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50th Anniversary Viewing
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Kung Fu
"Superstition"
Originally aired April 5, 1973
Wiki said:
Walls imprison the men unjustly sentenced to work as miners at a brutal labor camp. Yet an even greater barrier holds them captive: fear of the camps ancient Indian curse. But Caine knows no such fear.
Cue flashback... (and Stevie Wonder while we're at it)
This seems like one too many "Caine is unjustly convicted/imprisoned" episodes in a row. And of course, Caine's mad escape artist skills don't come into play when it might shortcut him out of the story.
What results is the obligatory labor camp episode with an emphasis on the benefits of meditation in enduring harsh conditions, and featuring a shared hotbox with standing room inside.
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Emergency!
"Audit"
Originally aired April 7, 1973
Season finale
The first sentence on Wiki said:
John is worried about a pending IRS audit.
One of the many idiosyncrasies of the
Emergency! Wiki guy is that he always refers to Johnny as John, which nobody on the show does. For once, the tax story comes on a timely airdate; but given how this was falling a month after the previous new episode, I have to wonder if it was a "Turnabout Intruder" situation, in which the episode got preempted on an earlier date.
Johnny's fretting about having to report to the IRS the next day for the titular procedure, though Roy, who had a pain-free one a few years prior, tries to convince him that it's just a routine spot check. The paramedics are called to a residence where a young woman (Kathleen King) has let in a man named John Welman (Ray Ballard), who's nursing what he says is a blow to the head, but insists on seeing a doctor rather than paramedics. At Rampart, he tells Brackett that he was attacked by teenagers in the park. Despite him seeming to momentarily black out, his vitals read normal. Dix gets Johnny worked up again when she tells him of a doctor whose titular procedure didn't go so smoothly.
On their way back to the station, the paramedics are flagged down by a woman to a crowd gathered around an unmoving infant left in the back seat of a locked car. Johnny gets the car open with a hanger, and it turns out that the child was just sleeping. After the crowd disperses, the mother (Adriana Shaw) comes out of a beauty parlor, outraged that the paramedics broke into her car. (The police were called before they freed the child, but we don't see them arrive.)
At Rampart, various examinations of Welman prove inconclusive, so Brackett brings the student doctors, including Morton, in to try to figure out what's wrong with him. After Brackett says that he plans to do a spinal tap next, Welman goes missing. A hippie gas station attendant, George Barton (Robert Porter), brings in his seven-months-pregnant wife (Kathy Cannon), who's not in labor but has been having trouble breathing. She tells Brackett that their desire to do things naturally means she hasn't been seeing a doctor. He diagnoses that she has a damaged heart valve from undiagnosed rheumatic fever when she was a child, and tells her that she'll need medical supervision for the remainder of her pregnancy. She's afraid of how George will take it, as he's more rigidly dedicated to their lifestyle. ("But having a baby, that's like for real.") Brackett breaks the news to George, who agrees not to "lay anything on her".
The titular procedure occurs between scenes only 2/3 of the way into the episode. It turns out that Johnny miswrote a number, and when all was said and done, the IRS owed him four dollars and change.
Meanwhile, Welman turns up again to see Early about stomach pains, now identifying himself as Gilbert Wells. Early talks to Brackett about it, who immediately makes the connection, as records have revealed that Welman is a "professional patient," now having turned up at Rampart six times in the last year. Brackett and Early go in to confront him. Firmly caught, he admits to his game, bragging of past accomplishments and trying to figure out how he could have been more convincing this time. Brackett wants him to stick around to see a psychiatrist, and he takes it as a new challenge.
Station 51 and other units are called to a construction site where a man named Milt (James McEachin) is trapped in a basement that's collapsing from water seepage, a reinforcing rod going through his right leg. With a wall above them threatening to give at any time, the foreman (Ross Elliott) convinces Milt that amputating his leg is the best solution. Rampart sends Early to the scene while the paramedics reluctantly prepare Milt for the requested procedure. When it looks like Early won't get there in time, Brackett gives Roy permission to do whatever he thinks is best...but Johnny manages to clear the debris trapping Milt's leg just in time for them to carry him out with the rod still in it. In the aftermath, Roy admits to Johnny that he doesn't know whether he would have gone through with the amputation.
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He's one of those guys who I'm always surprised was alive in my lifetime.
I got the
Band on the Run track stuck in my head ahead of schedule.
And had just recently returned from the Planet of the Apes.
[Moves eyes back and forth.] Accessing...accessing...
Vintage Cooper seems kind of like generic guitar rock to me, in an era that's giving us the likes of Zeppelin and Pink Floyd at their peaks.
A live single from the Hawaii performance, hence my indulging in a live clip. Not a particularly memorable Elvis single, but it's Elvis.
Okay, recognizable from oldies radio, doesn't do much for me.
Yeah, baby. It's Barry White. Listen up.
Upping soul's game in this era.
As I'd get into in the album spotlight that I'll have to get around to eventually,
Red Rose Speedway is a substantial step forward in Paul's post-Beatles career, setting the stage for his masterpiece of the era,
Band on the Run. The Lewisohn books tells me that the US airdate of the
James Paul McCartney TV special is only a week away. I've never seen it, and I believe it's available in its entirety on YouTube, so I'll have to catch that as 50th anniversary viewing.
I always wonder how effective these things are.
Tennis shoes, or anti-drug ads?
I had never heard his debut name before. I imagine there was some confusion about how to pronounce it.
It stands for Energy Release Generator. In his debut story, ERG-1 (Drake Burroughs) applies for Legion membership, telling an origin story of how his body was transmuted into anti-energy in an accident, for which he wears a containment suit, and demonstrating a variety of powers that duplicate those of existing Legionnaires. He's rejected because of the rule that each Legionnaire has to have a unique power. As seen in the page I posted, he tells them that he has such a power, but says that he can't show it to them. He ends up stowing away on the Legion cruiser to the mission on Manna-5, where a gigantic machine is sucking up crops. The efforts of the Legionnaires sent on the mission prove ineffective, and the machine is threatening to suck up an unconscious Colossal Boy, so ERG swoops in to save the day, revealing his ability to project his anti-energy as a blast, obliterating the machine. The last panel reveals his empty costume at the feet of the Legionnaires...who assume that he sacrificed his life in the effort.
By the time he makes it back to Earth a year later in real time, reunites with his suit (kept in a memorial display), defeats a menace, and joins the Legion under his new codename, projecting anti-energy blasts becomes his main power, and his other abilities are effectively forgotten, at least until they're readdressed in a more detailed account of his origin a decade later.
Cue "Bell Bottom Blues"...and maybe get ahead of our timeline and throw in "Peek-a-Boo!" for good measure. Cockrum's new outfits for the lady Legionnaires were characterized by their cutouts.
On other occasions, Greg, Lupus, and others invaded the Mannix stage with prop machine guns to kidnap Mike Connor's in the middle of a take
Now that would be a fun thing to see if anyone preserved it.
And I'll just push away intrusive memories of Sean Cassidy.....
