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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 1)
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M*A*S*H
"Cowboy"
Originally aired November 12, 1972
Wiki said:
A series of so-called "accidents" makes it clear that someone wants Henry dead.
A chopper brings in casualties and the pilot, John "Cowboy" Hodges (Billy Green Bush), collapses from a wound--not the first that he's sustained on duty. Mulcahy says a Hebrew prayer for one of the casualties, Goldstein (Joseph Corey), in the operating room. Cowboy acts more concerned about a letter he's expecting and getting a temporary leave than about his wound. Hawkeye puts in a medical request for the latter to Blake, but is rejected. He and Trapper think that Blake is overworked and needs to be loosened up, so Hawkeye treats the colonel to a game of golf with Ho-Jon as the caddy, but Blake is fired at during the game. Other incidents ensue, including a driverless Jeep running into Blake's office and a bomb in the latrine, which only causes slapstick harm--a blackened face and a toilet seat around his neck.
Everyone in the camp starts to avoid Blake except Hawkeye and Trapper, who convince him to take leave in Seoul. Cowboy offers to fly him, but after they leave, Hawkeye and Trapper find bomb-making gear in Cowboy's pack. In the chopper, Cowboy confronts Blake, threatening to drop the colonel out over not giving him leave. Hawkeye and Trapper get Cowboy on the radio, and read the letter from his wife that just arrived...and while they're concerned when it looks like a figurative Dear John letter as well as a literal one, his wife expresses her appreciation for and faithfulness to him, which causes him to relent.
In the coda, we learn that the Cowboy has been diagnosed with fatigue at a base hospital and is getting a month's leave.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 6, episode 9
Originally aired November 13, 1972
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Jack Benny, Sue Ane Langdon, Sally Struthers
ShoutFactory has this as episode 10. Sally's the main guest, though Jack also gets onstage time with Dan and Dick in parts of a recurring gag about him doing jokes written for other guests.
Laugh-In does fat jokes:
I finally looked up the source of all the jokes they've been dropping about Burt Reynolds being nude...he did a centerfold in a 1972 issue of
Cosmopolitan that's credited with launching him as a sex symbol and inspiring
Playgirl.
The latest in the Farkel serial:
That one actually got some laughter out of me.
The news segment:
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Hawaii Five-O
"V for Vashon: The Son"
Originally aired November 14, 1972
Wiki said:
The son (Robert Drivas) of the head of a family-dominated crime syndicate (Harold Gould) masterminds a series of small-time robberies. Eventually McGarrett catches him, but it doesn't end there... Luther Adler also guest stars as the Vashon patriarch.
Contrary to the titles give on Wiki, this first of three parts doesn't display a part number onscreen, as the individual episodes already have distinguishing subtitles.
A stocking-masked trio hold up a hotel in the early morning. The leader makes a point of clocking the desk clerk ([Nelson] Dick Fair) with a ring that leaves a V mark, saying that it's an old family custom. Steve talks to the head of that family, Honore Vashon (Gould), at his obligatory beachside estate, asking to see his son, Chris (Drivas), who plays it cool, showing his ring, which he's now wearing on his left hand. His father sees through the ruse, confronting Chris about it afterward, as the elder Vashon is a respectable figure these days, his own father having done most of the dirty work that he still profits from. Steve and Danno puzzle over the motivation for the robbery, as Chris is wealthier than the job would warrant, suspecting that somebody may be trying to implicate the Vashons. In private with his accomplices, Stu and Lance (Christopher Harris and Rick Kelman), we see that Chris is responsible (not that we couldn't tell through the mask), showing signs of being motivated by issues with his father.
The gang hits another hotel, near the first one, and Chris uses the ring again. Five-O scopes out all the local fences for the items taken in the robberies, but Honore's henchman, Tosaki (Kwan Hi Lim), finds them first and takes Chris to his father. Chris admits to being the mastermind behind the crimes, which his father considers beneath a Vashon, but Chris accuses him of being a hypocrite. Honore consults his now-retired father, Dominick (Adler), who at first dismisses the situation, thinking that Chris is out for thrills and advising his son to pay off the right people. But Dominick takes the situation seriously when he learns that the ring is being used, which puts the family history in the spotlight. He emphasizes that Honore has to teach Chris to respect him.
Meanwhile, searching an apartment that Chris has been renting under an alias, Five-O finds the expensive jacket that Chris has been wearing for the robberies, and a lighter with his fingerprint on it. Chris is cavalier about being charged, expecting his father to fix the situation for him, and Honore does, buying off witnesses in various ways, including paying some of them off to leave the country. Manicote (now being openly played by Glenn Cannon) thinks he has an open-and-shut case, but the witnesses don't come through for him and the case is dismissed. Afterward McGarrett exchanges words with the elder Vashons, and after he leaves, Nick slaps Chris, declares him to be a fool, and advises Honore that the boy could use some scars. This evokes a tearful reaction from Chris.
Five-O puts Chris under heavy surveillance on a federal court warrant that's about to expire when Stu and Lance return and Chris plots another job with them, this time burglarizing hotel rooms during a medical convention. Five-O swoops in on the heist in progress, catching everyone red-handed. Chris exchanges fire with McGarrett while making an escape, taking a bullet in the gut. Chris manages to get to his getaway car and via it to his father's estate, where he bursts through the gates and collapses with his head on the horn. Honore finds his son dead, and when Five-O arrives, accuses Steve of killing his son.
McGarrett: No, Vashon, no...I shot him, you killed him! You and his grandfather, a long time ago.
Honore saves his Bond villain retort for after Steve leaves...
Vashon: McGarrett dies!
Chris was supposed to be 21. Drivas was well cast, then, in the sense that he had fifteen years of experience.
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Adam-12
"The Surprise"
Originally aired November 15, 1972
IMDb said:
When a string of jewelry stores are robbed with the same M.O., Reed pulls some clever police work during an unrelated traffic stop. Also, Malloy spots the pattern of a second burglar as he breaks into stores in a path across town.
At roll call, Mac advises the officers of a series of 459s, mostly of jewelry stores, using milk crates to bust plate glass windows. Jim wishes Pete a happy birthday. (It's the 15th, narrowing it down to twelve possible dates. I wouldn't put any stock in the day being explicitly a Sunday, given
Dragnet's record in that area.) Pete expresses concern about the possibility of a surprise party, as Jim has informed others of the occasion. On patrol, the officers are about to respond to a call about a burglary on Santa Monica Boulevard when a car runs through a stop and they pull it over.
Malloy: This one's all yours, partner, I don't talk to drunks on my birthday.
The semi-conscious driver turns out to be the owner of the antique store that they were headed for, so the officers take him there before the station. The M.O. of this break-in doesn't match the others, but does involve the burglar having helped himself to some booze.
Their next call is for a purse-snatching at a boutique, but the victim turns out to be a highly defensive man, Bert Stanley (Don Stroud), who was shopping for negligee (said to be for his girlfriend) when his "briefcase" was stolen...but when pressed, the description is that of a handbag. Pete placates Stanley by noting that it's a very practical item.
At the station, Pete thinks he smells a set-up for the surprise party, but Jim insists that there isn't one. On patrol, they see a man (John Goddard) lurking around in a closed gas station and confront him from the other side of the garage's closed gate. He's wearing overalls and says he's the owner, there to work on a car on Sunday, but the emblem on his shirt tips them off that he's a phony. They circle the block, call for backup, and surround the place, arresting him.
On patrol again, the officers pull over another reckless driver, Floyd Sinclair (Felton Perry). While Pete's giving him a ticket, Jim notices a milk crate in the back of his car and discretely writes his serial number on it with his pen. Jim then interrupts Pete from bringing Sinclair in for a misdemeanor warrant, filling his partner in afterward.
At the station, Pete, sure that the party is about to be sprung, is calling a date to tell her he'll be late when he and other officers hear shots being fired and rush to the parking garage, where a policeman has been wounded by an armed suspect. A barrage of fire from various officers taking cover behind cars (including Mac) convinces the suspect (Sam Edwards) to surrender. The wounded officer, Bob Snyder (William Wellman Jr.), explains how he picked the man up for drunk driving but didn't cuff him because he seemed otherwise clean; then at the garage, the man grabbed his gun and tried to make a break for it.
Pete wants to follow a hunch about a pattern he's detected between the antique store burglary and another one he's heard about that matches its M.O, but Jim convinces him to call it a day as their watch is over and it's not likely to pay off. At the station, Wells tells them how he and his partner caught the burglary suspect doing another job on Santa Monica shortly after Adam-12 left the area; and Mac tells how Sinclar has been taken in because the marked milk carton was found at the scene of another jewelry store robbery. Pete's sure that the surprise is imminent when Mac wants help with something, but it turns out he wants Pete to help him load the crates of beer that Pete assumed were for his party into his car for a party being held for an officer who's getting out of the hospital. The other officers leave in their street clothes, one of them wishing Pete a happy birthday, and Pete's clearly disappointed that he was wrong. Then Jim brings him a present that he had Jean pick up...a man's handbag.
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The Brady Bunch
"Career Fever"
Originally aired November 17, 1972
Wiki said:
Mike mistakenly believes Greg wants to follow in his father's footsteps to become an architect. Greg does not want to offend Mike by admitting he does not want to become an architect, he merely wrote that he did for a school assignment. Greg creates ridiculous designs to show he will never make it as an architect. In the subplot, Cindy wants to be a model, Bobby an astronaut, while Peter and Jan want go into the medical profession and borrow large medical encyclopedias from the library. Peter mistakenly concludes that he has contracted a rare disease, but he has misread the encyclopedia.
Greg is helping Marcia with her homework when she notices a writing assignment of his just as Mike's walking by the room, about how he'd like to become an architect. Mike is proud and flattered, and Greg, who tries to play it down, doesn't have the heart to tell him that he only wrote the essay because he didn't have a better idea. Greg shares with Marcia his plan to break it to Mike by drafting a really weird design for a house (which includes a moat). While Mike is clearly taken aback by the plan, being Mike Brady, he puts on a show of trying to be open-minded and supportive. Later, discussing the matter with Carol, Mike decides to invest in helping Greg with his architectural skill, giving him a set of drafting tools and full use of his den.
Meanwhile, the subplot commences with Peter and Jan deciding they want to become a doctor and nurse, and checking out books in the library to study up on strange-sounding diseases. Bobby and Cindy then follow suit, the former wanting to be an astronaut, and thus committing to eating "that powdered junk," and Cindy wanting to be a model, for which Marcia helps her to learn to walk with a book on her head. Bobby also spends time in the doghouse with a toy space helmet and walkie talkie to get himself used to the loneliness of space. (He should try singing some Bowie and Elton. Also, it occurs to me that we never actually see the dog anymore...I don't even remember his name offhand.) Peter becomes convinced that he has a terminal disease that he can't pronounce because of incidental symptoms attributable to other causes (like shortness of breath after he ran a mile on the track). When he expresses concern about writing a will, he has to solemnly break the news to the parents, and Mike finds that a couple pages of his book were stuck together, with the symptoms being for poison ivy and the diagnosis being for a disease too rare and exotic for Peter to have possibly contracted.
Back in the main plot, Greg feels pressured to use the resources given to him by his father to produce something, so he ultimately decides to come up with an even more awful plan. Mike and Carol put on another show of support, but share their true feelings about Greg's talent with each other in private...Mike describing his son as "Frank Lloyd Wrong". Greg decides that he has to come clean now, and Mike tries to break the truth to him at the same time, resulting in both feeling great relief.
In the coda, Bobby and Cindy change to wanting to become a football player and lady wrestler, so they can indulge in overeating.
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The Odd Couple
"Oscar's Birthday"
Originally aired November 17, 1972
Paramount Plus said:
Felix plans a This Is Your Life surprise birthday party for Oscar.
The episode opens with Felix and Miriam planning a surprise party for Oscar, but he's ahead of them, vocally not wanting one, threatening to throw a surprise funeral for Felix. (There's a wonky 50th anniversary viewing coincidence that you'd never notice watching the shows in isolation.) Felix rededicates himself to the effort, rationalizing that it will be an even bigger surprise now that he's agreed not to do it. Felix, wearing rubber gloves, enlists Murray's help in searching Oscar's room for an idea for the party's theme, and finds a high school yearbook. Felix and Miriam have Murray and Myrna at Miriam's apartment to plan the party, with the super's son, Monroe (Andy Rubin), along for the ride.
Felix: Each of you must find out something about Oscar's life, but nobody tells anybody else what he's found out!
Murray: Or else we self-destruct?
Felix assigns each participant to find out something about a different phase of Oscar's life.
Murray: I got the puberty section!
Myrna uses the excuse of a new payroll form to question Oscar about his birth and early childhood. Murray claims to be studying to become a detective, so he can practice interrogating Oscar about his teen years (which include 1942, making Oscar at least a little younger than Klugman). When Oscar expresses suspicion, Murray cracks like an egg. Oscar is confronting Felix and the plan is otherwise falling apart when Oscar gets a call from his mother in Paris, and Felix realizes that he's found his spy. Felix is waiting for a follow-up call from Mrs. Madison when Oscar comes home early from a bad date (with Crazy Rhoda with the overbite). Felix allows Oscar to assume that he's waiting for a call from a girl and didn't want Miriam or Gloria to know.
Later, on Oscar's birthday, Felix tries to lure Oscar to his photo studio, but Oscar won't go, knowing what's waiting for him there, until Felix admits to it and argues that it's about pleasing Oscar's friends. Oscar goes and acts surprised, then Felix sits him down in a special chair and plays emcee of
This Is Your Life. The first figure from Oscar's past is somebody he never actually knew--a random person who used to fix the jukebox at the soda parlor that Oscar hanged out at, Arthur O'Reilly (Hal Smith--yet again playing to type, as a drunk). Then Felix brings out Oscar's childhood sweetheart, full-figured Judy Skelton (Mickey Fox), and Oscar compliments her for having lost weight. Oscar's being a good sport about it all until the next surprise persona turns out to be Irene Langley (Marjorie Ward, a.k.a. Marjorie Marshall, Penny's mother)...Oscar's childhood tapdancing instructor. Oscar is mortified for everybody to learn that used to specialize in imitating Shirley Temple, and walks out.
Later, Oscar returns home to find Felix acting remorseful about the situation, and the two have a good little talk. Oscar agrees to blow out the candle on his cake, and the whole crowd from the party jumps out of hiding to truly surprise Oscar.
In the coda, Oscar's getting into bed when everyone jumps out again, and he ignores it.
I was disappointed that this one didn't provide much for continuity comparison, as Oscar's marriage and history with Felix weren't covered. There's a twice-occurring sight gag about how Oscar somehow drinks entire six-packs of beer without separating the cans. We also got this gem...
Oscar: Where are my clean socks?
Felix: You don't have any, you buy them dirty.
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