_______
50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
_______
All in the Family
"Archie's Fraud"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Archie comes home with his shoes off because he stepped in a neighbor's dog poo on the porch. Gloria comes home from her new job shortly after, and Archie objects to her and Mike slobbering over each other.
Archie complains about no longer being able to claim Gloria as a dependent, which leads to an argument between him and Mike about tax loopholes for churches, during which Mike canvasses for McGovern some more. During dinner, Burt Munson comes over to ask Archie to sign a receipt for the money Burt's been paying him to drive the cab part-time, and it turns out that Archie doesn't want to sign because he hasn't been claiming the income. The kids guilt Archie over cheating the government (which seems odd for anti-establishment types), so he decides to go to the tax office, but insists that Edith's in it with him, as she co-signed their return.
At the office, Archie coaches Edith about how he plans to pin the blame on her for losing paperwork. While waiting to use the pay phone to call work, Archie overhears a man (Ed Peck) describing how he plans to bribe the tax examiner, so that becomes Archie's new plan. The examiner, Mr. Turner (James McEachin), turns out to be a man whom Archie had just had an altercation with in the waiting area. Edith's guileless honesty doesn't help Archie's snow job, nor does Archie voicing a couple of race-based assumptions about the examiner. Archie tries to offer Turner free cab rides, then a pair of tires, and Turner decides to go easy on him for the bribery attempt by only auditing him for the three years that he's been driving the cab.
_______
Emergency!
"Kids"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
When the Benji-type mutt shows up in the vehicle bay, Chet shoos the dog away, and the little critter is just too damn adorable about it. The station then gets a call for child trapped in an excavation site. The boy, Frankie, is off camera in a small, unstable hole, with his parents, Russ and Chirley Gentry (Roger Perry and Anne Whitfield), on the scene. The other firemen hold Johnny's legs, lowering him in arms and head first. The hole starts to sink in, but they manage to pull Johnny and Frankie (Christian Juttner) out. Upon examination at Rampart, Brackett finds a head injury inconsistent with his having fallen in the hole. Later his friend, Penny Andrews (Lori Busk), shows up at the nurses' desk bearing a toy airplane as a gift for Frankie, and tells Dix that Frankie's last name is Stewart from his mother's previous marriage and volunteers without having been asked that he had his head injury before he fell into the hole. When asked about this, Frankie insists that she's lying and that he wasn't beaten.
Meanwhile, the shaggy dog has stuck around the station, and the captain agrees to let the firemen keep him as a mascot, against Chet's skeptical objections. There's some intermittent comic business of Johnny trying to train Boot and Boot seeming to prefer Roy, but choosing Johnny's bed to tear up. Roy suggests that maybe Johnny's trying too hard. In another kinda squicky sign-o-the-times moment, Chet theorizes that maybe Boot takes objection to Johnny's Native American ethnicity (which I'm not sure has come up before).
At Rampart, Dix tries to talk to Mrs. Gentry about Frankie's history, and Mr. Gentry storms in wanting to know why Frankie hasn't been released despite his injury being an old one. Dr. Early reads a list of previous hospital admissions from Frankie's injuries, and he and Brackett try unsuccessfully to steer the Gentrys into seeking psychiatric help. In the meantime, Brackett has a court order to detain Frankie.
The paramedics respond to a call for a boy named Joey Parker (Tony Kelvin), who's gotten his head stuck out of a basement window while playing cowboy. The paramedics use the Porto-Power to jack up the window frame and Joey is able to slip out. At Rampart, there's some more stuck kid business when a Mr. Peters (Gary Clarke) brings in his son Randy (Scott Sealey), whose finger is stuck in a decorative hole in a now-detached custom steering wheel, which Early has to take apart. An investigating detective sergeant (William Bryant) indicates that there's insufficient evidence in Frankie's case to take legal action against the Gentrys, but recommends going to juvenile court to make Frankie a ward.
Cut to Brackett testifying in court to how Frankie's injuries are consistent with battered child syndrome. On cross-examination, the Gentrys' attorney (Richard Jaeckel) makes a case that the injuries could have been the result of other circumstances, such as skeletal deformities, which Brackett didn't look into. As Frankie won't testify against his parents, the judge (Victor Izay) is forced to dismiss Brackett's petition.
Station 51 is called to a brush fire, with Boot jumping in the squad truck as they're leaving. At Ascot Canyon, Squad 51 finds a hiker with an injured ankle (Don Carter, I presume) who can't find his friend Chuck, whom he thinks may have fallen in the canyon. Boot leads the paramedics to Chuck's pack, and they find the hiker sprawled at the bottom of the canyon. The paramedics rappel down the cliffside to tend to Chuck (in his first acting credit on IMDb)...
An engine arrives to lower the paramedics' equipment down to them on the Stokes stretcher. Chuck is secured in the stretcher and raised via the engine's cherry picker.
Back at Rampart, a tearful Mrs. Gentry works up the courage to confess to how her husband beat Frankie. At the canyon, Boot hitches a ride on the cherry picker of the other station's engine, but Johnny is happy for him. It's a shame that Boot's gig was only episodic...this was too cute:
_______
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"What Is Mary Richards Really Like?"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
The leaves in Mary's window backdrop are looking pretty vivid for September as she's trying to choose an outfit for her interview. When Rhoda learns that it's with Mark Williams, she cautions her about him by reading his scathing review of Sesame Street. At work, Murray tries to convince Mary to tell Lou about it, and her hand is forced when it looks like a jealous Ted is going to spill the beans. Lou makes his disapproval of Williams known, warning Mary that he'll twist anything she says against her. At the restaurant, Williams (Peter Haskell, who looks kind of like a Peter Graves cosplayer) finds that his tape recorder needs batteries, so he has Mary transcribe her own interview in shorthand. He then effectively offers to give Mary a positive write-up if she'll agree to see him again. Ted shows up to horn in and try to make himself the subject of the interview, so Williams has him speak into the nonfunctioning tape recorder.
Rhoda comes knocking pre-dawn with the paper to read the interview with Mary, which raves about Mary but paints Lou in a contrastingly negative light. Lou believes Mary's explanation of how things really went down, but Mary affirms that she's still going to see Williams that night. After an unseen date that we're told Ted crashed again, Williams rather bluntly asks about staying the night, Mary says no, Williams abruptly leaves, and Mary frets with Rhoda over whether she made the right decision. Mark comes back when Mary's getting ready for bed, asks her is she'll go out with him again, which Mary agrees to, and tries staying one more time, which Mary politely refuses.
_______
The Bob Newhart Show
"Tracy Grammar School, I'll Lick You Yet"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Emily recruits Howard to speak at career day for her third-grade class, and Bob wants to know why she doesn't ask him to fill her last slot. She doesn't think that the students will understand his job. The next day at work, Bob learns that Emily has gotten Jerry to take the last spot, and an argument ensues about which of them has the more kid-interesting job. Emily drops in to apologize for the night before, and at first Bob doesn't realize that she's talking about career day. She offers him the chance to appear, as another speaker has backed out. On the morning of career day, Bob feels threatened when he learns that Howard and Jerry are both bringing visual aids. Later at the school, Bob goes on after a fire chief (King Moody), loses the kids by talking about knowing themselves, and the chief ends up making an encore at the podium.
Feeling sore about bombing, Bob arranges to speak to the class again, which proves to be a less popular option than the math test he's replacing. He's interrupted by a fire drill, but after class resumes, he engages the kids with the visual aid that he brought this time--Rorschach cards!
I see a skull.
That evening, Emily nods off while Bob's congratulating himself for not being a boring speaker.
This episode features the brief first appearance of another recurring character at Bob's office, Dr. Bernie Tupperman (Larry Gelman), in a side gag about Carol getting a new coffee machine. Also, I just discovered that Patricia Smith will go on to play the scientist in TNG's "Unnatural Selection".
_______
Mission: Impossible
"Two Thousand"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Joseph Collins (Morrow) enters a seemingly abandoned residence to retrieve a briefcase full of cash, then take a call from a contact, whom he informs that the material is in the usual place. But the call is being bugged by conventional (though presumably federal) law enforcement agents.
Casey's in the episode, and Barney's sporting a 'stache! (I think Darren may have mentioned this.) In the briefing, Willy pronounces "cassette" as "KAH-set". The cassette in question plays news broadcasts about an intensifying situation in the Middle East through Collins's radio. IMFers stake out Collins's place while a lawyer named Max Bander (David White) calls from a payphone on the street to inform Collins that he's being watched, and to strongarm him into doing business with his clients (McMann & Tate?). Police Detective Willy knocks on Collins's door, accompanied by Detective Fred White (Don Diamond), to arrest Collins on suspicion of having murdered a man he's never heard of. Bander notes their license number.
Collins is taken downtown and tries to call his lawyer, Mr. Rogers, but the call is intercepted by Receptionist Casey. Meanwhile, Bander calls a vice squad lieutenant in his clients' pocket, C. A. Sager (Mark Tapscott), to find out what's going on with Collins. Sager learns from a policewoman (Marian Nichols) that the department doesn't have a car with that plate number. (Is this Nichelle's sister? IMDb has nothing on her, and it's her only credit. There is a resemblance, in both appearance and voice/delivery.) Collins is taken into an interrogation room where he can hear news broadcasts and is privy to a fake newspaper headline about the war breaking out. Sager drops a mic into a ventilation shaft to eavesdrop as the IMF fakes announcements of missiles heading for the West Coast and communications with Washington having been cut off, accompanied by air raid sirens and a mushroom cloud seen through a fake window. Collins is knocked out and taken to the next room to be worked on by Casey, and Sager hears Phelps drop the name of Bridgeton, the earthquake-ravaged town where the IMF will be simulating the post-apocalypse.
Sager plays his tape of what the mic picked up to Bander and a foreign man in dark shades, clueing them into the plot to fake a nuclear war. Collins is taken to Bridgeton, where he comes to finding himself aged a few decades (thanks to a temporary makeup job and some age-simulating drugs) and working on a ration-canning line with other scruffy-looking old men wearing numbered collars and overseen by armed military types. When Collins reacts to all of this, he's placed in a cell with Caribbean Barney, a fake prisoner of war. Graffiti on the walls includes dates from the 1980s and 1990s, and Barney informs Collins that he's of a class of survivors who were affected by being close to the nuclear blast 28 years ago, and that the state of war is still ongoing. Collins watches as the other men on the assembly line are taken into a gas chamber and executed. Then an air attack is faked, including actual explosions outside to shake the building...as Bander and a couple of men watch from a distance with a long-range listening device.
Barney and Collins escape through their busted cell door. Collins relieves a guard playing dead of his gun and tries to force Barney to cooperate with him. Barney informs Collins that his class of prisoners are executed at the age of 65, and that the number on his neck indicates his scheduled date of execution...which is in two days. Barney leads Collins outside, they're pursued by a couple of guards, and they duck into a building where they listen in outside a war room where General Phelps and a couple of other military types advise a suited civilian authority (Russ Conway--he's only listed as "Civilian," but I have to assume that this is supposed to be the president) about their dwindling options in the conflict. Barney and Collins are caught, and Collins pleads with Fake Bubba that he can be of use to them by building bombs with the weapons-grade plutonium that he stashed away 28 years ago. Phelps has Collins show them where it's located on a map, while at one point dramatically grabbing Collins's arm to prevent him from touching his face, as his disguise is visibly starting to self-destruct. At the location, Haig (Ivor Barry) already has a couple of men digging up the cannisters, only to get into a firefight with Bander and his men, who got there ahead of the IMFers. Jim, Barney, and Willy arrive armed to get the drop on everybody and take the plutonium. Back at the installation, Collins slips out of his cell again to find the place abandoned, including of its fake corpses. He steps outside, finds that his makeup job is wearing off, and laughs hysterically as a police car arrives for him.
_______
Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell - Wikipedia
50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
_______
All in the Family
"Archie's Fraud"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Wiki said:
Archie comes home with his shoes off because he stepped in a neighbor's dog poo on the porch. Gloria comes home from her new job shortly after, and Archie objects to her and Mike slobbering over each other.
Edith: No, that's right, Gloria. Your father was never much of a slobberer. He's more of a pecker.
Archie complains about no longer being able to claim Gloria as a dependent, which leads to an argument between him and Mike about tax loopholes for churches, during which Mike canvasses for McGovern some more. During dinner, Burt Munson comes over to ask Archie to sign a receipt for the money Burt's been paying him to drive the cab part-time, and it turns out that Archie doesn't want to sign because he hasn't been claiming the income. The kids guilt Archie over cheating the government (which seems odd for anti-establishment types), so he decides to go to the tax office, but insists that Edith's in it with him, as she co-signed their return.
At the office, Archie coaches Edith about how he plans to pin the blame on her for losing paperwork. While waiting to use the pay phone to call work, Archie overhears a man (Ed Peck) describing how he plans to bribe the tax examiner, so that becomes Archie's new plan. The examiner, Mr. Turner (James McEachin), turns out to be a man whom Archie had just had an altercation with in the waiting area. Edith's guileless honesty doesn't help Archie's snow job, nor does Archie voicing a couple of race-based assumptions about the examiner. Archie tries to offer Turner free cab rides, then a pair of tires, and Turner decides to go easy on him for the bribery attempt by only auditing him for the three years that he's been driving the cab.
_______
Emergency!
"Kids"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Wiki said:
When the Benji-type mutt shows up in the vehicle bay, Chet shoos the dog away, and the little critter is just too damn adorable about it. The station then gets a call for child trapped in an excavation site. The boy, Frankie, is off camera in a small, unstable hole, with his parents, Russ and Chirley Gentry (Roger Perry and Anne Whitfield), on the scene. The other firemen hold Johnny's legs, lowering him in arms and head first. The hole starts to sink in, but they manage to pull Johnny and Frankie (Christian Juttner) out. Upon examination at Rampart, Brackett finds a head injury inconsistent with his having fallen in the hole. Later his friend, Penny Andrews (Lori Busk), shows up at the nurses' desk bearing a toy airplane as a gift for Frankie, and tells Dix that Frankie's last name is Stewart from his mother's previous marriage and volunteers without having been asked that he had his head injury before he fell into the hole. When asked about this, Frankie insists that she's lying and that he wasn't beaten.
Meanwhile, the shaggy dog has stuck around the station, and the captain agrees to let the firemen keep him as a mascot, against Chet's skeptical objections. There's some intermittent comic business of Johnny trying to train Boot and Boot seeming to prefer Roy, but choosing Johnny's bed to tear up. Roy suggests that maybe Johnny's trying too hard. In another kinda squicky sign-o-the-times moment, Chet theorizes that maybe Boot takes objection to Johnny's Native American ethnicity (which I'm not sure has come up before).
At Rampart, Dix tries to talk to Mrs. Gentry about Frankie's history, and Mr. Gentry storms in wanting to know why Frankie hasn't been released despite his injury being an old one. Dr. Early reads a list of previous hospital admissions from Frankie's injuries, and he and Brackett try unsuccessfully to steer the Gentrys into seeking psychiatric help. In the meantime, Brackett has a court order to detain Frankie.
The paramedics respond to a call for a boy named Joey Parker (Tony Kelvin), who's gotten his head stuck out of a basement window while playing cowboy. The paramedics use the Porto-Power to jack up the window frame and Joey is able to slip out. At Rampart, there's some more stuck kid business when a Mr. Peters (Gary Clarke) brings in his son Randy (Scott Sealey), whose finger is stuck in a decorative hole in a now-detached custom steering wheel, which Early has to take apart. An investigating detective sergeant (William Bryant) indicates that there's insufficient evidence in Frankie's case to take legal action against the Gentrys, but recommends going to juvenile court to make Frankie a ward.
Cut to Brackett testifying in court to how Frankie's injuries are consistent with battered child syndrome. On cross-examination, the Gentrys' attorney (Richard Jaeckel) makes a case that the injuries could have been the result of other circumstances, such as skeletal deformities, which Brackett didn't look into. As Frankie won't testify against his parents, the judge (Victor Izay) is forced to dismiss Brackett's petition.
Station 51 is called to a brush fire, with Boot jumping in the squad truck as they're leaving. At Ascot Canyon, Squad 51 finds a hiker with an injured ankle (Don Carter, I presume) who can't find his friend Chuck, whom he thinks may have fallen in the canyon. Boot leads the paramedics to Chuck's pack, and they find the hiker sprawled at the bottom of the canyon. The paramedics rappel down the cliffside to tend to Chuck (in his first acting credit on IMDb)...
An engine arrives to lower the paramedics' equipment down to them on the Stokes stretcher. Chuck is secured in the stretcher and raised via the engine's cherry picker.
Back at Rampart, a tearful Mrs. Gentry works up the courage to confess to how her husband beat Frankie. At the canyon, Boot hitches a ride on the cherry picker of the other station's engine, but Johnny is happy for him. It's a shame that Boot's gig was only episodic...this was too cute:
_______
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"What Is Mary Richards Really Like?"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Wiki said:
The leaves in Mary's window backdrop are looking pretty vivid for September as she's trying to choose an outfit for her interview. When Rhoda learns that it's with Mark Williams, she cautions her about him by reading his scathing review of Sesame Street. At work, Murray tries to convince Mary to tell Lou about it, and her hand is forced when it looks like a jealous Ted is going to spill the beans. Lou makes his disapproval of Williams known, warning Mary that he'll twist anything she says against her. At the restaurant, Williams (Peter Haskell, who looks kind of like a Peter Graves cosplayer) finds that his tape recorder needs batteries, so he has Mary transcribe her own interview in shorthand. He then effectively offers to give Mary a positive write-up if she'll agree to see him again. Ted shows up to horn in and try to make himself the subject of the interview, so Williams has him speak into the nonfunctioning tape recorder.
Rhoda comes knocking pre-dawn with the paper to read the interview with Mary, which raves about Mary but paints Lou in a contrastingly negative light. Lou believes Mary's explanation of how things really went down, but Mary affirms that she's still going to see Williams that night. After an unseen date that we're told Ted crashed again, Williams rather bluntly asks about staying the night, Mary says no, Williams abruptly leaves, and Mary frets with Rhoda over whether she made the right decision. Mark comes back when Mary's getting ready for bed, asks her is she'll go out with him again, which Mary agrees to, and tries staying one more time, which Mary politely refuses.
_______
The Bob Newhart Show
"Tracy Grammar School, I'll Lick You Yet"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Wiki said:
Emily recruits Howard to speak at career day for her third-grade class, and Bob wants to know why she doesn't ask him to fill her last slot. She doesn't think that the students will understand his job. The next day at work, Bob learns that Emily has gotten Jerry to take the last spot, and an argument ensues about which of them has the more kid-interesting job. Emily drops in to apologize for the night before, and at first Bob doesn't realize that she's talking about career day. She offers him the chance to appear, as another speaker has backed out. On the morning of career day, Bob feels threatened when he learns that Howard and Jerry are both bringing visual aids. Later at the school, Bob goes on after a fire chief (King Moody), loses the kids by talking about knowing themselves, and the chief ends up making an encore at the podium.
Feeling sore about bombing, Bob arranges to speak to the class again, which proves to be a less popular option than the math test he's replacing. He's interrupted by a fire drill, but after class resumes, he engages the kids with the visual aid that he brought this time--Rorschach cards!
I see a skull.
That evening, Emily nods off while Bob's congratulating himself for not being a boring speaker.
This episode features the brief first appearance of another recurring character at Bob's office, Dr. Bernie Tupperman (Larry Gelman), in a side gag about Carol getting a new coffee machine. Also, I just discovered that Patricia Smith will go on to play the scientist in TNG's "Unnatural Selection".
_______
Mission: Impossible
"Two Thousand"
Originally aired September 23, 1972
Wiki said:
Joseph Collins (Morrow) enters a seemingly abandoned residence to retrieve a briefcase full of cash, then take a call from a contact, whom he informs that the material is in the usual place. But the call is being bugged by conventional (though presumably federal) law enforcement agents.
Another unlikely timetable for such a complex operation involving so many extras and repurposed real estate. Also, I don't think they needed the obligatory reference to conventional law enforcement for this case...while they have the cooperation of local authorities, this is more like the old disavowal by the secretary days.The reel-to-reel tape taken from the back of a photographer's station wagon said:
Casey's in the episode, and Barney's sporting a 'stache! (I think Darren may have mentioned this.) In the briefing, Willy pronounces "cassette" as "KAH-set". The cassette in question plays news broadcasts about an intensifying situation in the Middle East through Collins's radio. IMFers stake out Collins's place while a lawyer named Max Bander (David White) calls from a payphone on the street to inform Collins that he's being watched, and to strongarm him into doing business with his clients (McMann & Tate?). Police Detective Willy knocks on Collins's door, accompanied by Detective Fred White (Don Diamond), to arrest Collins on suspicion of having murdered a man he's never heard of. Bander notes their license number.
Collins is taken downtown and tries to call his lawyer, Mr. Rogers, but the call is intercepted by Receptionist Casey. Meanwhile, Bander calls a vice squad lieutenant in his clients' pocket, C. A. Sager (Mark Tapscott), to find out what's going on with Collins. Sager learns from a policewoman (Marian Nichols) that the department doesn't have a car with that plate number. (Is this Nichelle's sister? IMDb has nothing on her, and it's her only credit. There is a resemblance, in both appearance and voice/delivery.) Collins is taken into an interrogation room where he can hear news broadcasts and is privy to a fake newspaper headline about the war breaking out. Sager drops a mic into a ventilation shaft to eavesdrop as the IMF fakes announcements of missiles heading for the West Coast and communications with Washington having been cut off, accompanied by air raid sirens and a mushroom cloud seen through a fake window. Collins is knocked out and taken to the next room to be worked on by Casey, and Sager hears Phelps drop the name of Bridgeton, the earthquake-ravaged town where the IMF will be simulating the post-apocalypse.
Sager plays his tape of what the mic picked up to Bander and a foreign man in dark shades, clueing them into the plot to fake a nuclear war. Collins is taken to Bridgeton, where he comes to finding himself aged a few decades (thanks to a temporary makeup job and some age-simulating drugs) and working on a ration-canning line with other scruffy-looking old men wearing numbered collars and overseen by armed military types. When Collins reacts to all of this, he's placed in a cell with Caribbean Barney, a fake prisoner of war. Graffiti on the walls includes dates from the 1980s and 1990s, and Barney informs Collins that he's of a class of survivors who were affected by being close to the nuclear blast 28 years ago, and that the state of war is still ongoing. Collins watches as the other men on the assembly line are taken into a gas chamber and executed. Then an air attack is faked, including actual explosions outside to shake the building...as Bander and a couple of men watch from a distance with a long-range listening device.
Barney and Collins escape through their busted cell door. Collins relieves a guard playing dead of his gun and tries to force Barney to cooperate with him. Barney informs Collins that his class of prisoners are executed at the age of 65, and that the number on his neck indicates his scheduled date of execution...which is in two days. Barney leads Collins outside, they're pursued by a couple of guards, and they duck into a building where they listen in outside a war room where General Phelps and a couple of other military types advise a suited civilian authority (Russ Conway--he's only listed as "Civilian," but I have to assume that this is supposed to be the president) about their dwindling options in the conflict. Barney and Collins are caught, and Collins pleads with Fake Bubba that he can be of use to them by building bombs with the weapons-grade plutonium that he stashed away 28 years ago. Phelps has Collins show them where it's located on a map, while at one point dramatically grabbing Collins's arm to prevent him from touching his face, as his disguise is visibly starting to self-destruct. At the location, Haig (Ivor Barry) already has a couple of men digging up the cannisters, only to get into a firefight with Bander and his men, who got there ahead of the IMFers. Jim, Barney, and Willy arrive armed to get the drop on everybody and take the plutonium. Back at the installation, Collins slips out of his cell again to find the place abandoned, including of its fake corpses. He steps outside, finds that his makeup job is wearing off, and laughs hysterically as a police car arrives for him.
_______
I looked it up but couldn't find any indication that the announcer became Klinger. At any rate, the character hasn't been established yet.
Mac ribbed Malloy and Reed that if they weren't careful, they'd end up in Public Relations.
Dear lord, you're right...
Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell - Wikipedia
Last edited:
Harsh.
