The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

You'd think. I guess Leavenworth wasn't what Klinger had in mind.

I was skeptical, too, but it seems an odd thing to put out there on network TV in the day and to continue decades later on a website while going unchallenged. If it did happen, it's vaguely possible that there was a promotional element involved...Jud was on Laugh-In when the mission took place, and while it was on its last legs at this point, LI had been a big part of the cultural zeitgeist in prior years. Didn't one of the missions have astronauts taking stamps to the Moon to increase their value?

Mr. Sinclair did make some cracks about palm reading.

That was the implication, yes.

Went back to look...yep, Pete.

And she was called Shaaron in the episode.

Alas, they never touched that.

Not when somebody already has a gun on you.

Good question. Where's Che when you need him?

To be fair to Tyson, he did rise to the occasion, and apologized to Pete for being so by-the-book.

Specifically, the plate number was changed from ERQ 848 to LPQ 343...aided by the plate having a black background, of course.

I think Shaaron's been turning down his sevens to deny him sustenance.

Yeah, what is it with people feeding pigeons in parks?

Who can't afford a new bed. Actually, Felix insisted that Oscar replace it, and in the end Felix was paying for it and Oscar was paying him back in installments...and they have established that Oscar has issues with gambling debt.

 

Well, I'll be picking up my back-viewing near the beginning of Season 3.

 

The wager for their bets should be letting Jim drive!

I'd have to go back and look, but I'd think there was more to it; like Friday having to prove there was another gun involved at all, and that he didn't just shoot an unarmed kid.

 

50 Years Ago This Week


(Amazing Spider-Man 121, cover date June 1973; reportedly released Mar. 13)


March 11

• In the first free elections in Argentina since 1963, dentist Héctor Cámpora was elected the first civilian president of the South American nation after nearly a decade of military rule. Running on the premise of being a caretaker, he would serve only four months before relinquishing the position in favor of former dictator Juan Perón.
• The Soviet Union's lunar rover Lunokhod 2 began its third round of activity on the moon's surface.

March 12

• John T. Downey, the longest-held prisoner of war in United States history, was released after more than 20 years in prison as a humanitarian gesture by the People's Republic of China. Downey crossed over the Sham Chun River bridge from Shenzhen into British Hong Kong. Downey, a pilot for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had been captured in Manchuria on November 29, 1952, along with Richard Fecteau while on a mission to extract a CIA courier. Fecteau had been set free on December 13, 1971. Downey's release came after U.S. President Nixon had publicly admitted that Downey had been a CIA agent, and after a personal request by Nixon to China's Premier Zhou Enlai following a stroke suffered by Downey's mother.
• U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that he was expanding the protection of executive privilege, the means in which the U.S. president and staff were immune from having to testify or answer questions about White House events while in office, and said that it applied to former staff members as well.
• The final episode of U.S. comedy series Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, at one-time the most popular show on television but the victim of declining ratings, aired on NBC.

March 14

• North Vietnam released 108 additional American prisoners of war, including future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John McCain, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander at the time of his capture on October 26, 1967.
• Died: Murat "Chic" Young, 72, American cartoonist who had created the popular comic strip Blondie in 1930 and continued to draw it at the time of his death.

March 15

• In a press conference on national television, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon implied that the United States was prepared to resume fighting of the Vietnam War if North Vietnam or the Viet Cong were to violate the ceasefire. Asked about infiltration of men and material by North Vietnam into South Vietnam, Nixon said "Based on my actions over the past four years, they should not lightly disregard such expressions of concern." The reaction of the American public to the possibility of going back to war was so unfavorable that the Case–Church Amendment would be passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law on July 1, requiring Congressional approval in advance of any future military activity in Indochina.
• At the same conference, President Nixon said that he would not allow the FBI to turn over its files to a Congressional special committee, concerning the FBI investigation of the Watergate burglary. Nixon told reporters, "the practice of the FBI furninshing raw files to full committees must stop with this particular one."

​

• U.S. Air Force Captain Philip E. Smith was released from incarceration in the People's Republic of China after almost seven and one half years as a prisoner in Beijing, and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Robert J. Flynn was set free after more than five and a half years captivity. Captain Smith had flown into Chinese airspace on September 20, 1965, after becoming lost during an escort flight of a bomber over the Gulf of Tonkin in the Vietnam War, while Lieutenant Flynn had been captured after his airplane was shot down in Chinese territory on August 21, 1967. Both Smith and Flynn were allowed to cross the border into British Hong Kong.

March 16

• Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom opened the new London Bridge. The new structure was the third over the River Thames in the past 750 years.
• U.S. Army Captain Jim Thompson, the longest-held POW of the Vietnam War, was released after almost nine years of captivity in a Viet Cong prison in South Vietnam's Quang Tri province. On March 26, 1964, Captain Thompson had been a passenger on an observation plane that was shot down less than 13 miles (21 km) from the Special Forces Camp where he had been serving.
• The heaviest weight lifted up to that time, the 6,000 ton 12,000,000 pounds (5,400,000 kg) center span of the Fremont Bridge in Portland, Oregon, was accomplished with the placement of 32 hydraulic jacks working in tandem.

March 17

• Many of the few remaining United States soldiers began to leave Vietnam. One reunion of a former POW with his family would be immortalized in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy.

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "Do It Again," Steely Dan (17 weeks)
• "I Got Ants in My Pants (and I Want to Dance), Pt. 1," James Brown (8 weeks)
• "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?," Hurricane Smith (15 weeks)

(Also, "Love Jones" by Brighter Side of Darkness dropped off last week after 13 weeks; I've corrected the error in the post.)


New on the chart:

"Hallelujah Day," Jackson 5

(#28 US; #10 R&B; #20 UK)

"You Are the Sunshine of My Life," Stevie Wonder

(#1 US the week of May 19, 1973; #1 AC; #3 R&B; #7 UK; #281 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time [2004])


And new on the boob tube:

• M*A*S*H, "Major Fred C. Dobbs"
• Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Season 6, episode 24 (series finale)
• Hawaii Five-O, "Jury of One" (season finale)
• Adam-12, "Keeping Tabs"
• Kung Fu, "Alethea"
• The Brady Bunch, "You Can't Win Them All" (last episode of the season available on P+)
• All in the Family, "Gloria the Victim"

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Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki page for the month.

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Here's the relevant portion of my own post about the episode:

Depending on exactly what Marianne said in her false testimony, it sounds like a murky area where they had to prove that Arthur had a gun on the scene at all.

 

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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)

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Mission: Impossible
"The Pendulum"
Originally aired February 23, 1973

General Weston (Frank Maxwell) is driven into a reclamation project, shot by Gunnar Malstrom (Stockwell), and buried with a bulldozer. Malstrom reports to the directors of Pendulum--a really small-scale SPECTRE whose evil boardroom table is more of an evil card table; whose leader known only as Leader is played by Jack Donner; and one of whose members has had plastic surgery to impersonate Weston. We learn that Project Nightfall is a plan to take control of the US military.

At the time of the briefing, Casey is already seeing Malstrom, who's a young electronics genius by day. At their next date, she makes an enigmatic recruitment pitch to him, and Willy steps over from the bar to chastise her for overstepping her bounds. Barney later pays Malstrom a visit at his office, in the role of a contact that Casey namedropped, expressing an interest in meeting the leaders of Pendulum while planting a bug. Investigating Barney, Malstrom's secretary, Allen Bock (Scott Brady), relieves a hotel switchboard operator who's really an IMFer (Beverly Moore) to eavesdrop on a phone conversation between Barney and Willy in their roles. On his next date with Casey, Malstrom expresses an interest in her offer, so she takes him to meet Barney at the headquarters of her organization, World Resources Unlimited, which has got the evil poker table beat all hollow...

Geisel Library - Wikipedia
Named after Dr. Seuss, no less!

The place is bustling with repertory foreign dignitaries brokering arms deals and such. Malstrom is allowed to sneak around and finds a vantage point from which to spy on a presentation being made by Willy in an envy-evoking evil lecture hall. Barney takes the podium to expose Malstrom, declaring him to be a prisoner. Malstrom is tied into a chair that's rigged to serve as a polygraph. In his conversation with Gunnar, Barney fishes for information, and Jim signals him regarding the results via lights behind Malstrom. They narrow down Pendulum's interest in Weston, who's chairman of the Joint Services Intelligence Staff. Meanwhile, Bock, who's supposed to be in Europe, reports to the Leader and Fake Weston about Malstrom's whereabouts, then heads out to infiltrate the place.

Malstrom is taken to see the organization's Chief--Jim, of course, who'd look great with a white cat. Pretending to know more than he does, Jim expresses an interest in acquiring Pendulum and making Malstrom its puppet leader. Malstrom isn't easily swayed, but Jim deduces from Malstrom's reactions that Nightfall is happening soon, and they have to find out when. The IMF is more ahead of things than they know as an IMF member (uncredited Max Kleven) who doesn't do voices dons a Bock disguise to stage a rescue attempt.

IMF agent: What if Malstrom starts askin' me any questions?
Barney: Don't worry, Willy'll kill you...using blood-capsule bullets, of course.​

Using an alias with government credentials, Jim goes to see Fake Weston, thinking that he's real Weston, to warn him of an assassination attempt. Weston invites him to sit in on a meeting of military brass that he's hosting--and secretly planning to bomb while he and the Leader, posing as Weston's aide, wait outside.

Sneaking around WRU's parking garage, the real Bock spots and takes out his imposter, then makes an attempt on Malstrom. When Willy sees that one of the guards has been shot by a real bullet, he realizes that he's dealing with Real Bock. While Willy's taking care of him via firefight, Malstrom commandeers a car and screeches out. Barney and Casey tail Malstrom with the help of a bug that Casey planted on him, and he proceeds to Weston's house in Beverly Hills, where military VIPs are known to live. Fake Weston goes out to see Malstrom after planting his bomb, and listening via the bug, Barney and Casey realize that Weston's a phony, learn of the bomb, and hear the Leader shooting Malstrom with a silenced pistol--boy, is Jim gonna be jealous! Barney alerts Jim via an earpiece, and Jim hurls the suspiciously unattended briefcase out the window just in the nick of time. A living and conscious Malstrom is wheeled out to an ambulance in the aftermath.

I was disappointed that no repertory agents were fake-electrocuted or fake-fed to piranhas.

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Love, American Style
"Love and the Crisis Line / Love and the Happy Family / Love and the Vertical Romance"
Originally aired February 23, 1973

"Love and the Crisis Line": When Sydney Wimple (Gary Burghoff must be on our radar from something...) reads about a crisis line in the paper--which shows pictures of the operators, who make house calls (I'm pretty sure it never worked like that)--his roommate, Steve Stone (Fabian), gives them a call, describing psychological symptoms that Sydney actually suffers around women. The operator who pays a visit, Janet (Carole Ita White), is nerdish and aggressive, not like the ones in the paper. When Steve makes the date sound better than it was, Sydney decides to give the crisis line a try. He specifically requests Janet, but gets a sub named Peggy (Linda Kaye Henning) instead. She's more than Sydney bargained for, so he passes her off to Steve. While Steve talks to her, Sydney wanders the apartment exhibiting the symptoms that Steve described on the phone, including nervous hiccups and distractedly putting his food in his seat and sitting on it. Sydney ends up going out on the ledge, considering himself hopeless. Peggy goes out after him and brings him back in. At this point she's more interested in talking to Sydney, and when she admits to her own hang-ups, Sydney offers to listen and the two experience mutual attraction. Steve goes out on the ledge for attention, but Janet drops in and enthusiastically goes out after him.

"Love and the Happy Family": See Jane (Sian Barbara Allen) kiss Dick (Ed Begley Jr.). Kiss, Jane, kiss. It turns out that Dick and Jane are step-siblings, her father, Walter (Murray Hamilton), having married his mother, Ruth (Kim Hunter). The kids are only in town for a break while attending schools in separate states, and while the parents are concerned about the two of them not getting along, Dick and Jane are actually feigning sibling spats so they can get away to make out...until Walter catches them in the linen closet. The parents sit them down for a talk and they argue that they're not really related. (Do I sense some shade being thrown in the general direction of The Brady Bunch?) The parents end up getting into a fight defending their children, so Dick and Jane agree to cool things down and just act like siblings for the remainder of the visit.

Hoping to get the two of them interested in other people, Walter brings home Bert (Murray MacLeod), an awkward young man who works at his firm. Dick insists on hovering around as a chaperone while Bert spends time with Jane, creating actual tension between the step-siblings. Walter brings Bert over again, and this time Jane throws herself at him to make Dick jealous. But when Bert brings her home from their date, Jane pushes him away and he leaves angrily. See Dick wait up for Jane. Wait, Dick, wait. The two of them make up, and the parents, pretending to be okay with it at this point, are relieved that the kids will be going their separate ways the next day...but anticipate things heating up in the summer.

"Love and the Vertical Romance": It's only after Victor (Albert Salmi) and Elizabeth (Karen Morrow) return from a two-week camping honeymoon that Elizabeth learns that her husband suffers from bedaphobia--he hasn't been able to sleep in a bed since his brother trapped him in a convertible sofa as a kid, so he sleeps leaning against a wall. She tries to join him, but has trouble staying upright when she starts to fall asleep. Elizabeth comes up with the idea of having Victor's long-estranged brother, Alfred (David Ketchum), over so that, under pretense of wanting to mend fences, Victor can trap Alfred in a sofa bed as a release. Afterward, Victor gains enough confidence to get into bed, but still suffers from anxiety about it, so Elizabeth pushes the button to retract their pull-down bed into the wall, so that they're lying in bed while standing up...the catch being that she suffers from claustrophobia.

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All in the Family
"Archie Is Branded"
Originally aired February 24, 1973

Archie does a delayed double take after bringing in his Sunday paper. Assuming neighborhood kids are responsible, he calls the cops...and Edith wants to wipe off the door before they come. Archie opts to hang Old Glory over it instead. Edith discovers a vaguely threatening note outside, and when the mailman (on Sunday?) delivers a package that sounds like it's ticking, Mike puts it in the kitchen sink with the water on and everyone runs outside. When they go back in to check on it, they hear the ticking again and it turns out to be a kitchen timer in Edith's apron. The package had been a gift of cigars to Archie from the husband of Edith's cousin Amelia.

A shady character named Paul Benjamin (Gregory Sierra) shows up to offer protection, but it turns out that he's under the mistaken impression first that Archie is Jewish, and then that his name is Bloom. It turns out that Bloom is a Jewish school board member who lives up the street, and that the vandals got the wrong house, but Benjamin still expects them to return to follow up on their threat. Benjamin reveals that he's with the Hebrew Defense Association, a vigilante group, and some heated argument ensues with Mike and Gloria over his group's violent methods, with Archie backing Benjamin--and even coming to tolerate Paul's habit of referring to him as "bubbie". An associate of Benjamin's drops in to inform him that the vandals are headed to the actual Bloom house. After Benjamin leaves, the family hears an explosion outside and, in an unexpectedly grim ending, look out the door to find that Paul's been the victim of a car bombing...soberly underscoring Mike's argument that violence only begets more violence. The initial end credits play over silence rather than applause.

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Emergency!
"Seance"
Originally aired February 24, 1973

Seems like this one wanted to air in October. The station crew are watching Frankenstein when the squad gets called to help Dorothy Teal (Fintan Meyler), an unconscious woman at a titular occult gathering that's still in progress--led by a medium, Mrs. Butler (Suzanne Charny), who insists that the circle not be broken to help her. Harry Teal (Charles Aidman) comes home and breaks the party up, sending everyone on their way, though Butler warns of dire consequences...and tries to get payment, claiming that every psychic experience causes her to shed pounds. At Rampart, the conscious Dorothy explains that she was trying to reach her recently deceased sister, and insists on returning home rather than seeing a shrink.

A young man named Ken (Bruno Kirby, billed as B. Kirby Jr.) who's exhibiting strange behavior--including difficulty balancing and his eyes rolling back in his head--is dropped off at Rampart by friends who think he's putting them on, but he collapses at check-in. After consulting with Ken's personal physician via phone, Brackett gets Ken to admit that he's been taking his mother's prescription tranquilizers...motivated by being hung up on Jill (Laurie Brighton), the girl who stayed with him at the hospital despite assuming that he was faking it.

The paramedics are awakened in the middle of the night by a call to return to the Teal home (while the engine crew gets to roll over and go back to sleep). Dorothy insists that her sister Alice is haunting the house, and a skeptical Harry explains that the sisters became estranged over Dorothy marrying him. Dorothy insists that Harry has to leave the house, and he agrees to stay at a hotel if she'll return to the hospital. Back in the truck, Roy admits to having experienced a funny feeling when they searched the house to humor Mrs. Teal.

By day, the squad is called to the Teal home yet again, where Harry has suffered a head injury. He says that he tripped in the dark, but Dorothy is convinced that it was Alice. Johnny convinces her to take her husband to a doctor as a ruse to get her to a doctor. While she's getting her things together, Harry consults the paramedics about what he should do.

After the squad attends to a worker who was trapped under a stack of boxes at a warehouse, and at Rampart is discovered to have suffered a tear in his heart lining, Roy asks Brackett for his advice about the Teal situation. He recommends psychiatry or getting her away on a trip. Later, the station is called to a fire at the Teal home. They find the drapes burning and Harry lying unconscious from smoke inhalation with burned hands. When he's revived, he says that Dorothy set the fire, though she blames Alice.

The squad and another station are called to Marina del Rey, where a car has sunken in a channel. Roy and Johnny dive in to find the driver trapped in his VW with a small pocket of air. Rescue boats arrives to assist, and the paramedics go back down to insert an air hose through the small roll-out window; then come back down with the jaws to pry the door open and, taking turns diving all the while, help the driver to the surface.

In the coda, Brackett informs the paramedics that Mrs. Teal is under observation in a psychiatric ward.

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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Put on a Happy Face"
Originally aired February 24, 1973

In the week leading up to the ceremony, Mary has trouble securing a date for it; accidentally throws out the newsroom's obituaries file and has to rewrite them all on her own time; and injures her leg on the slippery hallway floor at the station...in addition to various other, more minor mishaps. As she's calling old boyfriends to try to get a date, she's nursing a cold from soaking her sprained foot. Rhoda comes to enjoy letting Mary be the miserable one for a change. Mary's banquet dress gets badly stained at the cleaner's and she has to borrow a less flattering one from Rhoda; and when she tries to accept an offer from Ted to fix her up with a guy he knows, she's baited and switched into going with him...but a bad hair incident on top of everything else has Ted passing her off as his sister at the event.

Mary inevitably wins the award for her Sunday program, and in her brief, nasally acceptance speech mostly apologizes for her appearance. On top of everything else, Mary's name is spelled wrong on the award. (Ask me about my spelling bee placement trophies!) In the coda, Ted takes the microphone after the presentation to give a speech about himself. In a tie-in with a gag earlier in the episode, the ending MTM logo features Mary imitating Porky Pig.

There's a reference to Ted wearing contact lenses. Rhoda is still seeing Jonas Lasser (Steve Franken reprising his role from "The Courtship of Mary's Father's Daughter").

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The Bob Newhart Show
"You Can't Win 'em All"
Originally aired February 24, 1973

Jerry's upset when he learns that Bob's been having sessions with Cubs pitcher Phil Bender and didn't tell him (apparently a fictitious Cub, as he's played by Jim Watkins). After Bender breaks his losing streak by wrapping up a five-hit shutout, he credits Bob by name in an on-air interview. Bob immediately starts getting calls, first from Jerry and also from his mother (who really shouldn't have appeared so early as she's better unseen in the phone gags). Bob ends up getting an office visit from Moose Washburn (Vern E. Rowe), a Cubs catcher with a terrible batting average who has his share of issues. In a subsequent game, Bob watches tensely as Moose is called to the plate to pinch-hit and strikes out.

Bob: I gotta get out of baseball, I can't take the pressure anymore.​

At the office, everybody treats Bob like he lost the game. In a phone gag, Moose informs Bob that he's been traded to a Japanese team. Bob has Moose over for dinner, after which Bob, Jerry, and Emily argue about Moose's career as if he's not there; and Moose ultimately talks himself into looking forward to his new opportunity. Howard drops in on his way to a flight...

Bob: Listen, if you're leaving right now, would you give our friend here a lift?
Howard: Sure! Where you going?
Moose: Japan.
Howard: I'm sorry, I'm only going as far as Cleveland. Bye.​

In the coda, Bob dictates a response letter to Moose's new psychologist in Japan...and we learn that sports fans there have taken to calling Moose the Japanese equivalent of his Chicago epithet, "bum".

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A couple of decades before "fridging" became a buzz-phrase, we had Gwen. I understand the reasoning behind the new creative team's decision, though. I love Stan, he gave us so much, but in his later years of active writing, he'd gotten noticeably stale...particularly in endlessly regurgitating the same old plot contrivances between heroes who kept secret identities and their supporting casts. He was pulling tricks to keep Pete from letting Gwen get too close that he'd originally pulled with Betty Brant when Ditko was drawing the series. The new creators didn't see anywhere left to go but what Stan had been trying to avoid, so they cut the Gordian Knot and gave us a seminal turning point in Spidey lore that informed the character for years to come.

Alas, my comic reading is roughly just as behind as my TV viewing, so I won't be getting to this issue on schedule unless I skip ahead.

Please tell me you're not one of those who holds Laugh-In responsible for not surrendering the timeslot in which they'd become a smash hit! Trek was already living on borrowed time in its third season, and NBC was only going to put it in that slot because it was TMFU's death slot before Laugh-In came in as the mid-season replacement. The needs of the breakout hit outweighed the needs of the show that was on the chopping block either way.

Maybe Tricky Dick deserves some credit for that.

It's a new one to me...and notable for being the Jacksons' first single to chart below the top 20.

Verily!

You and 1990s George Lucas--who forgot what he already knew about justified self-defense in the '70s.

 

I think it's great as-is, though having other band members sing the opening lines is an odd choice for such an intimate song.

Jim's singing voice is like Jean Stapleton out of character... I recall one of my great aunts having some of his albums.

That's nifty. I may have to listen that up.

A couple of interesting tidbits about Gwen's death that I didn't think to reference before...

There's a disconnect between artist and writer in the bridge that it happens on. It's referenced in the story as the George Washington Bridge, complete with a wisecrack about dollar bills; but what's drawn is very distinctively the Brooklyn Bridge and its surroundings, in a completely different part of Manhattan on the opposite river.

While the Goblin exposits in-story that the fall alone killed her before Spidey's webbing reached her, as originally published, there's a small "SNAP!" balloon near her neck as it makes contact. Reportedly, subsequent reprintings removed that bit of disturbing ambiguity. Likewise, the What If...? issue about Gwen living had Spidey trying a different tactic that, as I recall, involved diving after her, which succeeded.

I originally read the story in its Marvel Tales reprint, ca. 1978.

Somewhere in the spectrum between "power" and "world domination," I'm sure.

I should note that there's a nice pregnant pause with reaction where I put those ellipses.

It used to be unusual for any of the IMF to engage in gunplay, but became a lot more common by this season...no doubt informed by the attempt to switch them from spies to unconventional-but-avowed law enforcement.

Not sure why he didn't just use a sleeping bag at home.

It was played strictly for laughs, with Radar doing physical comedy and getting the girl.

Good observation.

But it goes too far when the person who believes in the haunting starts acting out the ghost's mission of vengeance.

The squad constantly getting called back to the same house felt like an Adam-12 story.

I was surprised that she didn't appear again later. Substitute Artie #1 did say that he'd considered bringing her back, but didn't want to feed into his wife's obsession.

One guy did accept, but it was an old boyfriend who'd since gotten married, so Mary refused.

In an elementary school that I'd been going to temporarily right after the family moved from Indiana to Florida--hence potential accent issues--I was disqualified for misspelling a word (don't ask me what it was now) that I was sure I'd spelled the same as the kid after me who got it. I had to "sign out," and my last name is just unusual enough that it tends to trip people up, so I went out of my way to try to spell it for the guy at the desk, who cut me short in a "yeah, we got it" fashion. To this day, I've got two little spelling bee runner-up trophies with my name misspelled on them! File under "You Can't Make This Shit Up".

She's like Jenny Piccalo in reverse.

Technically he was signing off on everything in these days, with that "Stan Lee presents:" banner on the splash pages.

Whew--I figured it would have come up by now if you'd been harboring a Trekkie grudge against LI.

I totally disagree. Being actively threatened with a gun changes the situation. In that scenario, you don't have the luxury of letting the other guy get off the first shot.

It's belatedly occurred to me that this episode of A12 could have benefitted from a Dragnet-format mugshot scene, so the narrator could clue us in on the perps' motivations.

 

Oh yeah, I've had that kind of phone experience; but not the lifetime subscription as a souvenir.

Bet Tremors really missed all eleven of them...

To use an alternate situation that's not strictly a perp with a gun on a cop with a gun--which may have been informed by the H5O I just watched--think of the situation of a police sniper in a hostage situation. His whole mission is to get in the first shot.