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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
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The Brady Bunch
"Will the Real Jan Brady Please Stand Up?"
Originally aired January 15, 1971
Wiki said:
Peter and Jan are invited to a party. Peter is reluctant to attend. Jan decides she needs a new look and buys a dark wig to stand out at the party. The plan fails when party-goers believe the ridiculous new look is Jan playing a joke, and she runs home in tears. Jan's friends show up to explain no offense was intended: they thought it was a joke because Jan's real hair is so beautiful.
Guest stars: Marcia Wallace as wig store sales assistant, Pamelyn Ferdin as Lucy Winters, Karen Foulkes as Margie Whipple
Jan's invitation to Lucy Winters's birthday party is accidentally addressed to you-know-who, you-know-who, you-know-who! She then gets the idea to buy the wig from an ad in a magazine. Jan borrows the money from Peter, with interest. Ah, Marcia Wallace was Carol on
The Bob Newhart Show...and I see from browing IMDb, the voice of Mrs. Krabappel on
The Simpsons. Jan ends up getting a short but full curly black wig, which Marcia thinks looks ridiculous, but Jan thinks that it shows "the real Jan Brady". Nevertheless, she goes out of her way to hide it from the adults and the boys, wearing a towel over it while she's preparing for the party...but Bobby yanks off the towel while teasing her, and Greg cracks that she looks like Davy Crockett. The parents try to talk her out of wearing it, but ultimately allow her to.
When Peter finds out that Margie Whipple, who moons over him to his annoyance, will be at the party, he feigns illness to get out of his commitment to take Jan there, but the parents see through his ruse. When Jan shows up at the party, Lucy assumes that it's a gag and everyone laughs. Jan goes home despondent, but
Lucy comes over to apologize and bolster Jan's confidence by telling her that her own hair is an object of envy.
Because nary an episode goes by without some physical gaggery involving Alice, in the coda she tries the wig on herself.
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The Partridge Family
"Old Scrapmouth"
Originally aired January 15, 1971
Wiki said:
Laurie gets braces right before a television show comes to film the band. As if that isn't bad enough, when they begin to play, her braces pick up radio signals and all she can hear is The Rolling Stones!
Guest Star: Mark Hamill as Jerry
Song: "The Love Song"
Laurie's supposed to be wearing them for six months--read on to see how the show gets out of that. She has to break a date with her current boyfriend, Jerry, to go to the dentist. Laurie avoids letting anyone see her with her mouth open, and to further her insecurity, the band gets a gig on the Wink Burgess Show the day after she has them put on. She actually does a good job of not showing them to us, which makes me think she's not actually wearing them in most of the scenes.
Burgess (Alan Oppenheimer) shows up at the house wanting to take pictures, which she avoids; and when Jerry asks her to go steady, she runs away crying. The show is being filmed in the Partridges' living room. Burgess gets upset when Laurie's dentist rings the doorbell...what did he expect? During an instrumental rehearsal, Laurie picks up the radio signals, which throws off her playing.
Danny: Laurie, I'm on your side, but the Rolling Stones don't make personal appearances in a person's mouth.
Everyone goes outside to try to find the radio that the braces are picking up, and Jerry drops in listening to a transistor radio, which is when he sees her braces and tries to pretend like it doesn't make a difference, though he can't help making awkward cracks about them.
The band proceeds into their performance...or rather, the Love Generation's performance...of "The Love Song".
Greg Brady is the real thing!
And sure enough, there's a cop-out in the coda...Laurie opts to have the braces removed and wear a night brace for two years.
Use the bus, Jerry!
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That Girl
"A Limited Engagement"
Originally aired January 15, 1971
Wiki said:
Donald gets cold feet about marriage and breaks their engagement.
Donald is at Jerry's overhearing Ann's bridal shower. She's all enthusiastic about the great gifts she's gotten, but he expresses his doubts about going through with it to Jerry. Between how he behaves before leaving and his reaction when Ann calls him a couple of times, she can tell that something's wrong. He hangs up on her, then calls her back, at which point they're in full-on fight mode. Then she picks up the phone to give him an earful and, as obviously set up, it turns out she got the wrong number. The fight continues in the elevator at his apartment. Having wanted to sleep on it, he finally tells her what's wrong, and pushed to make the decision, he says that he doesn't want to marry her, and she gives him the ring.
Things get worse for Ann when Ruthie tells her that Jerry knew. Donald takes his continuing funk to work with him, talking with Jerry again. While Jerry starts to sew the seeds of counter-doubt, Lew drops in on Ann and she unloads on him. She tells him that she still loves Donald, and thinks that there must be something wrong with her; but he asserts that by the end of the day, Hollinger will realize how stupid he's being and come crawling back to her. Indeed, Donald later drops by, makes a case that he wasn't being himself, and apologetically offers her the ring. In the coda, he explains that he had to stop thinking about it as getting married and start thinking about it as having the woman he loves as his wife.
"Oh, Donald" count:
12
"Oh, Daddy" count:
4
"Oh, Jerry" count:
3
"Oh, Ruthie" count:
3 (plus a close-sounding "Ugh, Ruthie")
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Love, American Style
"Love and Operation Model / Love and the Sack"
Originally aired January 15, 1971
In "Love and Operation Model," Christopher Leacock (Albert Brooks) has been stood up at an airport when he spots an attractive prospect at the insurance desk (Karen Jensen). He approaches her claiming to be an advertising agent who's trying to secure a model for a cigar campaign, then makes a call to his client, Mr. Tuttle--actually a friend at another airport payphone (Bill Callaway). When Leacock secures the audition, he tries to persuade Diane to come to his apartment that night to prepare. In tears at her lucky break, she insists on calling her sick mother--actually her fellow desk clerk (Judy McConnell), and drops enough description of her family's hardships that it sends Christopher running out.
"Love and the Sack" opens with April (Cher) anticipating a surprise from her boyfriend, Henry, which she expects to be a ring. Then she gets a delivery of large sack, which turns out to have a man inside--an admirer and co-worker of Henry's in an advertising department who mailed himself to her (Sonny, sharing a billing with Cher). He tries to give her the hard sell that he's better for her than the cheap, straight-laced, attached-to-his-mother Henry, but Henry (co-executive producer Arnold Margolin) comes knocking and April puts her rival suitor back in the sack. Henry does bring a ring--which is as small as her admirer tried to warn her--and a couple of audible heckles come from the sack. Henry eventually notices that there's someone in the sack. The admirer claims to be living with her, and Henry abruptly calls off the engagement, declaring that his mother was right that April is a kook and a weirdo. The episode ends with April agreeing to go out to an also-cheap but more romantic-sounding dinner with the admirer (who's never named--even Henry refers to him as "You!").
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Mission: Impossible
"The Missile"
Originally aired January 16, 1971
Wiki said:
An enemy agent attempts to steal the guidance system and schematics for a top-secret missile, but the IMF has secretly switched them out for fakes in order to set enemy weapons research back. Unfortunately, the team must also contend with a psychotic mechanic who is convinced that Dana Lambert is his former girlfriend.
The regular-sized reel-to-reel tape in a closed seaside general store said:
Good morning, Mr. Phelps. This is James Reed [David Sheiner], a systems analyst with the Baltimore Corporation. He will arrive forty-eight hours from now at the Weapons Test Center to conduct an authorized survey of that facility. Reed is a foreign agent. His objective is to obtain the electronic guidance system of our latest missiles now being tested. His contact at the naval facility is Doris Gordon [Karen Carlson], a civilian secretary.
Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to allow Reed to steal a bogus guidance system in place of the real one, thereby short-stopping enemy weapons development in this vital field. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim!
Jim goes to the facility and visits Gordon's office, where he gives the proper passphrases (about a cousin who lives near Danbury!) and she responds in kind. At that point the other IMFers and Commander Wardman (John Pickard) reveal themselves and place her under arrest--this hardly seems like IMF work! Gordon's boss, Bob Willard (Barry Coe), is informed that she would have blackmailed him, and is reassigned. Jim is then taken to a missile, which is partly disassembled so that he can personally replace its guidance system with the phony one--now if the IMF is gonna be involved in something like that, you'd think they'd have Barney do it! Jim presents Wardman with a phony set of plans to go along with it, and we're told that Jim will be posing as Willard for Reed's visit, and that there's a danger that Reed will want to off him to keep him quiet.
Dana, who's taking Doris's place, has car trouble leaving the facility for the night. She makes it to a nearby garage, where the proprietor, Duke (John Dennis), puts in a temporary replacement condenser. A deranged-looking mechanic (John Beck) sees her, says the name "Marlene," and follows her home, where he reaches through her open car window to the find the work ID mounted to her sun visor. This seems like a very random plot complication for an IMF mission! Anyway, when "Doris" goes into her apartment, another man is waiting for her there--Reed, with whom she exchanges the same passphrases. She shares the details of her affair and planned blackmail scheme against Willard.
Reed then visits Not Willard at the facility, where Wardman's son, Bobby (Jimmy Bracken), voluntarily poses as Willard's son--still more weirdness for an IMF mission! This is to set up Willard's family as his Achilles heel. Dana goes back to the garage, where Psycho Mechanic briefly approaches her. Back at her place, Reed is setting up the hidden camera for the fake blackmail attempt when Jim comes over. Reed and an assistant, Farrell (Gerald Hiken), shoot Jim and Dana being smoochy. After Jim leaves, Reed informs Dana that there's a fatal accident in store for him.
Barney and Willy tail Farrell to a photo lab, where he enters a metal-doored back room and sets it to catch fire. After Farrell leaves, Barney enters the room, where the metal door slams shut on him and the place bursts into flame...but he's saved by his partner's long-neglected Willy Strength! Meanwhile, Psycho Mechanic stalks outside of Dana's apartment, where Paris drops by and the two talk a bit sans covers.
Reed makes his blackmail move on Jim to gain access to the guidance system. Barney calls Jim to tell him that the trap was meant for him when he'd go to retrieve the negatives, and that he plans to set up an escape for Jim. Reed goes to Dana's and she gets info about the trap from him; as well as his A-plan deathtrap, which involves remote-triggered steering and brake failure. Dana's calling Jim to give him info about the other trap when Psycho Mechanic sneaks up and ethers her. Paris goes in and finds signs of a struggle, including the mechanic's garage patch, and talks to Jim on the phone about it. Paris then calls Barney away from re-rigging the photo lab trap to meet him at the garage.
Dana comes to at the mechanic's place, where he has newspaper clippings identifying him as a killer named John Hecker. He thinks that she's Marlene (implied to have been a victim), and she plays along. When she can't talk him into giving her a chance to slip away, she offers to cook for him. Paris and Barney search Hecker's things at the garage and find ether. They subsequently dig up background info on him being a mental hospital escapee who's known to have used ether in homicides; and get his address from his pharmacist (Percy Helton).
Reed and Farrell go to the test facility, where Farrell installs his sabotage mechanism in Jim's car. Jim takes Reed to the missile, where Reed photographs the guidance elements and asks for the schematics. Reed then leads Jim to the photo lab from a separate car...a route that includes a dangerous curve where he plans to trigger his device. Dana gives her abductor a face-full of steam and makes a break, and Paris and Barney subdue him in the stairway. Dana rushes up to the phone and patches through to Jim's communicator, warning him of the trapl he bails from the car before it goes off a cliff; and Reed and Farrell smugly view the burning wreckage thinking that he's dead.
The episode ends with the IMFers doing a dramatic walk-out at the testing facility. Really Oddball Mission on Multiple Levels: Accomplished.
"Bobby, have you ever been in a Turkish prison...?"
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Adam-12
"Log 26: LEMRAS"
Originally aired January 16, 1971
Wiki said:
The LAPD introduces the LEMRAS (Law Enforcement Manpower Resource Allocation System) to assist in identifying high-crime streets, including part of Malloy and Reed's patrol area, which was used in stopping a rash of burglaries involving motorcycle-riding suspects. The officers also have to handle an armed robbery-turned-hostage situation and a kidnapping involving a young girl.
The officers respond to an all-units call in their vicinity for a 211 at a market. At the scene, they see two robbers in stocking masks inside with two hostages; the robbers see them and fire shots. Mac gets on the bullhorn while Reed and Malloy surround the exit. With Mac's permission, the robbers slowly proceed out with their hostages...then one of the hostages stomps hard on her captor's foot, giving the officers the opening they need to subdue the robbers...one of whom is played by Ken Lynch.
Next they see a man regarding a 459 report. The wealthy Mr. Kale (Donald Barry) complains about his house having been robbed while he was traveling, and the officers point out the precautions he obviously didn't take, like not stopping his paper delivery. They also inform him of community meetings he could attend to better see to his policing needs. He remains belligerent, but gives them one useful bit of information--that a neighbor girl heard motorcycles driving away from his house.
On patrol, the officers see a car swerving around erratically and pull it over. They separate the driver from the young girl in the back, Wendy Tucker (Pamela Kenneally), whom Reed questions out of earshot. The man, Charles Hammond (Thomas Bellin), seems anxious to go and claims that he's the girl's stepfather. When they start to radio his ID in, he makes a break for it and they apprehend him. Wendy's mother (Sally Mills) later arrives on the scene and verifies that the man is a complete stranger.
The next day after roll call, Mac briefs the officers about LEMRAS, a computer-assisted method for determining how manpower should be allocated based on call history. He intends to test the program by using it to determine where to assign units to catch the motorcycle bandits. On patrol, they get a call to see Mrs. Vandemar (Pamela Curran) about 459 suspects. She saw the bandits leaving her house and is able to describe what they were wearing. The officers question this because they were nearby when they got the call and didn't hear any motorcycles while approaching her house.
When the officers respond to another 459 call, a man beckons them over to his house and they see the motorcycle bandits take off; they get back in their car and pursue but lose the bandits. Searching the vicinity, their attention is drawn to a van that drives away after they pass it having seen no driver inside. They and Mac follow it, and put on the sirens when it attempts to lose them. It turns into a dead-end street and the driver tries to get away on foot and is run down by Reed. With Mac and Malloy covering, a couple more officers open the back doors to reveal the motorcycles and their riders. Loot is found in the back as well.
The titular program seemed shoehorned into a typical series of calls. Sure, L.A. is a big place and Joe Friday was constantly reminding us that it was understaffed police-wise, but they need a computer program to tell them to put more units in the area where the motorcycle bandits have been operating?
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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Just a Lunch"
Originally aired January 16, 1971
Wiki said:
A globe-trotting journalist returns to WJM and catches Mary's eye, but she cannot see beyond the fact that he is still married. Guest star: Monte Markham
Lou comes in after being out drinking all night with war correspondent John Corcoran (Monte Markham), who used to work at WJM. John then pops in himself, it turns out that Mary's sitting at his old desk, and he asks her to lunch. He takes her to a nice restaurant where a woman asks for his autograph, and he has Mary sign for her too. Afterward Mary tells John that she signed as Mrs. Ringo Starr. The subject of John's marriage comes up, and he says that he's separated, and just can't get the ring off his finger. Back at the apartment, Mary's telling Rhoda about her uneasiness with his situation when he drops in. Mary tries to keep Rhoda around as a chaperone, but she falls asleep. When Mary makes her feelings known, John agrees that they won't see each other anymore.
Mary goes into WJM to find him using her desk; awkwardness ensues. Lou assigns her to help him with research, she refuses and has to explain why, and he scolds her for having seen him in the first place because he's the kind of guy she should stay away from...and confirms that he's been "separated" before. Then Mary learns that John is coming to a party at Murray's house that she's attending as well. We meet Marie Slaughter (Joyce Bulifant, in her first of 11 appearances in the role throughout the series's run) and see the Slaughters' groovy family room. When Mary ends up alone on a couch with John, Lou comes over and sits between them. John proposes playing a truth game, in which he goes first and declares that he's in love with somebody in the room; Mary responds to him, and he returns that he's seriously considering getting a divorce, but she calls his bluff.
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I imagine two bedrooms full of garbage.
Being allowed to clean them may have been incentive for Felix to move in.
That was a pretty ambitious escapade.
Too much credit again, I think. It seems that with this show, the grander the concept of the scheme, the more they half-ass the execution. Or maybe the series is just generally running on fumes at this point.
I wonder what that dirt cloud above Massachusetts is about. I don't remember anything like that.
Good question. I assume a pollution issue of some sort.
He must have gone out the back way.
They established in the investigation that he was seen leaving substantially before his brother jumped. Without going back to look, there may have been tape fast-forwarding involved.
Wow, well done, Hawaii 5-0. That was a pretty strong story.
This one struck me as being semi-anthology-ish...it was really the guest characters' story, with the Five-O investigation being a series framework within which to tell it.
Another nice socially conscious storyline. Those were the days.
You'll notice that I avoided using the E-word, which is now considered derogatory, but which was used to describe Ernie's ethnicity in the episode.
