Post-50th Anniversary Viewing
The Mod Squad
"Run, Lincoln, Run"
Originally aired January 4, 1973
IMDb said:
Linc tries to save his cabby friend from loan sharks.
The cabby, Herb Henderson (James A. Watson Jr.), is leaving Jacey's Bar-B-Q while trying to evade the described baddies, Krause and Marty (Elliott Street--who continues to impress me with his versatility, even as that guest actor pipeline becomes more crowded--and Taylor Lacher), when Linc stops there and chats him up. After Herb makes an excuse and goes his way, Linc sits down at the counter and co-proprietor Mrs. Milton (June Dayton) drops plates as she finds her husband, Chuck (Justin Smith), lying bloodied behind it. The loan sharks catch up with Herb as he's getting home, where Krause (per IMDb--I didn't catch the name being dropped) questions him for details about Linc, concerned that he might talk. Herb's persuaded to cooperate when they threaten to turn their attention to his young wife, Ruth Henderson (Emily Yancy--If she married Elliott, she'd be...). Linc has already called CLE and given a description by the time Greer arrives at Jacey's. The captain proceeds to Herb's, but the sharks, staking the place out, call Herb to threaten him not to talk. After Greer leaves, Ruth asks Herb about what's going on. Meanwhile, Chuck Milton dies, which the thugs' boss, Edmund Glendon of Westland Loan (Stefan Gierasch), chews them out about as they were supposed to persuade him to serve a key role in an impending heist.
Linc goes to Herb's to confront him about what he knows, but Herb doesn't want to get involved, feeling that he paid his dues by taking a leg injury in the service. Greer turns up that Chuck did time for work as a burglar alarm expert, and learns from Mrs. Milton that he got the money to start the business from a shady loan. Making a later visit to Ruth at her invitation, Linc learns that Herb took out a loan to pay for doctor bills he racked up trying to fix his leg...which is established to be an irrational obsession, as it was restored to 99% efficiency and shouldn't prevent him from pursuing his dream of playing pro basketball. Linc also learns of the two men she's seen stalking Herb. Linc's parking in an assigned garage spot--presumably at his place--when he's ambushed by the hoods, who initially go after him with a crowbar and blackjack. Linc's getting the better of them (mainly Williams, partly Lucy) when the guns come out and he beats a retreat, bloodying his hand smashing a fire alarm to send them screeching away.
Looking into Westland, Greer learns that Glendon's assistant, Freddie Moss, is also a safecracker, and speculates that Glendon's using the loans as leverage to assemble talent for a bank job, which may include recruiting Herb as a driver. (This is the guy who dismissed the idea of a getaway vehicle for a fur theft as a wild theory.) Pete volunteers to take a crash course in electronics to pose as a substitute alarm man. (There's a funny bit of business here where the budget-conscious captain instructs Julie, in establishing her and Pete's cover, to rent not an "apartment" [hands raised above his head], but an "apartment" [hands lowered].) Linc shows Herb his bandaged hand and goes along with agreeing not to talk when Herb offers to get the heat off of him. Pete and Julie show up at Westland as an ex-con with alarm expertise who's having trouble finding a job and his wife, looking for a loan. Glendon and Moss (Nick Lewis) subsequently visit their cover pad to have Pete sign a larger-than-asked-for loan. Back at Westland, Glendon goes over the details of the heist with Herb, which involves hitting an outdated bank before it's demolished to build a shopping center. Anticipating a fat paycheck, Herb buys a dress for Ruth, but they get into a fight when she asks where the money's coming from, which Linc walks into the end of.
Glendon and Moss return to the cover pad threatening to withdraw the loan and dropping off plans for the unidentified bank. Moss later returns without notice to pick up Pete, not giving him a chance to leave a message for Julie. Linc goes to Herb's to prevent him from going, but the hoods show up for him with guns and, seeing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, force Linc to come with them. Glendon, Moss, and Pete dress as uniformed CLE, complete with squad car, to handle the alarm part. When Krause makes Herb stop the cab in an alley so he and Linc can get out, Herb guns it and runs into an area under repair, causing Krause to take a dive out of his open door that results in unconsciousness. Linc calls in the location of the bank to Greer, but they're unable to free the cab, so they run back to Herb's place, where Marty is holding Ruth. At the bank, Glendon and Moss open the door to find that the alarm's still working, and Pete dives for cover as they take shots at him, followed promptly by Greer and real squad cars swooping in to nab them. Greer briefly takes in the sight of Pete in uniform.

Linc calls Ruth from a pay phone to clue her in to the plan, which involves Lucy diving through the glass front door to surprise Marty while Herb gets to Ruth through the back.


In the coda, Herb and Ruth head into a basketball arena where pro trials are being held, and the Mods drive away in the Charger.
Ironside
"Ollinger's Last Case"
Originally aired January 4, 1973
IMDb said:
Ed goes to a small coastal fishing town to investigate the death of an old friend [of Ironside's], a retired police officer, and finds the hostile locals very reluctant to help him.
The team members arrive at the Cave to find the Chief in bed sick. He tells them of a friend of his who needs help. Ed heads to Grant's Bay to find Ted Ollinger--a retired cop with whom the Chief had ridden in his first patrol car--at the pier that he owns. A youthful service station proprietor, Sam Madden (Joseph Kaufmann), tries to lead him elsewhere; while real estate agent Bill Eaton (Albert Salmi) gives him directions, then calls Deputy Larry Davis (Mills Watson), who proceeds to the pier to assess the situation and discourage Ed from proceeding.
Ed disregards this advice to the accompaniment of "Where Can You Go?" (written by Paich & Paich, sung by Jim Haas) and finds the pier abandoned, so he looks around the single-room cabin adjoining Ollinger's fishing and skiff rental shop. As Ed's leaving the pier, he finds that the deputy has ticketed him. (There was a No Parking sign.) A business card leads Ed to D.A. candidate Adam Bronson (Kenny Mars), who's eating at a diner run by Bert Martin (William Bramley), as is Eaton. Ed's presence makes the waitress, Sally Pearson (Loretta Swit), visibly nervous. Everyone plays dumb, but Ed notices everyone's conspicuously organized odd behavior and questions Martin about it. As Ed's leaving, somebody tries to run over him with a station wagon. (Ooh, is Pete crossing over?)
Ed returns to the pier cabin with his suitcase. In a confusing edit, we cut to a body lying face-down in the water, and Ed's calling the Chief to express his condolences, having implicitly found the body. Ed goes to Sheriff Pat Heally (Warren Kemmerling) to tell him that Ted called claiming to have found incriminating evidence of a conspiracy; though the sheriff tries to play the death off as an accident, and Ollinger's head injury of having happened after he fell in. Ed learns with the sheriff's help that Ted refused to sell the pier to make way for a shoreline factory, and his ally in this matter was local heiress Stella Grant, Bronson's wife, who died in a car crash. During Ed's absence, the deputy puts additional No Trespassing measures into effect at the pier and hands him his suitcase. Mark does some offscreen investigation in Vegas, where Ms. Grant and Bill Eaton both were prior to her death, and learns of a public argument involving a loan. Ed returns to the diner to find Hot Lips alone and questions her, confronting her with a lipstick that he found in Ted's cabin, but she denies involvement while emphatically reinforcing everyone else's story. As Ed's leaving, he finds that his brakes don't work and almost collides with a truck.
With the deputy hovering over, the mechanic diagnoses a mechanical failure; and Ed takes a silent interest in the wreck of Ms. Grant's car being in the garage. Ed questions Bronson about the possibility that her brakes were sabotaged, but he insists that it was faulty shocks. An autopsy performed in Frisco determines that Ollinger was asphyxiated above water, and finds blue lint that Ed ties in with a pillow in his cabin. Ed returns to the pier via water, and after helping himself to some clothes a la David Banner, is starting to look around again when a wetsuited figure who followed him up knocks him out, drags him out, and pushes him in the water. Ed comes to, climbs out, and rushes into the cabin for some binoculars to get a look at a boat that's getting away.
The boat having been Eaton's, as well as his car used in the hit and run attempt, Ed has him brought to the sheriff's office. When Bronson comes in to support him, Ed tells him about Eaton having followed his wife to Vegas to try to stop her from getting a loan to help Ted, which surprises and angers Bronson. Needing hard evidence to press charges against Eaton, Ed heads to the diner and tells Sally that Ted left her the pier in his will. She admits to having an affair with him, but confesses that she was just using the older man. When Ed presses about who killed Ted, her answer is, "We all did." A flashback ensues of most of the townsfolk of interest (notably including the deputy, but not the sheriff) storming into Ollinger's cabin while Sally's in his bed and shoving him around, which results in him falling and hitting his head on a dresser. Bronson arrives late and inspects the body, declaring Ollinger to be dead. Back in the present, Sally indicates that the group left the body there, but somebody apparently got cold feet and went back to dispose of it.
Ed takes Bronson to the pier to help him find Ted's notes, with the incentive of finding incriminating evidence against Eaton. While they're looking, the Chief calls Ed to tell him of some more offscreen investigation by Mark. After hanging up, Ed produces a notebook and says that it indicates that Bronson was seen in the car with Stella and that he killed her because she was seeing a lawyer about a divorce, which would cost him her family fortune. He then accuses Bronson of being the only one who knew that Ollinger was still alive and going back to off him with the pillow. Bronson pulls a gun, but Ed promptly overpowers him. The Sheriff pops in to take Bronson into custody, and it turns out that the notebook Ed seemed to be reading only contains an unrelated hand-drawn map.
Item of note: The 50th anniversary comic that I'm currently working on is a 100-page Super Spectacular issue of
The Flash that includes a reprint of a 1964 Green Lantern story, in which the opening crime involves a pair of thieves walking out onto the street, their arms loaded with furs...no getaway vehicle in sight.
I hope Len Wein and Herb Trimpe were able to negotiate some nice little dividend from the billions of dollars this character has earned.
It's worth noting that it was his gradual development in other hands that made him so popular.
I'm pretty sure I've never heard this one before. It's okay.
Sly's last Top 40 hit; an unremarkable echo of the group at their peak.
An amusing novelty number. I think you've said that you don't like Jim Stafford.
He's okay. I got the last two, I'm planning to get this.
Not a big Donny and Marie fan. Good song, though.
It's a little bit country, but is it even a tiny bit rock 'n' roll? The previous hit cover by Dale & Grace was the #1 song in the country the week that JFK was killed.
Strong nostalgia factor with this one.
I previously got Anka's Top 10 hits from the '50s, but drew the line at delving into this little comeback era. I dunno...
In fact, what was Pete doing in the laundry room?
Laundry?
Yeah, but the evidence still existed. His energy would have been better spent on escape rather than getting in deeper.
Too many bonks on the head fighting the Dynamic Duo.
I'm going with Irish. Donald Moffat in a red beard must have looked like a Leprechaun.
The right to privacy doesn't exist in Modworld.

But this guy was an Intelligence agent. Wouldn't the very purpose of taking his fingerprints periodically to be to make sure he hasn't been replaced?
Or just in case he needed to be identified later.
Can't let this one go without posting this.
Would that count as a vote from Johnny Fever that I should pass on it?