The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

_______

50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)

_______

Mission: Impossible
"Boomerang"
Originally aired January 12, 1973

John Vayle (Charlie Guardino) lands his twin-prop private plane on a remote airstrip for a rendezvous with his wife, Eve (Laraine Stephens), who relays instructions from a man named Luchek for John to hand over the documents he's carrying to her. John refuses to comply, and while Eve pretends to go along and be wifely, a man sneaks out of her car and whacks John with a wrench. The man drags John's body onto the plane, takes off, and parachutes out, following which the plane blows up. (He couldn't just let it crash?)

Having to drive to Frisco and back for the tape must eat into Jim's mission planning time.

Outside John's funeral, Lieutenant Barney gets noticed by Eve and the heavy she inherited from her husband, Homer Chill (Walter Barnes), while taking down the plate numbers of cars. Eve arranges a rendezvous with Luchek, where she negotiates a hefty ongoing payment to keep her husband's documents in safekeeping.

Outside her stately home, Eve is shot at by Jim but trips on a concealed wire. Jim is nabbed by Barney, who questions him and Eve inside. Eve refuses to cooperate with the fuzz, but makes a note of Jim's room key, via which she has him tracked down. While she and Homer are out, Willy gets to work replacing Eve's sleeping pills, getting a sample of John's aftershave, rifling through money in her safe, leaving a fake fingerprint on its dial, and then coming back to the front door to drop off John's dry-cleaning. Eve questions Jim, who tells her that he bribed Barney to be set loose, and arranges to discuss who hired him over dinner. She wants Jim to take out his employer, but he says he was hired via a female third party. Eve takes Jim home and pays him, but the packet of bills is short a couple thousand, to Eve's surprise. Jim raises a fresh fingerprint from the dial, which matches one on John's driver's license. Chill eavesdrops on all of this activity and reports to Luchek.

Eve woos Jim a little and goes to talk to her accomplice in John's murder, Garth, but Desk Clerk Willy informs her that he never checked into the shady hotel that she set him up in. Back at home, Casey calls Eve about how John's suit, which is an exact duplicate of the one John was wearing when he was killed, was delivered to the wrong address. Eve and Jim break into the apartment that leads them to, which belongs to a woman with a nursing degree who has a picture of John and a drawer full of (duplicates of) his personal effects. The woman in question turns out to be Casey, who's also the third party who hired Jim and identifies Johnny as her boyfriend. Later, an agent named Burt who wasn't at the briefing dons his Johnny mask and burglars into the Vayle home, giving Eve a shot in bed and spraying Johnny's cologne around. She wakes up to find him leaving, and he indicates that he has all he wants from her.

Lt. Barney comes to pick Eve up. Homer tries to follow, but Willy has tampered with his car. Barney takes Eve to a morgue where he shows her what she's led to believe is Johnny's freshly killed body. Barney shares Johnny's scheme to kill her so the police would get the records and Johnny could take Luchek's place. Barney also indicates that Johnny learned where the records were by questioning Eve with truth serum, showing her the needle mark on her arm; and that he now has the records, producing (a duplicate of) the case they're in and negotiating a hefty percentage of Luchek's payments to her. Eve tries to recruit Jim to take out Barney, offering to take him to a spot in the desert that she and Johnny used to go to; Homer tips off Luchek, who thinks he knows where she's going. At the spot, Eve retrieves the real briefcase, right where she left it, and Luchek shows up with a henchman who wings Eve. Jim struggles with both men until Barney and Willy pop up to take the case.

_______

Love, American Style
"Love and the Face Bow / Love and the Impossible Gift / Love and the Love Kit"
Originally aired January 12, 1973

"Love and the Face Bow" opens with Leo Brubaker (Wendell Burton) carrying his bride, Naomi (Cindy Williams), over the threshold of their snowy honeymoon cottage. Naomi is embarrassed when the item at the top of her suitcase turns out to be an orthodontic accessory that she has to wear at night, but Leo pulls out one of his own, and they decide to put them on to see what each of them looks like. Naomi accidentally puts on Leo's, however, and the metal part gets stuck on her teeth, protruding from her mouth like metal tusks. After awkwardly trying to make the most of their wedding night. Leo ends up calling for a dentist on a ham radio in the cabin that belongs to an uncle, using Naomi's tusks as an antenna. She has to stand a certain way to get a good signal, lest they receive the Super Bowl instead. Eventually a Dr. Edwin Muller (Sterling Holloway) arrives and gets the accessory out easily enough. The couple sends the doctor on his way, only to find that Naomi can't feel Leo kissing her because her mouth is numbed by Novocain.

In "Love and the Love Kit," country girl Annabelle (Donna Douglas) tries to get her farmer suitor Fenton (Stuart Margolin) in the mood while they've got her parents' place to themselves, but he blows the opportunity with his awkward nervousness. Later he gets a visit from a citified cosmetics salesgirl (Lori Saunders) who, when she learns that Fenton's having trouble with his girlfriend, pitches the titular item, guaranteed to make him irresistible to the opposite sex--a shoebox that includes aphrodisiac spray (dispensed from a plastic foot pump), wine, a small Lawrence Welk record, and a small guidebook of romantic things to say. She pretends to be swayed by his charms while he samples it in order to get his money, but Fenton's older shackmate (possibly his old man, but that's not made clear), Grover (Dub Taylor), thinks Fenton's been had.

Grover: Ain't no woman in the world worth eight bucks!​

Before Fenton can use the kit on Annabelle, however, he has to practice, so he gets Grover to don a bonnet and mop wig.

When Fenton goes back to Annabelle, she doesn't want to let him in the door, but the phrases he reads from the book do the trick. She's ready to go at that point, but he gets her to leave the room so he can deploy the other items, dispensing the spray, putting on the record, and treating her to some of the wine when she comes back. Fenton returns home boasting to Grover that the love kit worked, and of how he plans to go all the way to the end of the book next time. But while Fenton's taking a cold shower, the skeptical Grover sabotages the items in the kit.

On the next date, in addition to Fenton taking a swig of mouthwash, it turns out that Grover's put weed killer in the dispenser, switched the record with horse race music, and replaced the verses in the book with less romantic ones. Annabelle learns that she's been wooed by a "box full of junk," but Fenton finds the right words, describing it as a box full of loneliness that's filled with dreams of her...which does the trick.

In the coda, it appears that Grover's been using the actual items himself, locking himself in the shack to get away from either an unseen woman or a goat talking in a woman's voice.

_______

Emergency!
"School Days"
Originally aired January 13, 1973

Now that's more like an episode summary! Too bad this guy doesn't quit while he's ahead.

Squad 51 has another trainee, Billy Hanks (Kip Niven)--and this one, by contrast, is set up as being underconfident, afraid of screwing up...despite having received multiple citations for valor as a firefighter. The station is called to the home of elderly Dr. Andrew Temple (Ian Wolfe), who's had a bookcase fall on him from a gas explosion. When the doctor starts to go into pulmonary edema, Billy momentarily freezes up, and kicks himself for it afterward.

At Rampart, Brackett and Morton are seeing to Skyle Tyler, a third baseman who was beaned and got a skull fracture. After bringing Temple in, the station rushes to the scene of an accident involving an ambulance having been broadsided, sheering off a fire hydrant. Left on his own to see to the attendant in the back of the vehicle, Billy unhesitantly gets down to business. A couple of upright ambulances arrive on the scene to carry away their fallen comrades...and maybe to rub it in just a little. The relatively uninjured patient who was in the back of the ambulance with Billy compliments his skill.

The station is called to an explosion in a garage. Feeling that they need to put some pressure on Billy to boost his confidence, on the way Roy informs the trainee that he'll be in charge of this one. The paramedics tend to an injured twelve-year-old boy who was using a chemistry set, Brad Lewis (Michael-James Wixted). Billy acts a little edgy but focuses on the job and asks questions where needed. The boy's parents (Lew Brown and Sandy deBruin) are concerned that his eyes have been injured.

At Rampart, Tyler's estranged wife, Kathy (Terrence O'Connor), has been brought in. She's quick to blame herself for potentially having been a distraction, but Dixie encourages her to potentially mend their marriage by seeing to his recovery. Dr. Temple is up in bed and back to his books on ancient Middle Eastern civilizations, while his proud housekeeper, Emma Perigrew (Ann Doran), fusses over him.

In the aftermath of the last call, it comes out that Billy has a respiratory condition from a prior work incident that has taken away his sense of smell and causes him to be more susceptible to smoke inhalation, which has him coughing for days afterward. The squad comes to the aid of a man lying on a campus green with a snake coiled up on his stomach. Johnny takes the lead, having Roy lift up the man's shirt so he can knock the snake off with a broom and Billy can zap it with a fire extinguisher. The split-second rescue works, but the snake turns out to be rubber--apparently a gag having been pulled on him by some of the laughing bystanders. (You'd think he could tell that it wasn't alive.)

After hours at the station, Roy has an encouraging talk with Billy. At Rampart while they're picking up some supplies, Dix recruits Roy and Billy to loosen the recovering Brad's lips about what he was mixing with his set. Grateful that his eyes were saved, the boy reluctantly agrees, but the station gets a call before he can divulge the nature of his experiment. The station arrives at an auto wrecking yard where a scavenger is trapped under a fallen and unstable stack of cars. Billy crawls in and takes charge of seeing to the patient while Chet has the yard attendant take him to the crane. Marco climbs on top of the stack to hook the top car so the crane can keep it steady while the patient is removed and wheeled to an ambulance. Once they're done, the stack and one next to it both collapse. Afterward, Billy shares that he feels like he's graduated, but Roy cautiously offers that every day on the job will be a titular one.

_______

The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"My Brother's Keeper"
Originally aired January 13, 1973

Phyllis drops by the station to try to arrange for Mary to meet her visiting brother, Ben, in her pretentiously overbearing way. When Phyllis mentions that Mary and Ben have both have been saved for marriage, Mary again hints at a more active lifestyle than the show was initially leading us to believe...

Mary: Well, Phyl...I'm not all that saved.​

Phyllis brings Ben (Robert Moore) by Mary's place that night, wanting the two of them to "spontaneously" join her and Lars for dinner and the symphony, but Ben doesn't feel like such a big night out after having just flown in, so he ends up having a casual, friendly dinner at Mary's. Rhoda drops by and Mary soon finds herself cut out of the conversation, though it's her suggestion that Ben could take Rhoda to the symphony. Later, Phyllis returns to Mary's, in shock after the gauche spectacle of Rhoda at a Mozart concert.

Rhoda later makes dinner for Ben in Mary's kitchen, rubbing it in to Phyllis how they're hitting it off. On another evening, Mary's throwing a party in her place when Phyllis comes by, distraught that Rhoda and Ben are out together. Mary actually tries to get rid of Phyllis to avoid killing her party, but Phyllis lingers around long enough for Rhoda and Ben to come by. When Rhoda tries to explain that there's nothing serious going on between her and Ben, Phyllis won't believe it, so Rhoda tells her what she wants to hear--that she and Ben are getting married the next day. Phyllis actually buys this, and when Ted (who's accompanied by Georgette, establishing her as a recurring character) tries to liven up the party with a game of Twenty Questions, Phyllis loudly breaks out crying, clearing the party. Once they're alone, Phyllis takes exception when Rhoda tries to explain that Ben isn't her type...and we get the famously promo-featured exchange that I wasn't expecting to pop up in this episode...

Phyllis: What do you mean he's not your type? He's witty...he's attractive...he's successful...he's single...
Rhoda: He's gay!​

Phyllis initially drops her jaw at this revelation, but promptly finds herself relieved that Rhoda won't be her sister-in-law.

In the coda, as Ben's playing a piano that Phyllis rented for his visit, she mistakes a dog food commercial that he wrote for Mozart.

Well...MTM just earned its cultural cache keep with this little bombshell. And my compliments to a Wiki contributor who knows how to briefly summarize an episode premise without loading in beat-by-beat details.

_______

The Bob Newhart Show
"The Crash of Twenty-Nine Years Old"
Originally aired January 13, 1973

As the episode opens, Carol is already 29 with no mention of a recent or impending birthday (though it would have been close to Marcia Wallace's 30th when the episode was being shot). She has an impromptu session with Bob about her dissatisfaction with her life, at the end of which Bob learns that Emily encouraged her to quit her job at lunch. Bob tries to get to the bottom of this at home, learning that Emily was nodding along as Carol talked about quitting, but Emily emphasizes that lots of women are coming to question their roles these days. When Howard drops by between flights with a stewardess date (Jill Jaress), Emily asks Mary Ellen about her satisfaction with her career, causing an argument between Mary Ellen and Howard.

Carol attends a group session with recurring patients such as Victor Gianelli, Lillian Bakerman, Elliot Carlin, and Michelle Nardo--as well as a one-shotter, Mr. Keeney (Don Barrows)--at which career satisfaction becomes the main topic. Addressing the entire group in a general way, Bob makes an argument for Carol sticking with her job, but she stands up and declares that she's quitting.

Bob's office ends up with a new receptionist, Paul Sanders (Jack Bender). Carol drops by the office for unfinished business and runs into him.

Carol: You mean you're the new girl?​

Carol seems to miss her old job, but boasts to Bob of how she's gotten a new one at the unemployment office, which she's using to shop for a long-term career. But later Carol unexpectedly drops by another group session and Bob interrupts the other patients to find out what's bothering her. It turns out that she's realized that choosing a new career may involve years of night school while she's stuck in an unsatisfying job. Bob initially tries to argue for Carol to stick to her guns, but his patients turn the tables on him, asking him how he feels about Carol. The patients get Bob and Carol to admit to how they hurt each other in their dealings over Carol's career dissatisfaction; get Carol to ask for her old job back; and get Bob to accept her request. Bob reminds Carol that somebody else is currently occupying her desk.

Carol: Oh, that's right...what're you gonna do about Paul?
Bob: Maybe I could have Emily take him out to lunch.​

The climactic therapy session was a role-reversal gag that landed on the mark. This episode did confuse me about exactly who Carol's working for, though. Her services are shared by multiple offices, but here she seems to be Bob's to rehire.

_______

I wouldn't doubt it, though I don't remember that specific instance.

I could've described it as "strikingly pretentious"...

I wasn't familiar with either song. I think that at least part of the issue with glam rock not really taking off as a phenomenon in the States is that it was more of a style of presentation than a distinct sound.

 

It's funny you should say that, because in the briefing I was getting the impression that Willy would be the one donning the disguise, and was surprised when the guest agent popped up (which was at an earlier point than I first mentioned him).

Lt. Barney.

He wouldn't necessarily know that she'd hidden them there without more information.

I don't think she was entirely convinced that Barney had them, and Jim might have sewn a seed of doubt in her head about it.

Plot contrivance!

Some goon of Eve's. There were a couple of actors listed in the credits whose characters I wasn't sure of. One of them might have been him, with the character billed differently than the name mentioned in the episode, but I don't think he had any lines.

I thought I recognized that name.

Can you really tell without watching it?

Well, there was a gag earlier about him having to go out to tend to an actual goat...then when he's taking refuge against the unseen female voice (which sounded like it might have been a man, possibly Stuart Margolin, doing a female voice), he addresses the entity as "you old goat"...so I wasn't sure what they were going for there, but it would have fit some of the humor in the segment (like practicing on Grover in drag).

True. Squad 51 gets called to a guy who thinks there's a snake on his belly, but there's nothing there...

On the ground outside the vehicle assisting Billy. I think Roy was manning the biophone.

It's in a spot that Decades frequently uses.

They've definitely mentioned other providers using her services. In this episode, Paul was asking about the doctor for whom he carried some jars, to find out he was a urologist, and promptly went to wash his hands.

I'm under the impression that there were more such acts enjoying success in the UK at the time that didn't break out here.

 

I guess Donna was in more of it than it sounded like. And Lori's scene was pretty substantial...practically a mini-segment within the larger segment.

I should note that the Frndly description for the episode clarified the relationship between Fenton and Grover...Fenton was Grover's hired hand.

Whatever they were classified as in the early '70s, they became retro-classified as proto-punk.

 

^ Dude, that charts the week after the upcoming post.

 

_______

50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 1)

_______

M*A*S*H
"Tuttle"
Originally aired January 14, 1973

The guys' donations consist of smuggling out supplies via Sister Theresa (Mary Robin Redd), for whose benefit Hawkeye invokes Captain Tuttle as the benefactor behind their actions. Hawkeye explains to Trapper afterward that Tuttle was the name of his childhood imaginary friend whom he blamed things on. Radar's in on the ruse, which involves having Blake sign forms on Tuttle's behalf. But then Blake wants Tuttle to serve as Officer of the Day to give Burns a break...and Burns gets insecure that Tuttle wants to replace him. Burns wants to see Tuttle's file, so Hawkeye forges one. He invents physical characteristics meant to appeal to Houlihan, who takes an interest and wants to ask General Clayton about Tuttle. Radar patches Hot Lips through to Hawkeye posing as Clayton via his remote switchboard pal Sgt. "Sparky" Pryor, who's reading a Captain Marvel annual that Radar sent him. Based on something Hawkeye says as Clayton, Burns wants Blake to make Tuttle his roomie, which motivates Blake to have Tuttle summoned to see him.

Burns goes looking for Tuttle on Blake's behalf, so Hawkeye and Trapper give him a runaround. Getting deeper into the scam, Hawkeye gets the idea of obtaining Tuttle's back pay, which is dropped off to Hawkeye in a surgical mask by a finance officer (James Sikking). The money is donated to the orphanage on Tuttle's behalf, and when General Clayton learns about this, he wants to visit the camp to give Tuttle a decoration. It seems like Hawkeye's about to come clean when he reveals to Clayton and Blake that Tuttle died performing field surgery. Hawkeye is made to deliver a eulogy, in which he emphasizes how everyone who (thinks they) knew him helped make Tuttle who he was...and reveals that Tuttle's final act was to donate his GI insurance to the orphanage.

The closing credits include Captain Tuttle as Himself.

_______

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 6, episode 16
Originally aired January 15, 1973

Goulet and Dick as Lancelot and Guinevere:


Gladys in the Miss Galaxy Pageant:


They did a Salute to People on the Job, but if there's a clip available, it's well hidden from any relevant search terms.

The news segment:


_______

Hawaii Five-O
"The Listener"
Originally aired January 16, 1973

Dr. Eric Fowler (Robert Foxworth) gets an extortion call from a man identifying himself as Cerberus, who says he's been listening in on the doctor's sessions and expresses a desire for revenge because the doctor's office turned him away on the basis that he was a poor treatment risk. Che finds the place loaded with bugs, but Cerberus talks through the doctor's radio to warn the doctor not to have Five-O remove them. McGarrett convinces Fowler to call Cerberus's bluff, following which Cerberus calls a young patient, Bobby Martinelli (Grasshopper-with-hair Radames Pera), playing a tape of the doctor discussing Bobby's brain tumor with his mother, Angela (Lisa Pera). Bobby flies into a rage, but at the hospital, Fowler tells him that the recording was of an early diagnosis; that the tumor is benign and the pills Bobby's been taking have been treating it...but admits to Steve outside that the boy is dying, and that this is a lie he doesn't regret. Steve then quietly examines Fowler's suit jacket and finds a bug sewn within. At McGarrett's written prompting, Fowler kicks Five-O off the case.

Cerberus has a follow-up conversation with the doctor at home via a speaker there, alarming Fowler's wife, Carol (Elissa Fontes). Five-O determines that a key of Fowler's office easily could have been nabbed and copied from the super's office. Che examines the confiscated bugs, determining their range, which Steve works out from Fowler's home and office on one of his Lucite maps. Five-O monitors one of Cerberus's transmissions, triangulating its location but finding nothing suspicious in the cars that have to go through a roadblock they set up. Five-O can't dig up a likely suspect with Cerberus's skill set, so they send Duke to pass Fowler a note while pulling him over for a traffic violation. Fowler makes a rendezvous with Ben at a gym, where he changes into workout clothes provided for him and is driven to Steve's office. He doesn't see anyone familiar in pictures taken at the roadblock, but does recall a potential break-in at his home while he and his wife were on a trip. Cerberus interrogates Fowler at home about his conspicuous disappearance from surveillance, and silences a defiant Carol by threatening to play tapes of Eric having an old affair that she knows about.

Fowler goes to the bank to pick up the money for Cerberus's payment in a bag provided by Duke, and Five-O tails the doctor while Che monitors transmissions. At Cerberus's instruction, Fowler tosses the bag from an overpass while driving. Five-O closes in on the bag, finding it empty...while Cerberus (Greg Mullavey) watches with binoculars. Cerberus talks to Fowler again, doubling his price. Fowler starts calling his patients to discontinue treatment, warning them of Cerberus's methods, which provokes a distraught reaction from the blackmailer. Cerberus then calls one of the patients, Eva Haynes (Linda Ryan), who's twice attempted suicide over a baby daughter she abandoned who subsequently died of a medical condition. Cerberus claims to be the one who found the girl and blames Haynes, which drives her to jump from the balcony of her high-rise.

When Fowler identifies the body, McGarrett arranges a debugged rendezvous at his office. Cerberus raises his price more and instructs Fowler to get back to seeing his patients, following which Fowler opens a suitcase left by Five-O and follows detailed instructions that involve pretending to go to sleep, playing a tape of his sleep noises, and changing into provided clothes for an outside meeting with McGarrett, who subsequently arranges for a colleague to summon Fowler for a consultation. A chopper tails Fowler, but Cerberus calls the other doctor's facility in advance and determines that there's no patient there by the name that Fowler's colleague referenced.

Fowler identifies hypochondriac Mary Dalton (Patricia Herman) as another patient Cerberus has expressed an interest in and might try to get to. Steve arranges for Danno to take a stroll in Fowler's bugged clothes, and takes Fowler to talk to Dalton. Dalton takes a call from Cerberus, stalling him for a trace while being silently encouraged by Fowler, to whom she hands the phone when Cerberus starts to play a tape of Fowler discussing her condition. The call is traced to a phone booth, which Ben and Duke swoop in on, pursuing Cerberus on foot. Losing sight of him, they check a Post Office truck in an adjacent parking lot and find Cerberus's tapes and electronics equipment. He's spotted fleeing again, pursued, and subdued by McGarrett. Fowler identifies Cerberus as his building's mailman, who's taken away while ranting about how Fowler looked past him every day.

_______

Adam-12
"Clear with a Civilian: Part 2"
Originally aired January 17, 1973

The story commences with Reed being teased by Officer Bob Snyder (William Wellman Jr.) while changing his torn and stained uniform in the locker room, following which Pete informs Jim of their special assignment. The commissioner is good-natured and easy-going toward her hosts, though she rightfully expresses concern over Reed's nose-blowing; shows an interest in how the officers distinguish calls with their radio turned down so low (Indeed, it's substantially lower than normal, though they play it as routine volume.); and is quick to call their attention to a driver turning right on red like she did, but Malloy is firm that he came to a complete stop while she didn't. Reed is embarrassed and Dixon bemused when the unit is assigned to deal with a 311 man at a bar. If you look that up, you'll get results of "loud and obscene," but the alternate use that's relevant here is "indecent exposure".

Commissioner Dixon: Let's go see the naked man.​

The bar's proprietor, Jean Wagner (Rose Marie), not wanting to drive away business, lets the officers in the back, where they find a regular customer, Fred Tiller (Burt Mustin), now in a bathrobe after having stripped down and cleared the place out. He drunkenly waxes poetic about his godlike physique, boasting of how he was a living statue in the 1913 World's Fair. Meanwhile, the commissioner persuades Wagner that it doesn't hurt to let the police park in front, as it discourages crime in the area.

After they've taken Tiller in, and following a little Webbian infodump about how Dixon is part of a committee of five police commissioners, she asks about taking a seven, and promptly finds out how that rolls when the unit is assigned to a 415 fight with chains and knives in an alley. Malloy wants to drop Dixon off, but she insists on going with them. They find a group of surly young men standing around a badly injured fellow. While Reed calls for backup, a kid named John Hagen (Claudio Martínez) tells him that the one doing most of the talking, John Benjamin (Michael Bonita), knifed the guy on the ground. When Dixon shows Benjamin her badge, he likens her to a now-discontinued syrup icon, but is impressed when she stands up to him. Reed takes Benjamin aside to persuade him to cooperate in order to defuse a potential riot. Benjamin says that he fought in self-defense, and Reed finds the gun on the knifed man just as backup and an ambulance arrive.

At the station, Wells pop up to rib Malloy and Reed about how Dixon's going to bust them down to meter maids, following which Pete and Jim sit down for a vending-machine seven with her in the breakroom. Back on patrol, the officers name-drop T.J. and are assigned to investigate a missing juvenile. At a home for deaf children, they talk to Diane Stanley (Cay Forester) about an emotionally disturbed seventeen-year-old named Roy Wilson, whom she thinks is trying to return to his family. A picture reveals that he's the guy Reed tore up his uniform chasing last week (Anthony Eldridge). Jim goes out to the car to make a supplemental broadcast when he hears a call about a matching suspect being pursued in a stolen vehicle. And here we come to a definite childhood memory of mine from seeing the episode first-run (possibly during rerun season): Jim uses the car's PA to summon Pete "on the double"...which freaked 3-year-old me out a little because I thought he was saying "I'm the devil"! The officers and Dixon head toward the pursuit, but have trouble cutting in on the radio chatter to offer what they know. When the vehicle is blocked, Wilson tries to flee on foot and the officers in the pursuing unit are about to fire at him, but Reed stops them by using his demonically amplified and echoey voice again. As the youth is apprehended with minimal force, Dixon signs a soothing message to him.

Back at the station, Dixon thanks the officers for showing her around, and Wells learns that he just ticketed the commissioner's car for being parked in the red zone out front...by Mac.

_______

Kung Fu
"Blood Brother"
Originally aired January 18, 1973

Cue flashback...

_______

Keep in mind also that Lori was playing the key role of the traveling salesperson in an inverted play on farmer's daughter jokes.

 

50 Years Ago This Week

January 22

• The U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in Roe v. Wade by a vote of 7 to 2, overturning individual state bans in the first three months of pregnancy on a woman's right to an abortion, concluding that such bans deprive a woman of a fundamental liberty without due process of the law contrary to the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. States were allowed to bar abortions during the final 10 weeks of pregnancy. The Texas case had been consolidated with the lesser known Georgia case of Doe v. Bolton. Justices Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist dissented, while Harry A. Blackmun was joined in the majority opinion by fellow justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan Jr., Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell Jr., and Chief Justice Warren Burger. For nearly half a century afterward, a division between "pro-life" and "pro-choice" positions on abortion would continue with challenges until the overruling of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
• Former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had served from 1963 to 1969, suffered a massive heart attack at 3:50 p.m. local time while at his LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, Texas, and died shortly thereafter. According to contemporary reports, he picked up the phone next to his bed and told the switchboard operator at the Ranch, "Send Mike immediately," referring to his Secret Service agent, Mike Howard. The nearest agents, Ed Noland and Harry Harris reached Johnson's bedroom at 3:52 and found him lying on the floor, dead. The death of Johnson, coming 27 days after that of Harry S. Truman, marked the first time since January 5, 1933, that there were no former U.S. presidents alive.

[Breaking news from Walter Cronkite]​

• George Foreman, a 24-year-old challenger, defeated champion Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica to win the heavyweight world boxing championship.
• Northern Songs Ltd and Maclen (Music) Ltd sue John Lennon over alleged deliberate assigning of some of his recent copyrights to Yoko Ono's music company Ono Music Ltd.

January 23

• After U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho attached an agreement on terms of a treaty at 12:30 p.m. local time in Paris, President Richard Nixon announced that a peace agreement had been reached in Paris to end the Vietnam War, including the release by North Vietnam of all American prisoners of war, and a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from South Vietnam by March. The cease-fire was scheduled to take effect on Saturday, January 27. Nixon spoke on national television in the evening and said that "we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia."

​

• American inventors Mario Cardullo and William L. Parks, received U.S. patent 3,713,148 for the first radio-frequency identification transmitter, the first implantable tracking device, after having filed the application on May 21, 1970.
• The U.S. House of Representatives implemented electronic voting for the first time in its history, with the members of Congress pushing buttons on their desks rather than the more time-consuming roll call. The first test was for a quorum call, moved for by Congressman Wayne Hays of Ohio, to determine if the House had a quorum of at least 218 members present to conduct business.
• After lying in state at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, the late president Johnson was flown in his casket to Washington, D.C., to lie in state in the United States Capitol.
• Died: Alexander Onassis, 24, Greek businessman, heir to the Aristotle Onassis fortune and chairman of Olympic Airways, died one day after being fatally injured in the crash of his single-engine airplane on takeoff from the Athens airport.

January 25

• A state funeral in Washington D.C. for former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson took place at the National City Christian Church. Johnson had died three days earlier in Texas, after which his flag-draped casket was flown to Washington to "lie in state" in the U.S. Capitol building. Following the funeral, the late president's body was flown back to Texas and buried in a cemetery two miles from the LBJ Ranch.

​

• National Lampoon: Lemmings, an off-Broadway comedy and music show at the Village Gate nightclub in New York City's Greenwich Village, began the first of 350 performances and launched the careers of John Belushi, Cornelius "Chevy" Chase and Christopher Guest. Belushi was praised by a critic for The New York Times for his portrayals of Pontius Pilate and Marlon Brando in parodies of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Godfather, "Chevy Chase's aping of President Nixon" in a skit called "Mrs. Agnew's Diary" (the show's "attempt at political satire") was described as piddling.

January 26

• The Battle of Cua Viet began on the morning before the U.S. and North Vietnam signed the Paris Peace Accords, as South Vietnam's Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) ground troops, supplemented by air cover from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy, attempted to recapture the port of Cua Viet in the Quang Tri province and failed. North Vietnam claimed that 2,330 ARVN troops were killed or wounded, while South Vietnam claimed that the North sustained 1,000 casualties.
• Died: Edward G. Robinson (stage name for Emanuel Goldenberg), 79, Romanian-born American film and stage actor known for his "tough guy" roles, died of cancer 12 days after completion of filming of his final role as a supporting actor in Soylent Green.

January 27

• U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords at the Hôtel Majestic. Neither Le Duc Tho or Henry Kissinger, who negotiated for North Vietnam and the U.S., respectively, was present for the signing of "Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam".
• At Paris, the government of North Vietnam and delegates from the Viet Cong presented U.S. representatives a list of 555 American prisoners of war that it was prepared to release, while the U.S. provided a list of 26,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong prisoners that were being held by the South Vietnamese government. The U.S. Department of Defense was aware of 1,925 missing personnel, and 1,370 servicemen would be listed permanently as "missing in action." After reviewing the names, the U.S. Department of Defense said through a spokesman, "there are 56 men that we had previously carried on our list of prisoners of war" who were not on the list provided.
• Outgoing U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird announced that the United States armed forces would become an all-volunteer organization and that no further draft of U.S. citizens would take place.
• Died: U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel William Nolde, 43, of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, was killed by North Vietnamese artillery fire at An Loc in South Vietnam, at 9:00 in the evening local time, 11 hours before the ceasefire agreed upon in Paris took effect. Colonel Nolde became the last combat death in the Vietnam War.

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "I Am Woman," Helen Reddy (22 weeks total)
• "I Can See Clearly Now," Johnny Nash (20 weeks)
• "If You Don't Know Me by Now," Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (17 weeks)
• "Something's Wrong with Me," Austin Roberts (15 weeks)
• "Sweet Surrender," Bread (11 weeks)

New on the chart:

"Space Oddity," David Bowie

(originally released in 1969, reaching #124 US, #5 UK; #15 US this run)

"Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)," Gladys Knight & The Pips

(#2 US; #15 AC; #1 R&B; #31 UK)

"Killing Me Softly with His Song," Roberta Flack

(#1 US the weeks of Feb. 24 through Mar. 17 and Mar. 31, 1973; #2 AC; #2 R&B; #6 UK; 1974 Grammy Awards for Song the Year and Record of the Year; #360 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time [2004])


And new on the boob tube:

• M*A*S*H, "The Ringbanger"
• Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Season 6, episode 17
• Hawaii Five-O, "Here Today, Gone Tonight"
• Adam-12, "Citizen's Arrest – 484"
• Kung Fu, "An Eye for an Eye"
• Mission: Impossible, "The Fountain"
• Love, American Style, "Love and the Singing Suitor / Love and the Unmarriage / Love and the Wee He"
• All in the Family, "Archie Goes Too Far"
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show, "Romeo and Mary"
• The Bob Newhart Show, "The Two Loves of Dr. Hartley"

_______

Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki pages for the month and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.

_______

Hawkeye was diverting supplies and didn't want the sister to know that their gifts were obtained illegally.

Having taken a second look, it appears to have been a '60s war comic. He was reading it folded over. From what I could make of the page we got the better look at, somebody was carrying another character in uniform on their shoulders while planes were bombing the area. On the opposite page, I think I spied a helmeted soldier.

Actually, he died in an explosion and all that was left was his dog tags.

Is it, if he's doing it in cooperation with the mother?

Or unintentionally makes you giggle, because people taking dives from that high-rise is a trope of the show.

I wasn't clear on that myself.

We might've seen a secretary or something.

"I wonder what Glenn's doing these days...?"

"Sure is a quiet night, isn't it, partner?"
"Say, are either of you guys hungry?"
[In unison] "NO!!!"

Keep in mind it's the same night.

TZ woulda freaked the shit outta me at that age!

 

Immersive retro context pays off again here. I never knew that Johnson died the very day before Nixon announced the Vietnam peace agreement. There's something poetically tragic about that.

In addition to the previously discussed subject of this starting one of the periods during which there were no living ex-presidents, it's also noteworthy that there won't be another presidential death for over twenty years. This was coming out of a period of relatively concentrated presidential deaths that resulted in there being no living ex-presidents at this point: Kennedy in '63, Wilson in '64 (had to look that one up), Eisenhower in '69 (preempting "Turnabout Intruder"), Truman in '72, Johnson in '73, less than a month later.

Nor had I, but those guys had to come from somewhere.

I'm certainly grateful.

Didn't know about that. "Space Oddity" came up as Bubbling Under business a few years back, but this would be the period that most people remember the song from, no doubt.

Yeah...it's alright but not terribly memorable.

Gorgeous '70s classic.

The sister wouldn't have wanted to be involved in taking stolen donations. And the Tuttle ruse was preexisting as the name being signed to acquire the supplies.

Po probably would've given it to the kid straight while using it as a teachable moment. Kan might have been a little more enigmatic about it.

I was very sensitive about some things in my single digits. You may recall that I was too scared to watch The Incredible Hulk for its first season.