finds a group that's having a meeting that night called Women for Better Government. Mary and Rhoda go, returning after a cut. They start talking about the governor's assistant, who was the only man at the meeting, with Rhoda being jealous that he seemed interested in Mary. Mary then gets a one-sided call from him, asking her to lunch. The next day, Lou wants Mary to use her lunch hour to buy a birthday present for his wife, and she has to refuse. Then she gets a call that whatshisname can't make it, but wants to have coffee with her in a few minutes, and she tries to smooth it over with Lou by telling him she can get the present at lunch after all, though he sees through her motivation.
Mary returns to reveal that her date also canceled coffee, and Lou irately reads her a message that he took for Mary setting a dinner date. At home, while Mary's waiting to be picked up, she gets a call from the governor himself, who wants to speak to his assistant. Then the governor gets a call from him on another phone and informs Mary that her date won't be able to make it. Cut to Mary getting dressed up for another date, which Rhoda describes as their "fifth first date". Whatshisname calls to have Mary meet him downstairs, and Phyllis watches her driving off with him in a chauffeured limo. Then Mary promptly returns, saying that he got called away while in the limo. Mary decides that she's had enough of trying to hook up with the guy.
In the coda, Ted shows Mary and Murray his ventriloquist act in which he uses a dog puppet, which reminds me of
Too Close for Comfort, which had Ted Knight as a cartoonist who tended to have conversations with a puppet of his strip's hero, Cosmic Cow.
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Mission: Impossible
"The Bride"
Originally aired January 1, 1972
Wiki said:
Casey poses as the Irish mail-order bride of a Syndicate boss (James Gregory) in order to disrupt an international money laundering ring.
When he has to have a diplomatic courier named Anders (Douglas Henderson) who's been cheating him killed, Joe Corvin (James Gregory trying to do something that sounds like an Irish accent, but sounds more like James Gregory) finds himself in a bind to find another means of moving large sums of money for the Syndicate.
The miniature reel-to-reel tape in the locker room of a women's swimming pool said:
Good morning, Mister Phelps. This is Joe Corvin, one-time Syndicate killer and extortionist, and now an expert in handling illegal monies. Through Corvin, tens of millions of underworld dollars have been funneled out of this country and into Swiss banks, from there to be returned as "foreign investments" in American business. So far, conventional law enforcement agencies have been unable to stop Corvin's operations. Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to put Corvin out of business for good. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim!
The briefing introduces us to a guest agent named Bob Roberts (Gwil Richards), who'll be impersonating a man named Harris (still him, with cosmetic differences). Casey, who'll be faking her death using vital sign-stopping Barney Pills and a lifelike dummy of herself, arrives at the airport to meet Corvin posing as his mail-order bride from a convent in the old country. Posing as Anders's boss, Barney approaches Corvin's client, Frank Mellinger (Brad Dexter), to offer his services as a competitive alternative to Corvin's. Mellinger goes to the party at which Corvin's showing off his new bride to inform him about Barney and put pressure on Corvin to get the eight million moved.
A thug (Harry Raybould) carjacks Barney, and Corvin and his men interrogate him, all according to plan, and Barney tries to make a deal with Corvin for half his cut. Jim, previously seen as one of the plane's personnel at the airport who handed her a package of medicine she'd left behind, calls Casey to reveal to Corvin's listening chief henchman, Richie (Charles Dierkop), that he's her smack supplier. Corvin follows Casey to a hotel where Jim fake shoots her up. Richie calls Corvin about Casey, and Corvin heads to the scene. Corvin is disgusted and finds that Casey was paying Jim with jewelry that Corvin had given her, but expresses an interest in how Jim smuggles his merchandise via his airline job. Jim asks Corvin if he likes movies about gladiators, and Corvin makes a call to have Barney cut loose as he doesn't need him. Back at Corvin's place, Richie tries to move in on the discarded Casey, who pops the pill. She then noisily collapses on a brass bed, and Richie and Corvin find her apparently dead. Corvin orders Richie to have Casey cremated by his usual undertaker, Collins (Woodrow Parfrey).
Jim arranges for a hearse to arrive at a plane just as he's showing Corvin how tight security measures have become, with all cargo being searched. Corvin gets the idea to have Casey's body shipped to Zurich with an embassy seal and a coffin pillow full of cash rather than cremated. Ambulance crew Willy and Bob bring Dummy Casey to the funeral parlor, knock out Harris, who works there, and Bob takes his place. The real Casey is revived out in the ambulance. When Dummy Casey is taken to the airport, Mellinger wants to tag along in the hearse to oversee this wonky plan.
Barney rises out of a secret compartment in the floor of the hearse next to the coffin--perhaps his coolest hiding place ever--takes out the pillow, reseals the casket, and gets back in the compartment, which then lowers him under the vehicle, where he gets into an adjacently parked van driven by Willy. As the casket is being loaded on the plane, it falls off the conveyor and opens, revealing that Casey's a dummy. Mellinger wants to know where the money is, and Jim shares info that implicates Corvin in a double-cross. Mellinger takes Corvin back to his place, where Casey turns up alive and well and still in character, further indicating a scam on Corvin's part. As Mellinger's threatening to toss Corvin down the same elevator shaft as Anders unless Corvin tells him where the money is, Casey joins the other IMFers.
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Suddenly this guy is the Batman or Rorschach of
Hawaii Five-O.
Getting a little far fetched....
More so than the stuff Wo Fat does?
Sounds like a fun episode, although a little over the top for this show. I wonder if Filer ever comes back.
If they didn't recast him, no.
It seems a little odd that Malloy never got a chance to eyeball the license plate number with his super eye for detail.
Not sure if he did or didn't. It was more a matter of catching the guy doing something.
In your Brando voice?
An odd character bit. I'm undecided if I can see Malloy sitting around at home watching 25-year-old movies.
Sure, why not? He's gotta have his down time, and maybe he was a fan as a kid.
Well, it's a
Family Affair crossover.
I think it was all tailored to Hale. The child actor was really awful...Johnny Whitaker would've been an improvement.
You'd think the younger kids would be relieved that they weren't invited and making fun of the older kids.
It was more the idea of being told they were too young for something.
The oldest daughter on Family. Also, she was on a forgotten sitcom called Bridget Loves Bernie, which I actually remember watching.
Main thing I knew her from was
Family Ties (hence noting her age here). She was Michael J. Fox's mom.
I don't recall. Might have gotten in the paper.
Ooh, a "Twilight Zone" crossover.
Are you referencing the band that sang the song, or was that name used in a TZ episode?
Interesting. For me, I would prefer either a more faithful adaptation of the source material (which I'm kind of a stickler for) or else using the source material as a jumping off point for a new concept. For example, I would have enjoyed the Flash Gordon movie a lot more if they had used an original character.
I just really, really hate the internet "theory" that James Bond is a code-name used by different agents. Anyone who promotes it needs to read the Fleming books.
