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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing
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The Mod Squad
"Fever"
Originally aired December 15, 1970
Wiki said:
A man on the run, with the son he doesn't have legal custody of, kidnaps Julie. However, as both have Rocky Mountain spotted fever, she's more concerned for their lives than hers.
The episode opens with a commune leader (Paul Wexler) conducting what's apparently a symbolic funeral for the commune, which must be a seasonal thing ("Before we bury Earth Mother, let me lay this on you, brothers and sisters..."). When a sheriff's car pulls up, a man and his young son split into the woods. Sheriff Jack Summers (Ken Lynch) tells the commune leader that everyone present is under quarantine. On vacation (because she works
so hard), Julie's driving on a windy, hilly wooded road when she has to stop because there's a large section of tree branch blocking her way. The man and boy, Cliff and Shad Hansen (Robert Viharo and David & John Mutch), come out of hiding. Cliff explains that he put the branch there, and pulls a gun to carjack Julie, taking the wheel himself and heading back for L.A.
Back on the road, Cliff explains that he's taken sole custody of his son illegally and is on the run from his domineering father-in-law, department store magnate Leonard Morrison; and Julie tends to Shad, who's feeling ill. Taking Julie's wallet for a gas stop, Cliff discovers her ID. While he's trying to make a call in a phone booth, Julie writes a detailed note on the back of a check and drops it out the window in a lipstick case. The none-too-bright proprietor, Ben (Karl Swenson), tries to flag them down over their lost item before finding the note. He takes to the booth and calls Greer (passing by a vintage generic soda machine that's apparently out of use). Having already called in Pete and Linc when they were packing for a diving holiday, the three of them meet with Morrison (Frank Maxwell), who chastises Greer for having been on the case for months but not having found his son-in-law. Greer then gets a call from Sheriff Summers that the virus is spreading among the commune members, which means that the Hansens have been exposed.
Educational break: A quick bit of searching turns up that Rocky Mountain spotted fever is spread by ticks, not communicable between humans as it's portrayed in the episode. They even show Linc getting what I assume is meant to be a vaccination, when one of the tidbits I came across is that there is none; the treatment, as with Lyme, is antibiotics after infection.
Cliff and Julie hear a radio broadcast about the epidemic, but Cliff dismisses it as fake news. Pete talks to Shad's mother, a hip young artist type named Trudy (Brooke Bundy), who expresses how she feels torn between her husband and father before pointing him to a pair of artist friends who own a gallery where Cliff might go to hide out. Linc talks to Ben to get an idea which way they went. While Cliff is making a water stop, Julie slips a spare key out of her wheel well and tries to take off with Shad, but Cliff jumps into the moving car window and stops her. Pete hits the gallery and talks to Les and Jon (Paul Collins and Gordon DeVol), pretending to be a friend of Cliff's; but Cliff calls the gallery while Pete's there and disavows him. On the road, Julie stops the car, insisting at gunpoint that Shad has to be taken to a doctor, and Cliff, now showing signs of the illness himself, relents. At a small private practice, Dr. Wilson (Harlan Warde) verifies that Shad has spotted fever, and when he calls a hospital, Cliff takes off in the car on his own.
Greer goes to the doctor's office to see Julie, who's said to have contracted a mild case which only involved a brief fever. Pete returns to the gallery, is stonewalled by Les and Jon, and tries to lay it to them straight about the spotted fever, but they think it's all fake news, too. (Hippies were there first....) Demonstrating an uncanny sense of timing, Cliff calls again while Pete's there, wanting the guys to get him some bread out of the bank and meet him outside. Pete and Linc tail them, and are physically stalled by Les and Jon long enough for Cliff to drive away, though the Mods make pretty short work of the duo. Succumbing to the fever, Cliff tries to call the hospital about Shad, but they'll only talk to Morrison; so Cliff goes to Morrison Manor and confronts his father-in-law, who tries to reason with him. Refusing his help, Cliff splits again, but is intercepted by the assembled Mods and Trudy in the Challenger and collapses trying to get out of the car.
In the coda, the Mods visit Morrison Manor to ask about Shad; find that Leonard is helping Trudy pack the car to leave for her and Cliff's new apartment; and Julie and Leonard both agree not to press charges against Cliff. The guys even seem to have mended fences with Les and Jon, mentioning that they've contributed to a defense fund that the gallery's raising for Cliff. The Mods do a mansion driveway walk-off to the Challenger...Julie silently vowing never to go on vacation again, because it's more work than working.
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The Mod Squad
"Is There Anyone Left in Santa Paula?"
Originally aired December 29, 1970
Wiki said:
Following a death of an immigration agent at a car wash where an undocumented immigrant (and a friend of Pete's) works, the Squad finds a cop involved in the illegal entry of Mexican youths across the border - all tied to a village in Sonora. The officer and Greer are at odds on how to handle the case.
The immigration agent (Walter Stocker, I presume, whose character is billed as Neal, a name that never comes up) comes to the car wash questioning the owner (Paul Bryar) about his hiring of illegal immigrants, interested in particular in a Paco Montoya (Richard Romanos). When he tries to take Paco in, a chase through the car wash ensues, and the agent takes a nasty fall in a struggle on the rollers, suffering a skull fracture and possible brain damage. It turns out that Paco is a friend of Pete's, and Greer's angle on the case is finding Paco as a possible lead to the ring that helped him get into the country. Pete goes to Paco's home to try talking to his family, but is caught coming out of the empty home by a detective named Evans (Patrick Waltz), who takes him to the community center to see his partner, Lt. Ramon Sanchez (Fernando Lamas)--an infamously hard-boiled cop who's working the assault angle. He questions Pete for what he might know while warning him to discontinue his search. Afterwards, Greer approaches Sanchez at HQ to see what he's got, and they get into a discussion about the injustices of illegal immigration enforcement, which Sanchez feels very strongly about. Pete talks to another car wash worker he knows, Eddie (Joe Renteria), who points him to Paco's fiancée, Anita; while Linc and Julie question the owner, whose defensiveness about hiring illegals makes him unwilling to come forward as an eyewitness to the struggle--Paco's legal standing depending on whether it can be determined that he had intent to kill.
The Mods go to see Anita (Amparo Pilar) at the hamburger stand where she works, trying to get a lead on an unnamed cousin who helped Paco into the country, but she asks them to let Paco be. Pete tries digging up a Brown Power activist named Rick Ramirez figuring he might know something, but is chased into an alley by a trio of toughs he'd previously questioned at the community center and warned to stay away. (I assume that their leader is the character billed as Chico [Bert Santos].) When Anita gets off work, the Mods tail her to a house, but are intercepted outside by Sanchez and a couple of other detectives and arrested. At Greer's office, having been filled in on who the Mods are, Sanchez accuses them of interfering with his case, but Pete thinks that Sanchez is the one scaring off leads, and Greer insists that the Mods stay on the case. They go back to the house to find it recently abandoned, with signs that several men had been sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and that at least one of them was from the titular locale, which is the same village that Paco, his father, and uncle came from. They think that somebody tipped the occupants off...with Sanchez being the only one besides Greer who would have known to.
The Mods look up Sanchez's record to find that he, too, came from Santa Paula. Pete makes another try at locating Ramirez and is taken to his hideout blindfolded to see him (George Cervera)...but only learns that Ramirez has a history with Sanchez but thinks well of him. He then goes back to the community center to talk to Sanchez, dropping the episode title, accusing him of running interference for his fellow Santa Paulans, and informing him that the immigration agent has died, raising the potential charge against Paco to murder. Meanwhile, Linc and Julie stake out the hamburger stand and tail Anita after she's picked up by an older Latino (Victor Millan) in a beat-up old car...following them into what I think is the same warehouse yet again, where they catch a glimpse of Paco through a doorway, only to be caught at gunpoint by the older man, Pedro.
Back at HQ, Sanchez explains to Greer and Pete that he tried to discourage his townsfolk from coming in illegally, but once they were in the States, did what he could to help them. Sanchez ultimately agrees to take them to where Paco's hiding on the condition that he accompany them. At the warehouse, Paco verifies that Linc and Julie are friends of Pete's and learns that they know about Sanchez, and the others, including Paco's father (Julio Medina), debate what to do about them--Pedro insisting that the Mods can't be allowed to get them sent back to Mexico. Greer and the others arrive, and Sanchez prevents Paco, who's been holding Linc and Julie at gunpoint, from firing on them as they're trying to make a break for it. Pedro grabs the gun, pointing it at Sanchez, who chastises the lot of them for what they were considering doing and talks Pedro down. Sanchez then lets Greer make his arrest and says that he's putting himself on suspension.
Outside the courthouse, Sanchez makes amends with the Mods, and Greer comes out to announce that the car wash owner, having ultimately come forward, has gotten Paco off. Greer expresses his intent to help Sanchez save his career, and the Mods walk into the reflection of the Challenger's sun visor mirror.
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That's pretty nice. I don't believe I've ever heard it before.
Nor had I...it's alright.
The song sounds kinda Shaft-derivative, but when I get to the film chronologically in my catch-up movie viewing, I may have to try it. It sounds pretty interesting.
And one that had previously eluded my collection.
Yep.
