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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing
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The Mod Squad
"Good Times Are Just Memories"
Originally aired October 26, 1972
IMDb said:
A dirty cop frames Pete for the murder of a confederate in crime.
While a singer and guitar player perform a folksy song at the park, Pete's waiting for a meeting with Georgy Felker (Frederick Herrick), who seems to know that he's an undercover cop and wants to discuss immunity. But in a concealed spot, Georgy is shaken down by crooked cop Lt. Jerry Price (Leif Erickson) over some stolen jewels. Georgy tells Price that he wants out, an altercation ensues, and Georgy's head lands on the obligatory rock. Georgy's waiting girlfriend, Prudence Gordon (Tyne "or Lacey" Daly), sees Price coming out of the hiding place, then goes in to find Georgy's body just as Pete's jumping in, which sends her running and screaming. Pete is arrested, and while Greer's trying to get him released, Price leans on an accomplice, a travel agent named McCleary (Clifford David), to learn Prudence's name and address, the latter of which he searches. Price subsequently learns from his son, Rick (Sam Elliott)--Greer's liaison with the D.A.'s office--that one of Greer's undercover kids has been arrested in connection with the killing. Price forges some incriminating evidence, including tracing and altering a note Georgy left about his meeting with Pete, and breaking into Pete's place to leave a key taped under a drawer.
After Pete's released, Price visits Greer to cast some doubt in Pete's direction. Price is present as both pieces of evidence are found. Meanwhile, the Mods are trying to track down Prudence--first roughing up an auto mechanic where Georgy worked, who leads them to her job at a jewelry making shop, where they talk to co-worker Johnny (pre-perm future
General Hospital heartthrob Tony Geary). Outside, a pair of uniformed CLE approach to arrest Pete and he unprofessionally runs for it. The key leads to a locker where the stolen jewelry is found, and Greer blames Price for having pushed the investigation. The other Mods find Pete searching Prudence's place, and they lampshade a bit in arranging to have Pete "hide out" at Julie's place (which doesn't go anywhere anyway). Meanwhile, Price breaks into and searches Johnny's pad, where Pru is hiding out...seeing evidence that she's been there (her shoes), but is interrupted in searching for her by Johnny's return. After Price leaves, Pru cries to Johnny that he'll kill her.
McCleary calls Johnny wanting to know why the heat's on and looking for Pru, and learns about how Price killed Georgy. A police graphologist named Charlie (A. B. Mingleton) turns up evidence of how the incriminating note was traced, and Greer calls off the APB on Pete. Price goes to McCleary, who's the ringleader of the jewelry thieving operation, looking for his cut, but McCleary holds his knowledge of the murder over Price's head. The assembled Mods work out that McCleary's agency, which also sells theater tickets, scopes out the houses to rob, and the jewelry store cuts up the stolen jewels. Price meets with his son to protest about Pete being let off the hook, and we learn how Price is resentful of Greer's success on the force relative to his own, and even resents his son making more money than he does. McCleary instructs Johnny and Pru about the next house to be hit, and calls Price for intel about police patrols.
After an all-night stakeout of the jewelry store, the Mods witness Johnny meeting up with McCleary and tail them as they head for the next house by day on a sidecar motorcycle disguised as being for a blade sharpening service. Pru calls the police and goes to Greer's office to tell him what she saw and how McCleary approached Georgy and her months back after getting Price in his pocket. Not wanting to believe that Price is on the take and killed Georgy, Greer presses her for details and her story holds up. Greer then goes to a disbelieving Rick with what he knows. As McCleary is cracking the safe in the targeted home, Price shows up and tries to arrest him, knowing that he'll be fingered but wanting to go out on his own terms, as "top dog" (following up on a story he was telling Greer in a previous scene); but Johnny takes Price by surprise and the thieves split. The Mods chase after them on foot, intercepting them by running downhill as the cycle navigates a winding road and subduing them. Then Price pops up again holding his piece on all of them, but hands it over to Pete...coolly noting, "In the old days, cops carried guns."
Rick breaks into tears at seeing his father in cuffs at police HQ, and the senior Price grumbles some more about scraping by for 29 years. The freeze-framed last shot is uncharacteristically not a pull-out of the Mods exiting the scene, but of Greer hitting his office door in frustration.
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Ironside
"Camera...Action...Murder!"
Originally aired October 26, 1972
Wiki said:
Ironside must figure out who's sending him films of future murder victims.
Mark shows up at the Cave in his new uniform, complete with gun belt, while the Chief is opening mail in Fran's absence. (It's later mentioned that he's attending the academy.) One of the packages contains a roll of silent 8mm film showing a woman (Erena Radich) being shot in the park from the direction of the camera. Our top-billed guests are Joe Don Baker and Dennis Patrick--both good suspects.
We quickly meet Baker's character, Eric Blair, in the back of a squad car that Fran is riding shotgun in, filming a documentary about a day in the life of a policewoman. Fran is upset by Blair's cavalier attitude while shooting on a pier as Fran looks at a woman's body that's been fished out of the drink; Blair explains that he was a combat photographer in 'Nam, so he's seen it all. Back at the Cave, Fran recognizes the woman in the film as the corpse, who's identified as Ann Simonson. Blair continues to follow Fran as she goes to Simonson's home to question her flakey roommate (Linda Gillin), covertly slipping in some filming against Fran's wishes. The Chief drives to the park to inspect the murder scene, questioning a young jogger who happens to be brandishing an 8mm camera (Elliott Street--both too obvious and not in the post-opening credits).
Back at the Cave, when another reel of film comes in, the Chief takes it more seriously. Eric recognizes this victim (Fleur H. Powell)--who waves at the camera before a gun is pulled in frame--as an old girlfriend, Rosemary Forrest. Her body is found, and when the team visits her home, Ironside finds that Rosemary's brother, Thatcher, is the jogger he met. They're joined by Arnold Gardner (Patrick), the executor of the estate that the Forrest siblings inherited from their parents, and Ironside breaks the news of why they've come. Afterward, Fran and Eric pay a call on Antonio Fazzi (Anthony Caruso), the owner of a hot dog stand that Simonson was walking away from in the film, and Eric's experience filming in the man's region of Italy helps get them in the door. Fazzi tells them that he always saw a young man running around in the park with a small camera. Back at the Cave, another reel arrives special delivery, showing another young woman (Emily St. Michael) being killed.
After questioning how well she knows Blair, Ironside sends Fran to question Thatcher. Believing Thatcher to be their #1 suspect, Mark objects to Ironside's cavalier attitude about sending her alone into danger. Thatcher comes off as awkward and sensitive, and Fran tells him to call her if he needs to talk about the loss of his sister. Gardner, who paints himself as a surrogate parent to the Forrest siblings, promptly visits the Cave to object to Thatcher being badgered in his current state of mind and promises to obtain a court order. Meanwhile, a budding attraction between Eric and Fran blossoms into romance, and he probes about whether she's too dedicated to her career to consider alternatives. A new film comes to the cave--this time 16mm and showing footage of the still-living Fran, who's of a similar type to the other girls, that Fran confirms was shot by Eric.
The Chief visits Eric's editing room, where it's found that the footage in question is missing, and he acknowledges that he's a suspect. While the Chief studies footage of the victims via a film editor/viewer that he's ordered and assembled and has Mark recreate the shooter's actions, Eric calls Fran to ask her to sneak out of her building--now staked out by a swarm of police--for a rendezvous with him, in which he asks her to come with him on a new assignment to Hawaii. While Ed is still trying to track down the body of the last victim, back at the Cave, the Chief voices to Mark a suspicion that the murders aren't the work of a deranged serial killer, but meant to cover up a killing with a more specific motive. Sneaking back to her apartment, Fran's approached in the dark by Thatcher, and her scream brings the CLE swarm down on him. When the Chief learns that the "wrong man" was arrested and the stakeout pulled, he, Mark, and Ed converge on Fran's place, arriving just in time to tackle a ski-masked assailant, who's taken down by a roundhouse kick from ESD and Scooby Doo'd to reveal...Mr. Gardner, the attorney!
In the coda, the Chief explains that he noticed a movement in all of the films when the killer switched the film to his right hand to fire with his left, and that Gardner was the only left-handed suspect...and he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddlesome dicks! Eric drops in with a plan to get hitched with Fran while on his next assignment and have his subsequent globetrotting jobs double as their honeymoon, but she gently turns him down, telling him that she's not ready to disappear to the Great White North.
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