The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing

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The Mod Squad
"Kill Gently, Sweet Jessie"
Originally aired January 18, 1972

Jessie Cook (Al Freeman Jr.) acts contrite before a parole board, but afterward brags to his cellmate, Leonard Gault (Don Dubbins), about his performance, and volunteers that he expects to be back after he's killed someone--pulling out a slip of paper with Pete's name on it. At Pete's place, Julie's nursing him through an illness. They never specify what it is one way or the other, so it's possible that in production order this may actually have been an attempt at continuity with his surgery a couple of episodes ago. Greer calls Julie and Linc in to listen to a recording from a series of anonymous calls warning that Jessie Cook plans to kill somebody. Greer explains that Cook is a part-time singer from Georgia who served four years after beating a hood named Beldon to death, and is now out. Greer arranges for Linc to go undercover as Gault's new cellmate. Jessie returns to his old digs at a junkyard, where his good friend Lonnie (Glynn Turman) is overjoyed to see him. Jessie then pays a call on his old flame Dina Lane (Leslie Uggams) at the piano bar where they used to work together, which she now owns; and she defends her choice to move on while he was in the slammer. Jessie then makes a call to get Pete's address and to pay a couple of hoods to meet him there and beat on him. A pajama-and-robe-clad Pete is listening to classical when he hears the commotion and runs out to intervene, sending the hoods driving off and taking Jessie inside.

Pete patches Jessie up and offers his couch, not being deterred when Cook reveals that he's fresh out of the hoosegow. Back at said hoosegow, Linc's doing a street character while acquainting himself with his new bunkmate, and drops that he's an old friend of Jessie's, pretending to be surprised that he's in Cook's cell and asking about his old buddy. At the junkyard, Jessie and Lonnie (who keeps his hardhat on even while having dinner) are listening to an old recording of themselves playing the blues; and we learn that Jessie associates the hood he killed with the loss of his singing voice. Julie's at Pete's when Jessie returns and introduces himself. Cut to Pete being played the call tape in Greer's office, the Captain having deduced that Pete is Cook's target. Back at home, Pete watches as Jessie has a nightmare on the couch...a nightmare of being severely beaten and suffering a throat injury. After waking up, Jessie hits the street and the bottle, and Pete follows him, eventually hearing from a drunken Jessie about how he was beaten, and expects Pete to remember it.

Pete shares this with Greer, and while he can't remember such an incident, he admits that there is something familiar about Jessie. Greer gets a call that Linc's out and got the name of somebody who plans to kill Jessie if he gets out of line. Instead of reporting to Greer with details, Linc heads to the apartment of a Frank Weaver (Mort Mills), whom he finds roughing up Lonnie (who at least changed his hat for the occasion). After Lonnie exits, Linc propositions Weaver about wanting to team up, claiming that he has his own score to settle with Cook. Finally reporting to Greer, Linc learns that Weaver's a very nasty character who does jobs for a man named Whittaker. Weaver then hits Dina's lounge to report to a man named Keller (Leo Gordon) that Jessie Cook's after him, and Keller tells Weaver that he should've finished Cook off that night in the alley with Beldon. In his junkyard digs, Jessie has the nightmare again, which includes a blurry figure who looks like Weaver stepping on his neck. At Pete's, when he mentions that Jessie got into trouble in December of '68, Julie remembers something about Pete having missed a party for Linc to identify a prisoner at a hospital, which triggers Pete's memory of having seen Jessie in the next bed. Pete figures that Jessie saw him in his injured and drugged-up state and misremembers him as his assailant; and after Julie leaves gets a call from Jessie, who indicates that he now has doubts and arranges a rendezvous.

Linc pays a call on Dina, to whom Lonnie's truck is registered, and asks her questions. She reveals that Lonnie's her brother and the two of them came from Georgia with Jessie; that a man named Whittaker took an interest in her and had Jessie beaten as a warning; that she stayed silent and pushed Jessie away for his own protection; and that Whittaker's now out of her life, but bought the club for her before he dumped her. Finally, she shares an address where she thinks Jessie may have gone. Pete shows up at the junkyard to meet Jessie, who goes after him with a forklift. While Pete's being lifted on top of a car and trying to set Jessie straight, Keller and Weaver arrive, the latter of whom announces his presence by winging Jessie. Seeing Weaver's face triggers Jessie's memory of him as the other man who beat him...then Stunt Linc drops in to drop kick Weaver, enabling Stunt Pete to tackle Keller. Pete then sees to an apologetic Jessie.

In the coda, we get a hint that Dina and Jessie may be patching things up; Jessie breaks his old record; and Pete and Linc drive off the junkyard lot.

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Ironside
"And Then There Was One"
Originally aired January 20, 1972

Driving back from the Chief giving a speech, Mark stops by a service station run by a friend, Sid Potter (Harrison Page), and his partner, Joe Grainger (Scott Hylands)--both recently returned from Vietnam. Right after the Ironsidemobile leaves, a mysterious figure rolls a grenade into the office while the proprietors are in it. Conventional detectives determine that it wasn't a robbery; and Mark has to inform the victims' wives, Marge Grainger (Christine Dixon) and Helen Potter (Pamela Jones), that Joe is hospitalized and Sid is dead. The Chief questions Joe at his hospital bed, and Joe indicates that they received a threat from an Afro-American separatist movement, who don't approve of mixed-race ventures. The Chief finds that this attitude goes both ways when he questions Henry Garrison (Vic Tayback), a lumber mill proprietor who's resentful that he lost out on the station franchise because the oil company preferred being represented by a "salt and pepper" combination. The Chief gets a proactive visit in the cave from the separatist movement leader, Mohammed (Percy Rodrigues), and one of his men, Mustafa (Felton Perry). When pressed by Mohammed, the headstrong Mustafa admits that he violated the group's commitment to non-violence when delivering a message to the station; and that he was drunk the night of the bombing, and can't remember what he was doing at the time. (There's nothing Percy Rodrigues hates more than an evident perjurer.)

The wives tell Fran that their husbands didn't like to discuss 'Nam or congregate with their surviving squadmates. Ed then uncovers that their squad was investigated when somebody tried to frag their C.O., Lt. Link...who later got himself killed in combat anyway, when the squad refused to walk into a trap with him. When pressed by the Chief, Joe confesses that he's sure that Gregg Hewitt (Bo Hopkins) was the attempted fragger. The Chief takes interest when he confirms with Nurse Wilson (Virginia Gregg) that among the calls Joe's been getting, some have repeatedly been from a party who wouldn't identify themself. Back at the Cave, the Chief makes a late-night call to Mohammed to inform him that Mustafa has been cleared, while trying to sew a seed of mutual respect.

Ed investigates the drydocked-for-repair boat of another squad member, Steve Winters (Richard Young), who doesn't want to talk about 'Nam, but indicates that his boat was damaged by a mysterious explosion, after which Ed reveals that he found a piece of frag grenade inside. The Chief and Mark talk to Sgt. Hewitt, now transferred to the regular Army from the squad's National Guard unit. He expresses his skepticism about Sid and Joe's "oil and water" partnership, but contrasts that with the following...

Hewitt: It's diversity in its infinite variety that makes like interesting in this star system. I'm not sure what that means, but I heard it on a science fiction program.​

Fran talks to now-businessman Vince Atkins (Phillip Clark), who tries to play it down when his wife, Gracie (Karen Carlson), indicates that he's been getting anonymous calls. Vince follows Fran out into the hall to retract his alibi, confessing that he was seeing another woman on the night of the bombing. A Major Haggerty (Frank Maxwell) calls the Chief to tell him that Link's brother, Eldon--the first mate on a freighter--had the investigation unsuccessfully reopened by making a lot of noise about it while in Saigon. On the street, Ed's trying to pick up Hewitt for his own protection when a now fully revealed figure (Rick Arnold) drives by and tosses a grenade at them, both surviving.

All of the suspects from the squad are promptly eliminated by the timing of this attack. The Chief arranges for the nurse to give the anonymous caller a phony discharge time for Joe so that a trap can be sprung. Ed and uniformed backup converge on Link's place, finding the vehicle, but he slips out. Link subsequently makes the anonymous call, and the trap is set, with Marge accompanying Ed as he's wheeled out to the parking garage in Joe's place. Link is waiting in an adjacent car, which the Chief spots with binoculars from his stakeout point as the most likely hiding place. Ed drops his cover and calls for Link's surrender. When Link tries to run, he finds himself spotlit and surrounded by uniformed officers.

In the coda, the wives are working at the station with Joe.

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Not quite that thick, but perhaps meant to be Irish American...there were a lot of "laddies".

Not if they were supposed to be minding him and they trying to keep him in line.

Now that you mention it, no. But her albums were among the contents of the duplicate suitcase.

Because Rusty asked Pete to retrieve the case for him.

At this point, it was supposed to be a personal affair and they didn't know the actual stakes.

(Where's the other guy? RJ asked.) Yep, Rusty sideswiped him with the car and he was sprawled presumably unconscious.

But then we don't get that emotionally powerful climax with Pete.

It seemed like it was supposed to be a local affairs show. When the Chief walked in on Ed and Fran watching Charo, he made a crack about Sesame Street.

I looked back to make sure I didn't miss some case-relevant context. I didn't.

The latter.

I guess we were meant to see him as a sort of Robin Hood figure who just needed to be set back on the straight and narrow.

Ooh...I picked that up as used vinyl in the '90s. I probably still have it stashed away somewhere, but I couldn't say what its playing condition would be after all these years.

And yet there it is...

 

Interesting thing here is this makes twice in my most recent watching that Pete's surname has come up onscreen spelled Cochrane. (Previous time was when he used his cousin's address for something.) Online sources overwhelmingly indicate that it's spelled Cochran. I wonder if this was a continuity issue within the show itself?

How so?

There was a running bit of business where Jessie nicknamed Pete the name of the composer or performer. I didn't jot it down and it wasn't a name I was familiar with.

It was a bit of a leap, but Greer thought it was too much of a coincidence that this guy who was outspokenly out for revenge on somebody immediately found his way to Pete first thing after getting out.

Maybe she keeps a Mod scrapbook in her abundant spare time.

Say, that could explain the Julie situation--she's really just their secretary, but they humor her by letting her think she's part of the team.

Good question. He might have heard Pete saying his name to the guy he was questioning.

Stunt Linc could have done a flying drop kick into one side of the cab, causing Jessie to tumble out the other side!

I get what they were going for--putting that chapter of his life behind him.

In Hewitt's case, he was described by one of the others as being something of a gung ho type who enjoyed the military life.

Good point.

Now if he'd been an old friend of Pete Cochran's...

An early red herring / topical filler. Mel also never popped up again. It did seem kind of questionable/unsatisfying mystery structure-wise that they pulled out a culprit who wasn't one of the many onscreen suspects.

I got the impression that he was supposed to be smuggling the dope for them, but was double-crossing them to sell it himself. They were warning him not to try anything.

They were supposed to be her character's albums, but I didn't look closely enough to see if they were actually Vikki Carr albums.

"The place is surrounded by cops, man! Surely you aren't gonna go out there with your gun drawn!"
"I am going to go out there with my gun drawn...and don't call me Shirley."

Ah, good premise!

And generally, he was portrayed as a loveable rogue.

Next up will be the last Mod Squad that I have (six episodes short of finishing the season)...and the last thing ever shown on Decades before they switched over to Catchy Comedy. There will only be four more Ironsides in the season after that week's episode, which I am planning to cover before the new 50th anniversary season is fully underway. Note that we'll be jumping from Ironside Season 5 as post-50th anniversary viewing to Season 7 as current 50th anniversary viewing, with Season 6 hopefully to be covered in the next hiatus.

 

"The Earth-Romulan War? It's all my fault, man..."

 

50 Years Ago This Week


September 9

• Jackie Stewart's fourth-place finish in the Italian Grand Prix gave him sufficient points to clinch the title of World Drivers' Champion in the Formula One season. With two races still left, and a maximum 18 points left to be won, Stewart had 69 points, far ahead of Emerson Fittipaldi (48), François Cevert (47) and race winner Ronnie Peterson (43).
• John Lennon and Yoko Ono put Tittenhurst Park on the market.

September 10

• Under an agreement between West Germany and East Germany, garbage trucks from West Berlin were allowed to haul rubbish "through a newly opened hole in the Berlin Wall" into East Germany in order to dump their contents into an abandoned quarry.

September 11

• Chile's democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup after serious instability. President Salvador Allende made a farewell speech to Chileans on live radio broadcast by the station Radio Magallanes and then, according to reporter Juan Enrique Lira of the Santiago newspaper El Mercurio, shot himself. Lira reported that the press secretary, Agosto Olivares, had committed suicide as well. Chilean Army General Augusto Pinochet took over as chairman of a four-member military junta, along with Air Force General Gustavo Leigh, Admiral José Toribio Merino and General César Mendoza of the nation's national police force, the Carabineros de Chile. Pinochet would govern Chile for the next 16 years. Earlier in the day, the military chiefs of staff had informed Allende that they had taken control and called upon him to resign. Allende refused and for the next three hours, airplanes strafed and bombed the presidential residence, La Moneda and tanks fired shells.
• In the first known fatality from a crash of a flying car, American aeronautical engineer Henry Smolinski was killed along with a passenger, Harold Black shortly after taking off from the Ventura County Airport in Oxnard, California. Smolinski, president of Advanced Vehicle Engineers, was making a test flight of his AVE Mizar flying automobile, built from a Ford Pinto automobile and a Cessna Skymaster airplane and was at an altitude of 400 feet (120 m) when the Mizar fell apart.
• Egypt's President Anwar Sadat hosted a meeting with Syria's President Hafez Assad and Jordan's King Hussein at the Kubbeh Palace near Cairo, reportedly to discuss resumption of Jordan's diplomatic relations between the other two nations. The three nations would invade Israel 25 days later on October 6, starting the Yom Kippur War.
• Art Garfunkel finally released his solo debut album Angel Clare, 17 years after starting his career.

September 12

• The British government announced that it had accepted a White Paper recommendation for construction of the Channel Tunnel at an estimated cost of £468 million ($1.17 billion), subject to approval by Parliament and equal spending by the government of France, with construction of two tunnels to begin within 18 months and trains to operate as early as 1980. The project would be halted on January 20, 1975, by the new Labour Party government, and construction would not begin until 1988.

September 13

• The Israeli Air Force sent its 69 Squadron on a reconnaissance mission over northern Syria with F-4 Phantom jets, triggering the largest aerial battle in the Middle East since the 1967 Six-Day War. The Syrian Air Force engaged the invaders, and 13 of its MiG-21 jets were shot down, while the IAF lost a single Mirage III fighter. Most of the fighting took place over the Mediterranean Sea.
• A ban on television "blackouts" of professional football games—the prevention of the broadcast of a game in the television market where the game was being played—was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, 336 to 37, three days before the 1973 NFL season began, following on a 76 to 6 vote in the U.S. Senate. Under the new law, which took effect upon President Nixon's signature the next day, local broadcasts of games could only be blacked out if the stadium was not sold out 72 hours before kickoff. The ban followed the blacking out of the Washington Redskins' home games during 1972, preventing most members of Congress from watching on TV.

September 14

• Governor of Georgia and future U.S. president Jimmy Carter was asked by the International UFO Bureau to file a report on his 1969 sighting of an unidentified flying object, and sent his statement on September 20.

September 15

• King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden died at the age of 90 after a reign of almost 23 years. He had been hospitalized for 26 days at a hospital in Helsingborg after the surgical removal of half of his stomach to halt bleeding from a complicated gastric ulcer. He was succeeded by his grandson, Prince Carl Gustaf, who took the regnal name of Carl XVI. The King's death came on the day before elections for the Swedish parliament.

Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:

Leaving the chart:

• "Believe in Humanity," Carole King (9 weeks)
• "Diamond Girl," Seals & Crofts (18 weeks)
• "Smoke on the Water," Deep Purple (16 weeks)

New on the chart:

"All I Know," Art Garfunkel

(#9 US; #1 AC; #51 UK)

"Paper Roses," Marie Osmond

(#5 US; #1 AC; #1 Country; #2 UK)


And new on the boob tube:

• Hawaii Five-O, "Hookman" (Season 6 premiere)
• Adam-12, "Harbor Division" (Season 6 premiere)
• Ironside, "Confessions from a Lady of the Night" (Season 7 premiere)
• The Brady Bunch, "Adios, Johnny Bravo" (Season 5 premiere; unavailable)
• The Odd Couple, "Gloria Moves In" (Season 4 premiere)
• Love, American Style, "Love and the Footlight Fiancee / Love and the Plane Fantasy / Love and the Swinging Surgeon / Love and the Teller's Tale" (Season 5 premiere)
• Super Friends, "The Baffles Puzzle"
• Star Trek, "Yesteryear"
• All in the Family, "We're Having a Heat Wave" (Season 4 premiere)
• M*A*S*H, "Divided We Stand" (Season 2 premiere)
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show, "The Lars Affair" (Season 4 premiere; shockingly unavailable debut of Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens)
• The Bob Newhart Show, "The Last TV Show" (Season 2 premiere)

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Timeline entries are quoted from the Wiki page for the month and Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Day by Day, with minor editing as needed.

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So I guess I'll watch AITF and M*A*S*H for the first week after all, as Emergency!'s season isn't starting yet.

Alas, as with Best of, that's one of the shows that gets replaced in streaming; in this case, by another Carol Burnett.

The regulars are only listed in the opening credits, without character names.

Hadn't heard about that...and I have no idea who that is.

In this case, if one cared enough to rationalize the continuity issue (like fans of some show franchises), it could simply be that Jessie didn't know how Pete spelled it.

Extra points if Stunt Linc lands in the seat and takes control of the forklift.

But smashing the vinyl makes for a more dramatic moment than putting the record back in its sleeve and up on a shelf.

Which brings to mind the sad fact that Michael Cole (now 83) is the only surviving member of the cast. Lipton and Williams both passed in the last four years.

 

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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing

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The Mod Squad
"Shockwave"
Originally aired January 25, 1972

Julie's shopping at Nassraway's Grocery, Liquor, and Deli to prepare a home-cooked meal for Pete and Linc when a pair of real amateurs from Texas, Troy and Sue Ann Eldridge (Michael Anderson Jr. and Lyn Loring), bring their baby, Sally Ann, in with them to rob the place. Julie doesn't seem to notice the commotion until the grocer, Al Franks (Lou Krugman), tries to pull his gun as the robbers are exiting, and Troy shoots him. In the car between robberies, we're told that both mother and baby are feeling unwell, and learn something of the childhood trauma that informs Troy's demeanor. Greer's questioning Julie for information--which includes remembering the woman's name and that the man had a naval insignia on the back of his left hand--when Linc takes a call that Franks has pulled through surgery. Elsewhere, disappointed that all they got was $17, Troy holds up another grocer, Jack Miller (Davis Roberts), who's able to provide Troy's name and that the insignia was from the USS Lincoln. Troy next steals a convertible, and while he's away getting water for its radiator, Sue Ann and the baby are sleeping in the car when a motorcycle patrolman (Walt Davis) questions her and has her get out of the car. She screams a warning to Troy as he's coming around the corner and he pulls his gun, shooting the policeman, who also wings Troy before the trio take off again.

Davis is conscious afterward to describe the trio, who subsequently check into a motel, where Troy, nursing his wound and clearly not much of a caring father, yells at Sue Ann to keep the baby quiet and that the infant is in the way. The following morning, a Father Kenton (C. Elliott Montgomery) reports a baby having been abandoned at his church, St. Augustine's. (The exterior appears to be the same backlot church that I was poking fun at in the hit-and-run episode.) For some reason this is reported to Greer, who takes the Mods with him, where Julie thinks that the baby might be the same one she saw. Sally Ann is identified by checking Texas hospitals, which matches with Eldridge being one of the several Troys they've dug up who've served on the Lincoln. Somehow Julie gets to take care of the baby (who's given a clean bill of health with a little cough medicine), and keeps her for the weekend while prospective foster parents are being lined up for interviews on Monday. Instantly overattached, Julie immerses herself in her new role, which results in some sitcom-ish scenes of the guys shopping for baby clothes and supplies and trying to change Sally Ann's diaper.

(Lurene Tuttle plays Female Clerk)


Julie even casually blows off a work appointment with Greer because of the baby. She's also clearly threatened by the idea of the baby being adopted by somebody else, and goes to talk about it with Father Kenton, who has a couple lined up. Meanwhile, Sue Ann has taken off in the car while Troy was robbing a place, to return to the church for her baby. Julie sees her and calls Greer; while Sue Ann tells Kenton that she wants her baby. Troy catches up, Sue Ann sees the baby through a doorway, and Troy pulls his gun on Julie. Julie tries to approach Troy, who's suspicious because he recognizes her from the store. Greer and the guys get there, and when they storm in, Troy fires, winging Greer. Troy then takes turns shooting at the Stunt Mods as they dive behind pews, and Linc gets close enough to tackle him. Troy is taken into custody by uniformed officers, wanting to know if his clean police record before his spree of armed robberies and shootings will be taken into consideration; and Julie hands Sally Ann to her praying mother.

In the coda we're told that Sue Ann is an accessory to robbery and murder, which would seem to indicate that either Davis didn't make it or somebody was killed in one of the offscreen robberies, though I didn't catch a reference to either. The guys dramatically convince Julie that being adopted by a couple would be what's best for Sally Ann, and she reluctantly hands the baby over to Pete to be returned to the hospital. (I have to wonder how realistic a young single-mother adoption would have been in 1971-72 anyway.) As Julie walks away, the episode ends unusually on a closeup shot of her crying.


The USS Lincoln that Troy served on would have been the ballistic missile submarine USS Abraham Lincoln (SSBN-602), which was in service from 1961 to 1981. While the episode doesn't get into that detail, apparently somebody did a bit of homework, because Pete specifically says that the sixteen Troys who've served on her go back to '61.

And this is the last we saw of Decades before a 6:00 a.m. episode of Full House commenced with the Catchy logo in the corner:

Interestingly, the Decades logo that's usually in the lower right was absent from the Mod Squad episode after the opening credits.

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Ironside
"Death by the Numbers"
Originally aired January 27, 1972

There's more generic use of the sped-up "Growing Up Is Hard to Do" theme as Mel Gordon (Bobby Bass) is run through by a car outside of a theater. Gordon's old parole board number was found in his pocket, and Commissioner Randall considers this important enough to visit the Cave, because he was also on the board. Ironside visits Mrs. Gordon (Marilyn Erskine), who was getting tickets at the time, while the family is sitting shiva. The team digs up that two other members of the board have also recently died, one from a hit and run, the other from falling out a window. The parolee, a former pusher named William Adams who was let out in 1968, has also been killed. The Chief calls Randall to inform the commissioner that he'll be going on a vacation with a bodyguard.

Fran expresses that she's conflicted because she's inclined to sympathize with one of the loved ones of victims who'd have good reason to hold a grudge against Adams. Ironside proceeds to the cabin home of board member and reclusive painter Carlton Duffy, who is lampshaded as not looking anything like the Chief, though it appears that Burr is getting a small opportunity to stretch his legs again...

The Chief sends the disagreeable artist back to the Cave in his custom chair with Mark, and has a doctor (Michael Fox) brought in to put one of his legs in a cast to explain Duffy being chair-bound; then gets to work on assuming a disguise to make him look more like Duffy. While Don Mitchell gets to have some fun bickering with Burr...and while a mystery man stalks Duffy's property...the Chief soon finds himself surrounded by potential suspects--a substitute housekeeper, Felice Evans (Jacqueline Scott--high-billing alert), who hasn't met Duffy, and whom he finds snooping around the place; a grocery delivery boy named Jimmy (Bill [William] Katt) who spends a lot of time at Duffy's and can tell he's not the real McCoy; and his grocer father, Jim Peters (George Murdock), who comes inside behind him for some family drama.

When the Chief goes out for a roll on the dirt road while the mystery man is out, he's soon nearly run over by a speeding car.

The disguised Chief hits the local backwoods tavern and asks the bartender (James McCallion) about Jimmy; the bartender indicates that somebody's been asking about him--Hank Logan (Burr DeBenning, also highly billed), who claims to own a gallery in La Jolla (totally gorgeous place), and whom the Chief invites to the cabin for dinner. Fran and Ed are also there, posing as hippie types so Fran can give the Chief a potential rundown on several local suspects who have a history with Duffy...none of whom appear on the cast list. Another stranger approaches Fake Duffy--Matt Newell (Shelly Novack), our mystery stalker, who says the he's an art student. The Chief also invites him to dinner, at which the Chief fakes knowledge of art, then confronts both of them for being posers. Newell says that he's really a draft dodger, and heard on the grapevine that Duffy has been known to put them up while en route to Canada. Logan confesses to being a con artist. Both leave, Logan with a veiled threat. The Chief next confronts Felice Evans with being a phony, on the basis that she's too well-groomed to be a housekeeper. She's defensive about this and storms out. When the Chief's alone, Jimmy sneaks in, and Ironside drops his disguise, attempting to gain the young man's confidence, indicating that he's impersonating Duffy for his own good; and sharing his deduction that Duffy is losing his eyesight.

Evans sneaks in by night and pours gasoline throughout the cabin. When she gets to the bed and finds the Duffy wig on some pillows, the undisguised Chief comes out of hiding to identify her as a Mrs. Mann, whose son Adams was responsible for the death of, and identifies himself as Robert Einstein (according to our astute closed captioning). He tries to reason with her, but she goes berserk and lights the place up via wood from the fireplace. The Chief is struggling with her as Jimmy bursts in; the Chief pushes her to Jimmy and rolls out behind them.

In the Cave coda, Duffy leaves after the Chief shares how he's learned that the gruff artist is really a softy who likes to help people; and Ironside gives Randall a bill from Duffy, for fire damage and two days' rent.

While they weren't fooling anyone with who was playing the real Duffy, there was a nice touch in the makeup work, in that the real Duffy was more elaborately made up than the Chief disguising himself as Duffy.

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Yep.

I've got this, but I'm not really feeling it.

I guess she is a little bit country. I can't see lifting my Osmonds boycott for this, but she does have a decent set of pipes for still being only 13 at the time.

Yeah, I couldn't say offhand if the Cochran spelling had been previously established onscreen.

After my Saturday morning 50th anniversary viewing, I'm more inclined to say "Super groovy!"

Maybe if it broke from the hugging.

Coming to the US chart in about a month, FWIW.

 

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50th Anniversary Viewing

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Super Friends
"The Power Pirate"
Originally aired September 8, 1973
Series premiere

In the great hall of the Justice League, there are assembled the world's three greatest heroes...and Aquaman.​

Featuring Ted Knight as the narrator--burning both ends of the candle on Saturdays, it seems! The rest of our regular cast includes...

• Superman: Danny Dark

• Batman: Olan Soule, who definitely predates the modern notion of casting a voice artist who could play the character in live action
• Wonder Woman: Shannon Farnon
• Aquaman: familiar period heavy Norman Alden, who'll in a few years be playing the butler in Electra Woman & Dyna-Girl
• Robin: Counting down this week's list of the top 40 escaped lunatics in Gotham City, I'm Casey Kasem...and we're not gonna stop until we've reached the top!
• Daphne Wendy Harris: Sherry Alberoni
• Shaggy and Scooby Marvin White and Wonder Dog: Frank Welker

I'm not sure where Wendy and Marvin's surnames come from, or if they were ever used on the show. They may be from the tie-in comic, which is a few years down the road.

The distinctive exterior of the Hall of Justice (not originally from the comics) is clearly based on a real-life landmark--Cincinnati Union Terminal.

And now, on with our countdown story...

The episode opens with a skier (John Stephenson) taking a tumble as a UFO spies on him overhead, then being approached by an alien, who shoots a medallion ray at this head.

"Wow, that was a super-groovy save!"
"Right on!"​

"Super groovy" seems to be a frequently used catchphrase of Wendy's. And you spotted the engineer who was voiced by Casey, right? It's kind of indirectly dark that a kid's cartoon would reference Donner Pass right upfront. Batman gets in some messaging about brains also being a superpower, and the Friends brainstorm about what caused the trains to lose their power.

Her "Transparent" Plane (as they're hair-splitting here) is said to be capable of 5,000 mph (Mach 6.5). Aquaman gets caught underwater by a rogue super-anemone, and has to call some octopi to help him.

Aquaman stands on a whale and semaphores to signal the ship to drop its anchor.

Marvin: Far out--that was just in time!
Wendy: But I wonder how he did it?
Aquaman: With a little help from my friends, from the name of the same song!​

Sir Cedric was the skier, and he drops the episode title to describe the culprit he's onto. At what appears to be the Batcave, Wonder Dog plays charades to tell Superman who Sir Cedric is.

Wonder Woman displays her limited flight ability from the comics and super-strength here. The rest of the Super Friends join her and help stop the flood by closing the floodgates. The Dynamic Duo use their batarangs and batropes a lot. In the aftermath, Batman speculates that somebody's trying to cause an energy crisis, and has the team split up to cover potential trouble spots.

The shadowy figure is obviously Sir Cedric...and this whole sequence is blatantly very Scooby. Wonder Dog catches Sir Cedric by causing a series of locker doors to close like dominoes, as Cedric is hiding in the last locker.

There's a montage of Superman saving an experimental jet fighter that looks period authentic; Aquaman saving a sunken nuclear sub with the help of a school of whales--a whale pushing it up from the bottom with its nose; and Batman and Robin substitute for the warning lights of the tallest skyscraper in a city...which they somehow swing up to with their ropes.

Brains over muscle is sold up again as the assembled Super Friends put their heads together at the Hall of Justice. Wendy recalls how she saw a "full moon" above the power plant, and how Sir Cedric was soaking wet while his umbrella was dry. Batman generates a Scan Report of UFO sightings in the vicinity of the power losses, and speculates that Sir Cedric is a phony. "Holy imposters, Batman! [I'm Casey Kasem.]" The report involves using what they refer to as the Big Eye--probably a satellite. (The Justice Leage is actually using a geosynchronous satellite as their headquarters in the comics in this period. The tie-in comic would try to fit the series premise into DC continuity of the time, which included sometimes using the JLA Satellite.) The heroes bring up their Good Guys File of Sir Cedric, which reveals that he's currently hospitalized in Ski Valley. Superman flies Batman, Robin, and the Wonder Gang to talk to him.


"This is your captain speaking--Thank you for flying Superman Airlines!"

Laid up in a leg cast, Sir Cedric recalls how the alien scanned his brain, assumed his form, and brought him to the emergency room. Wonder Woman reports that the Big Eye has spotted a UFO over a nuclear generator plant that's being dedicated. The heroes make contact with Fake Sir Cedric, and Wonder Woman catches him with her lasso as he's using his umbrella to send what appears to be a signal the ship. He resumes his real form of Anthro, from the planet Traum (still John Stephenson), and willingly describes his times-signy plight.

Anthro: I've been stealing your energy because my people ignored the warnings of our conservationists and used up the energy resources of our planet. We built bigger and more powerful machines we neglected....Without energy, our planet is doomed.​

So...what powered the flying saucer to get to Earth? Since arriving, he's been stealing sources of power and transmitting them up to his ship via the umbrella. Seeing an image of Traum's moon, Superman promises to polish it as smooth as glass so that it serves as a giant solar panel. (Alas, we don't actually see him do this, but it sounds like a very Silver/Bronze Age Superman feat. And yet it still takes effort for him to stop a train...)

The super-messagey coda has Batman, Wendy, and Robin tell Marvin and Wonder Dog how they should conserve energy by turning off the TV set when they're not watching, turning off the lights when they leave the room, and turning off the record player (the last bit from Robin/Casey, no less)! Aquaman then delivers a voice preview of next week's adventure, which plays over scenes from this week's.

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Star Trek
"Beyond the Farthest Star"
Originally aired September 8, 1973
Animated series premiere

Featuring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and James Doohan reprising their roles from the live-action series...with Doohan doing everyone else this episode (Lt. Kyle, Ancient Insectoid, and Magnetic Organism). Majel Barrett's also a regular, but is "credit only" in this one, though we see Chapel in Sickbay. I'll confess that I've never seen the retronymed Animated Series in its entirety...whenever I tried to watch it in the past, going back to my teenage years, it always had the disturbing ability to put me to sleep any time of day. Dammit, Scotty, we need more caffeine!

Captain's log, stardate 5221.3: On outward course beyond the fringe of our galaxy towards Questar M-17, a source of mysterious radio emissions. Mission: Star charting.​

The stardate here is roughly in the same ballpark as where TOS left off. "Turnabout Intruder" had a stardate of 5928.5. The Enterprise is caught in the hyper-gravity of an imploded star, and soon discovers another trapped vessel--a large, organic ship consisting of jellyfish-like pods attached together by tendrils, which is estimated to have been trapped for about 300 million years (which is said to be before life emerged on Earth, which is way off--Google says at least 3.5 billion years ago for that). Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty don life support belts and beam onto the exterior of the ship, where they find that the pods are all burst open, believed by Spock to be an act of self-destruction.

Captain's log: We have beamed aboard the alien ship found orbiting a strange, dead star. The Enterprise is recording all data for the log and a full report later.​

The landing party beams inside to find the source of the radio signals, and surmise that the entire vessel is built to absorb and store energy. (Must be a theme week.) They become trapped in a control center with the power being drained from their equipment (though Spock continues reading his tricorder), and an insectoid alien appears on a viewscreen as something seems to be getting through the door...accompanied by annoying color flashes that might be an issue for viewers with epilepsy. The translated viewscreen message warns of the ship carrying a malevolent life form. As a series of explosions go off, the landing party is beamed out by Kyle (while Sulu has the conn) but transport a mysterious energy form with them.

The crew activates another new feature, an Automatic Bridge Defense System mounted in a ceiling dome; and Kirk sends Scotty to Engineering to arm a self-destruct device. Life support malfunctions, and Scotty is trapped in an Engineering Core hatch. When phaser banks activate to destroy the alien ship, the crew realizes that something seems to be controlling the ship. The controlling entity negotiates with them from the defense globe, demanding that they remove a static shield from the navigation controls; as persuasion, it fires beams at Spock that the life support belt, which he happens to still be wearing, blocks. Kirk puts his belt on the console to sabotage it and dodges a ray by going into a roll--about as physically dynamic as the show gets. Spock determines that the alien has taken control of the ship as its own body, but with the crew needed to operate manual controls. The entity wants them to take it to the center of the galaxy. Fearful of the entity multiplying, they steer the ship into the dead star; an order to go to warp is given, the ship seems to disappear, the entity flees the ship to find itself stuck on the star, pleading not be left alone. (I might be misunderstanding what happened here, but it looks like the ship warped through the planet, and I'm pretty sure that's not how warp is supposed to work.)

Captain's log, stardate 5221.8, final entry: Resuming outward course beyond the farthest star of our galaxy. Mission: star charting.​

I think it's the cast who could've used more caffeine. The lulling effect which always put me to sleep, which I could still feel, seems to come from a combination of their generally flat delivery even in moments of danger and the repeated music cues. The main action/tension cue seems to have the opposite of its intended effect when it's on a loop.

Distracting animation detail: characters' eyeballs being the same color as their skin. They managed to get black and red inside people's mouths, you'd think they could do white eyeballs.

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As did I.

I also wondered about that. They probably planned to shoot the desk clerk.

I think they used the name in the story in this case, but it's on the outside of the church over the doors.

Supposedly identified by her footprints and such.

The priest made a special request via Greer...but yeah, no actual child custody authorities were seen in this episode.

Would they look anything like this?

I get the impression that none of them were, though I've never seen it in full. I caught part of it on Me years back when they had a Friday night TV movie slot.

Possibly from the number tags.

He's got little reason to break out of it, though.

Oh yeah...I think I'd been exposed to that fact somewhere, but I didn't recall it to make the connection.

But he played an admiral who wasn't evil...

He could tell that she wasn't the type who'd done physical labor...too well-manicured and such.

I was making fun of a closed captioning error--it can't even get the name in the show's title right!

True.

 

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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing

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Ironside
"Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Murder"
Originally aired February 3, 1972

In a kind of Julie-ish plot-driving moment, Ironside is called upon by his Old Friends of the Week Gerald and Carol Barker (Paul Carr and Anne Whitfield) to talk to their young daughter Pip (9-year-old Jodie Foster!)...

...who's confined herself to her room since their landlord, Mr. Morrison, died. When Uncle Bob gently questions her about it, she explains that she doesn't want to hurt anybody, as she's a witch, and she believes that she killed Morrison by putting a spell on him.

The Chief looks into the Morrison homicide case and decides to get involved. He has Ed and Fran talk to Billy Mahan (Lee Paul), a developmentally disabled man whom Morrison hired to do odd jobs and let live in the basement, and who's now in custody for questioning, after Morrison was found in the basement and Billy was found hiding nearby. Billy explains that he was playing with Pip and two other girls when Morrison came down and yelled at him, scaring the girls, and he pushed Morrison, sending him falling to the ground. Billy doesn't believe Ed when he explains that Morrison's dead.

For his next visit to the Barker home, the Chief practices child witch psychology by distributing charms he had made up to protect everyone from Pip's black magic. He then has Mark take her into the witchcraft shop where she buys her spell components, where she explains that she and her friends were working on a success potion, and that during the argument between Morrison and Billy, she told Morrison that she wished he'd fall down and die. Mark then has the shopkeeper, Thyros (wait for it...), lay it straight to her regarding the mundane items that the spell ingredients they sell are really made from. Are you ready for this one...?

Submitted for your consideration:


One of only two acting credits on IMDb that isn't "Narrator"!

Uncle Bob takes Pip down to the basement to show him how things happened, and learns a couple items of interest...she indicates that Billy pushed Morrison in the back of the room, when Morrison's body was found near the elevator; and that the girls and Billy ran to the elevator without turning on the lights, which were on when Morrison was found. Upstairs, Ironside runs into one of the tenants, Archie Baldwin (top-billed guest John Schuck), who expresses an interest in Billy's welfare, explaining that he'd befriended Billy and asking to come to HQ to help question him. When asked, Billy confirms that he and the girls ran by somebody in the lobby, but Billy gets clams up when asked who. The Chief subsequently digs up that Morrison had a habit of regularly visiting the basement two or three times a day for years, and it wasn't for maintenance; the Chief surmises that somebody may have killed Morrison for whatever he was hiding down there. More investigation turns up that Morrison has a quarter of a million dollars in a safe deposit box, which doesn't match Morrison's accounting. Knowing what questions to ask, the Chief learns from Billy that his main job for Morrison was watching the basement. Taken back to the basement, Billy is persuaded to show him and Mark Mr. Morrison's hiding place, which he wasn't supposed to know about. Inside, they find a large stash of counterfeit bills.

A shovel is subsequently found that the Chief thinks may have been the murder weapon. Talking to the tenant who found Morrison's body, Mr. Gold (Milton Selzer), Ed learns that Morrison had lots of visitors, and that Baldwin was a regular one of them for a couple of years before he moved in. Finally, the team assembles Pip, Billy, and Baldwin in the basement to reenact the scene of the crime, with the Chief and Fran standing in for the two other girls, and Baldwin for Morrison. Pip prepares her spell with ingredients that Fran's bought from Thyros's shop. The altercation is then recreated, with the Chief having to prod Pip to repeat her wish to Baldwin. Billy pushes Baldwin, the foursome go up the elevator, and when Mr. Gold is standing in the lobby as arranged, Pip says that it was Baldwin standing in his place. The Chief accuses Baldwin of having befriended Billy while trying to find Morrison's hiding spot, and of making a move to take out the groggy Morrison after he recovered so that he could search the basement...which the Chief expects to back up when Baldwin's prints are found on the shovel. As he's taken into custody, the suspect graciously agrees to confirm for Pip that he saw Morrison alive after Billy shoved him.

In the coda, Carol promises to have Pip learn to make cookies and sew, and Pip gives Uncle Bob a good luck charm that she made in gratitude. This is the part where I say something about October.

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Ironside
"Achilles' Heel"
Originally aired February 17, 1972

Judge Lawrence Van Buren (William Windom), who's being considered for nomination to the Supreme Court, is telling Ironside how attempts to persuade him have stepped up since he's been working on the income tax evasion case of Frank Stillwell. Meanwhile, Van Buren's Harvard law school graduate son, Larry (Rick Lenz), is being picked up at a bar by a woman (Angel Tompkins) who's supposedly having car trouble that he's been trying to help with. She brings him back very under the influence to her place via taxi, and when we cut back to them, he's stumbling out disoriented while she's lying face-down on the floor.

Police enter the apartment of the woman, illicit actress Candy Delmar, to find and apprehend a delivery boy, Otis Williams (Hilly Hicks), who's looking through her purse--ostensibly to find change to call the police. Larry wakes up at the family home the next day having flashes to the woman and not remembering much of what happened or where he left his car, but telling his father over breakfast about what he does remember. In Stilwell's (James Douglas) boardroom, his heavy, Ellis Stark (Bill Fletcher), indicates that the job is done and Stilwell has Stark call Judge Van Buren to ominously offer to help him with the mess that his son got into the night before.

Ed learns from Lt. Reese that Delmar's car and Larry's were found near each other with evidence that his had pushed hers, making him a suspect. The judge gets a package of pictures of his son at Delmar's place and her body, and a threatening call from Stark. Ed goes to the bar to question the bartender, Arnie Hummel (Val Avery), whom he busted several years ago and has racket connections, about Larry and Delmar, the latter of whom he's learned was formerly employed at the bar. Larry is tagging along with a prospective employer, deputy DA Paul Arnstein (Kerwin Mathews), as he appears in court as the prosecuting attorney in the Otis Williams case. As Lt. Reese is describing the crime scene on the stand, Larry has flashes of Delmar tearing her own dress and Larry pushing her away, then collapsing in a chair. Larry tries to say something to the judge, then runs out of the courtroom.

Both Van Burens go to the Cave with what they know, and the Chief gets on the case. He sends Mark to tell Williams that the charges against him are being dropped, but they need him to stay in jail for the time being. Fran visits a camera shop owner named Durand (Henry Beckman) at home in the middle of the night to verify that he recently sold special high-speed film to Ellis Stark. Ed goes back to the bar to lean on Arnie to admit to having been enlisted by Stark to slip Larry a slow-acting mickey, underscoring that this makes Hummel an accomplice to murder.

The Chief meets with Stillwell to negotiate, offering on behalf of the judge to give him a suspended sentence and fine in return for the negatives. The Chief agrees to trust Stillwell to make good on his end, then, in court for Stillwell's sentencing, shares with Mark that he's expecting a double-cross. When Judge Van Buren pronounces sentence, it's for eighteen years in a federal penitentiary. Stillwell gets up and demands a meeting with someone from the DA's office, taking the packet of negatives from Stark's jacket. In private chambers, he shows the photos to Arnstein, accusing Ironside of attempting to suppress evidence in the Delmar case. The Chief produces the prints, pointing out how the police photograph of Delmar indicates that her body was moved after Stark took the pictures, and revealing that a fingerprint of Stark's was found on Delmar's earring. Ironside leaves with a promise that having now implicated his own involvement, Stillwell can look forward to serving more time after his tax evasion sentence.

In the coda, the Chief implies that Judge Van Buren is on his way up to the Supreme Court, and lays it on a bit thick in having the honor of expressing his gratitude to the judge for what he is and what he's done.

Ian Wolfe appears as Van Buren's butler, Sam.

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I recall catching a Justice League parody on a '90s syndicated comedy show...Kids in the Hall maybe...where they had Superman ordering the various Leaguers to trouble spots to deal with a crisis. "I'll stop the missiles that have already been launched...[pauses to adjust crotch]. Aquaman...you go talk to some fish!" [Everyone busts out laughing.]

As I recall, the tie-in comic explained it as a super-hero school, with Wendy and Marvin being the only students in their class; and they graduated when Zan and Jayna came along with the next iteration of the TV series, The All-New Super Friends Hour. I was gonna ask @Nerys Myk if DC had an explanation for Wonder Dog...

Probably.

We'll accept nothing less than "Super groovy" from now on!

"Remember, kids, your brain is a super-power, too...and it's also a tasty treat if you and your friends should find yourselves snowed in for the winter on Donner Pass!"

Rot ras rood ras Rooby, rararenry.

It's an hour format! Around 46 minutes without commercials.

But...but...Superman!

Maybe...OTOH, he might've ended up in a different kind of hospital.

It tends to get credit for being less Saturday morning cartoony than the next Saturday morning cartoon...but yeah. Giant Spocks...full-scale inflatable Enterprises...

Back into the plot abyss whence it came!

Actually, it was depicted as a solid planetoid.

One thing that the animated format did allow them to do was realize the Trek concept in ways that they never could have done in live action. OTOH, I think that the Brainiac 5-style force field belts were a bit much, and those were probably an animation budget-saver so all they had to do to put the usual character models in space was slap belts and a glowy aura effect on them.

I haven't...I've been busy with my retro viewing, and it took me this long to get around to TAS...assuming I see it through this time.

We also have this...

Quincy Jones...I heard about that.

 

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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing

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Ironside
"His Fiddlers Three"
Originally aired March 2, 1972

Mark comes out to complain when the Chief is listening a little loudly to a reel-to-reel of the Beecham String Quartet playing Mozart...

Mark: I've got an exam tomorrow, Chief!
The Chief: F.
Mark: I hope not!
The Chief: No, no, I thought they were supposed to transpose to an F major here! I must be thinking of a different allegro.​

I'm not sure who's more square in this scenario. Elsewhere, the quartetmeister, Anton Beecham (Kevin Hagen), is complaining to an unseen party about it being the quartet's worst recording yet, and alluding to the titularly quoted nursery rhyme while mocking his musicians. The figure pulls a silenced gun and shoots him. With his last words, he indicates that he was prepared for this, while addressing the figure as "my dear". (I suspected a gender twist here, and I guess there still was one if they were trying to misdirect us into thinking that the killer was a woman. But it didn't play out as I expected, as no same-sex affair was established, and Beecham's sexuality was never an issue in the story one way or the other.)

The team head to the Lombard Conservatory to investigate, and are heckled on the grounds by surly music students (who clearly know who Ironside is, as the team are all plainclothes). The Chief talks first to the security guard, Mr. Eagles (Ken Renard), to find out who was around the campus that night (the suspects being narrowed by it happening to be Spring Break); then to quartet manager Elizabeth Flanders (Collin Wilcox-Horne), who has an alibi and addresses Ironside by the rank of lieutenant. (Possibly his actual police rank, but I couldn't say offhand as I can't recall it ever coming up.) Between interviews, Fran, looking at the tape package, comments on how attractive quartet member Darryl Podell is. (This played into my expectation, as he's being played by top-billed guest Tim Matheson.) A violin student who was noted as missing, Tony Savo (Rick Kelman), picks up his girlfriend, Diane Lombard (Kathy Lloyd), at the airport. She proceeds directly to the conservatory to talk to Ironside, as she's the daughter and secretary of the conservatory's recently deceased founder. She offhandedly notes that Tony has been visiting his sick mother, and brings the Chief's attention to a message that Beecham had left for her father, saying that if anything happens to him, Lombard should study the Mussorgsky Quartet, Op. 89. A web search indicates that this is a fictitious work...but that turns out to be deliberate.

To further confuse things, Diane describes what they actually heard on the tape as the first two bars of a work each by Schubert, Ambroise Thomas, and Bach. (I was able to identify the last part as Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"...without Shazam's help, as it apparently doesn't do classical.) She explains that her father and Beecham used to exchange musical messages in lieu of greeting cards. The Chief, when shown a picture of Lombard, also comments that he was a "fine-looking man," and when asked about how he died, Diane starts to say something about her father doing something with quartet member Donald Flood, but then says that she'd rather not talk about it. Fran questions Darryl Podell on the beach after a volleyball game with three attractive girls; he claims that he was with a married woman the night before. When asked, he indicates that he admired Beecham as a musician but loathed him as a person. Ed questions first violinist Jeremy Daniels (Barry Higgins), whose musicianship Beecham publicly praised, which Jeremy indicates Darryl in particular was envious of; and that Anton consoled him when a girlfriend named Amy died. Ed and Fran then talk to the last of the titular musicians, Donald Flood (Paul Koslo), an unpleasant person himself, who berates his coughing wife, Risi (Dita Nicole). When asked, he indicates that he was swimming with Martin Lombard when Lombard accidentally drowned due to an angry sea. The Chief follows up with Diane, who informs him that Mussorgsky never did a string quartet, and Opus 89 was Pictures at an Exhibition. (I couldn't find anything about that work being Opus 89, and a web search still indicated that he didn't have one.) The title makes the Chief curious to examine Lombard's personal musicology room, where he spent lots of time with Anton; and he learns that Martin's most prized possessions are three violins--two made by notable craftsmen, one a very good forgery. Meanwhile, a shadowy figure sneaks around in the garden just outside the French windows.

At the Cave, the Chief studies the names of the composers and works in the recording by spelling them out with Scrabble tiles. Diane is digging through things and about to call Ironside when the sneakered, male-armed mystery figure chloroforms her. Ironside examines the place in the aftermath, which has been ransacked, and talks with Tony, whom he notices from a fatigue jacket served in Germany. (The gun that killed Beecham was noted to be of a European model.) The recovered Diane plays Ironside a birthday tape that Beecham sent her father the previous year. The Chief wants to know what the pieces in the recording are to try to determine how they relate to a birthday greeting...apparently looking for a musical Rosetta Stone. The team questions the quartet members again about their whereabouts during the Diane incident--Daniels and Flanders asserting that they were together, and Podell and the Floods asserting that they were together, all claiming to have been reminiscing about Anton; with Fran sure that they're covering for one another. When Ed's reporting about investigating whether Savo obtained permission to buy a gun in Germany, the Chief has a lightbulb moment, consulting a new Scrabble board of the birthday message composers and compositions. Summoning Diane, he confirms that key parts of some of the proper nouns indicate that her father's birthday was June 2 (Moonlight, Sextant, Second Symphony--sixth month, second day). Following the same pattern with the other message leaves three sets of tiles--DIE ELLE JESU. It's noted that two of the quartet members have names beginning with D, and when the Chief expresses curiosity about Elizabeth Flanders, Diane indicates that her main interest was possessing young male musicians. Then the Chief gets a call from Mrs. Flood, who indicates that her husband stormed out drunkenly for a swim. The team heads to Hazard Beach, where Lombard drowned. They find Flood swimming as advertised, in rough waters, and Ed and Mark take off their shoes, jackets, and ties to bring him to shore. When the Chief questions him at home, the Floods talk about the pressures he's under, including that Diane intimates awful things about Donald's connection with her father's death.

The Chief runs into Diane and Tony before a memorial concert for Beecham, at which each of the surviving quartet members will play one of her father's three prized violins. The Chief takes interest in a cross symbol on the cover of the fake Guarneri, and they explain that this was the craftsman's hallmark, and that he nicknamed himself del Jesu...which brings together parts of the remaining tiles. The Chief examines the violin bag backstage and finds hidden within the lining a note from Jeremy's deceased girlfriend Amy to Anton, pleaded with him to persuade Daniels to marry her, while indicating that Jeremy had made threats if she didn't relent in her pursuit of him. The Chief deduces that Beecham was blackmailing Daniels with knowledge that he killed Amy, which was made to look like a suicide. Daniels comes upon the scene, tries to flee, and is pursued outside and cuffed by Ed. Flanders comes up to comfort him afterward, the team expositing afterward that she was in love with him and knew that he was the killer.

This one was clever and hard to follow at the same time.

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Ironside
"A Man Named Arno"
Originally aired March 9, 1972
Season 5 finale

How fitting that the last installment of this year's hiatus season viewing should bring us full circle with where we began...



Fran's working late on the case of the titular heroin supplier when an escaped prisoner with a big knife named Moratta (Tom Geas), who's being pursued by police cars outside in the fog, sneaks up the fire escape into the Cave. (I think they've plumb forgotten that the Cave is supposed to be over police HQ!) As Fran's leaving for the night, another man (Nico Minardos) comes up via the elevator wanting to see Ironside, and when they walk back in the office, Moratta grabs Fran and holds her hostage, wanting the other man's wallet and car. The other man creates a distraction, giving Fran a chance to break free, and takes Moratta down so Fran can cuff him. When Fran's about to call the Chief, who's out looking for Moratta, the mystery man gets cold feet about the attention that this will bring and skips out, insisting that Fran take the credit. When the Chief and Mark get back Fran tries to play down her alleged heroics and gets upset at the mention of being given a commendation, so the Chief gives her a few days off. Ed comes back from staking out a shipment of heroin, the Chief not wanting to move until they can nail Victor Arno picking it up. Elsewhere, we see a man implied to be Arno (Howard Lees) making a call about the shipment, during which he looks at a framed picture of the mystery man.

The Chief sends Ed on another leg of the assignment, trying to find potential pushers working for Arno via real estate upgrades, and promises to have another officer assigned to assist him in Fran's place.

Ed: Maybe I'll get Bill Murray, he's a lot of laughs.​

Ed thinks he's being sarcastic, but Mark suggests that he take recently plainclothed Officer Peggy Alexander (Aldine King) instead, motivated by his opinion that she's a "dollish doll". Fran shows up at the Cave the morning after the incident, expecting a call from the mystery man. Instead the Chief gets a call from an old friend's wife, Angela Griffin (our Special Guest Star), whose husband, Ken, was supposed to be going to the see Ironside the night before and hasn't come home. Fran takes interest in the Chief's side of the call, as Ken sounds like the mystery man. The Chief goes to see Angela at her home, and she's persuaded to tell the Chief how Ken's been engaged in shady activities trying to get out of gambling debt without using her inherited wealth, and she thinks that he may be desperate enough to kill himself. Angela gives the Chief a picture of Ken, which is the same one that Maybe Arno had. When Fran sees the pic back at the Cave, she comes clean about what happened the night before.

Meanwhile, Officer Alexander has turned up that Arno's moll, Kitty Ornell (Karen Bouchard), has a new penthouse, so Ed stakes out the building's garage posing as a chauffeur, and sees Ornell leaving in a convertible, which is tailed to the dock by Lt. Reese. Ornell gets on the boat, which turns out to be a cruise ship, but leaves before its departure with nothing more than she brought aboard. Later, Ken Griffin's car and clothes are found on a beach, and Angela is sure that he's dead. But when a body in shorts is fished out of the water, it's identified as Victor Arno's. Yet Officer Alexander, working a switchboard at the apartment building, reports Ornell leaving a message for Arno with an answering service, the timing and content of which seems to indicate that the man they thought was Arno may not be.

Ed is still staking out the garage when a catering van pulls in and some goods are hauled up the elevator. Reese is on the van's tail, as it came from the cruise ship. He and Ed watch an old boyfriend of Ordell's, Sid Nedo, go up to the penthouse, and come back down to put some cases in his trunk. They tail him, and nab him when he stops to change cars without taking the case. While everyone else is out, Ken pops back in on Fran at the Cave. The Chief, who's been doing some digging around, visits Angela again to inform her that the body was of a man named John Rogers, whose car and clothes Ken took; and verifies that she inherited the company that owns the catering business from her previous husband (whose name was Val Karate, making me wonder if somebody on the writing staff was a Legion fan). Ken comes in with Fran, and Angela tries to keep him from talking, but he tells of how he had to kill a man who tried to kill him. The Chief produces checks made out to Kitty Ornell, with Ken's forged signature on them. Ironside accuses Angela of being the one who was planning to pick up the heroin; of trying to get Ken out of the way because he was planning to talk to Ironside; and of being 1/4 of the titular heroin supplier, whose initials were an acronym for Angela, Rogers, Nedo, and Ordell.

In the coda, Mark learns that his new suit was stolen by Moratta, who changed clothes between busting into the Cave and taking Fran hostage.

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On second thought, let's not go to the Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread...'tis a silly place.

Bah, mere formalities!

He was trying to get her to open up. She's was literally scared of saying the wrong thing.

As with Charo, it was just one scene which easily could have been excised from the episode; unlike that one, it actually did fit into the story and involved interacting with one of the regular cast.

It was printed with a McGuffin Press.

Speaking of October, that 50th anniversary re-charting of "Monster Mash" is almost seasonable now...

If you'd said it, I could've responded "DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT!?!"

Lots of these crime scene apartments have payphones in the hall. Reed and Malloy have even needed to phone in to HQ from them on occasion.

He just wanted to get out, and it was to avoid tipping the bad guys off.

I expect the Chief to be above brown-nosing.

Wendy and Marvin didn't, other than that gag about him practicing flying/levitating in the first episode. Zan and Jayna were an upgrade in that they were super-powered aliens (with Vulcanoid features). They activated their powers by fist-bumping; IIRC, Zan could change into anything made of water, including ice forms; Jayna could change into animals. They had a blue, alien monkey named Gleek. Wiki reminded me of this bit of business:

Rimresrive...rost rimresrive.

I'll agree with that.

Another observation about our new Saturday morning additions--TAS really could have used some more bombastic music. That Super Friends theme has been a major earworm for over a week.

I'll also note that the addition of these shows brings back some much-missing sci-fi/fantasy to the viewing lineup. 50th anniversary viewing started out being all sci-fi/spy-fi/superheroics, and has become predominantly sitcoms and cop shows.