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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
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Love, American Style
"Love and the Competitors / Love and the Forever Tree / Love and the Image Makers / Love and Mr. Bunny / Love and the Phobia"
Originally aired January 11, 1974
Series finale
Bobby Riggs returns to TV comedy with "Love and the Competitors," and this time the female tennis competitor he brings with him is Rosemary Casals. The two of them are caught drag racing by rural deputy Fleetus (Tom Lester) and brought before the sheriff, Armie (Lester's fellow former
Green Acres regular Pat Buttram). Bobby and Rosie are so competitive that they get into an argument over how competitive they are. Against their protests, they're locked up in a cell with a drunk (Joseph Mell) overnight, where the competition continues over a marathon of gin rummy and poker, and extends to other sundry matters like guessing the time. Finding their running score tied, they decide to have a kissing contest and a mutual attraction sparks between them. In the morning, it turns out that the drunk is the judge. He sentences each to 30 days, and they get into a competition of haggling their sentences up.
Bobby's acting chops didn't impress me as much here as on
The Odd Couple; both tennis players were about equally unseasoned in their acting abilities, whereas Riggs could clearly outact King.
"Love and the Forever Tree" opens with a slo-mo, song-accompanied sequence of Kathy and Everett (Elaine Joyce and Robert Morse) falling for each other in the woods outside a summer camp as teenagers in 1923, which includes carving their initials in a heart on a tree. When Kathy tells Everett that her family is moving to Texas, so he won't be seeing her at camp the next year, he has them make a pledge to meet again under the tree in ten years.
The song expresses Everett's doubts as he returns to the tree in '33, but Kathy makes it and both are pleasantly surprised. They try to play things a little cooler than before. Everett, now a veterinarian, drops references to the stock market crash and Lindbergh before she tells him that she was in love with him and he drops the bomb that he's now married; as, it turns out, is she.
The song switches to her perspective as she returns in '43 to set up a picnic, and he arrives in an Army captain's uniform. She tells him that her son is attending the camp, and he shares that he now has six kids and is serving in New Jersey as a Canine Guard trainer. He shows her pictures of his family, and she reveals that her geologist husband passed away, leaving her an oil field that he discovered.
A grayer Everett waits under the tree in '53 as Kathy arrives. He's still married and now running an animal hospital, and she's now twice widowed, with her son from her first marriage in and out of college. Topical references include the bomb, the Russians, and Kathy's second husband having died working on a moon rocket, a venture about which Everett expresses great skepticism.
A silver-haired Kathy is waiting in '63 as Everett arrives in the uniform of a scoutmaster for his grandson's troop. He reveals that he's now divorced, but it turns out that she's married again.
The elderly pair arrive at the same time in '73 in another slo-mo sequence of mutual attraction. They compare notes about his married grandson and her middle-aged son. He's still single, her third husband has passed, and their spot is scheduled to be turned into part of a subdivision. They express their love for one another and he proposes; following which the segment ends with flash backward through their previous meetings at the tree.
I have to wonder if the segments actually played in the order listed. This one would have been a striking note to end the series on.
In "Love and the Image Makers," political neophyte John Simpson (James Hampton) walks into the PR firm of Kipnis & Karatz (Gavin MacLeod and Michael Lerner), looking for help in running for mayor of Packerville. The PR men become interested when they learn how much money he's got to burn, and resolve to create a new image for Simpson. To this end they bring in their political expert, Max (William Hansen), a tailor who's worked for a number of governors and senators. While Max works on a suit, K&K coach him on developing a speaking style, then have him practice eating food of various ethnic origins while being photographed.
K&K attend as John appears on television for a debate against his opponent, councilwoman Joanne Myers (Anne Randall), moderated by Fritzi Burr. Simpson opens with a speech about the need to build new sewers. Myers deftly rebuffs his argument, accusing him of emotionalism and declaring that they need to repair the old sewers--"Make love, not sewers!" During a break, it turns out that they know each other from high school, and they become reacquainted. When John returns to the podium, he's clearly smitten, complimenting her personally and conceding points to her. She then returns the favor. During the next break they become interested in each other's availability and broach the subject of going out. For the final round, each has completely switched to the other's position, though they continue to debate.
Back in the office, Kipnis & Karatz are arguing over where they went wrong when John and Joanne drop in to reveal that they're married; and that they now consider the election to be a no-lose scenario, as one of them is going to win.
Karatz: Well, as a wise man once said, "Politics makes strange bedfellows."
Kipnis: And bedfellows make strange politicians.
In "Love and Mr. Bunny," Earl and Janet (Larry Storch and Joyce Van Patten) check into a very small hotel room with a single twin bed (not brass). To make matters worse, Earl finds that Janet didn't pack his titularly themed alarm clock, without which he can't sleep. They call in the assistant manager (William Tregoe) to ask about getting another alarm clock, and it turns out that the manager's older brother also has a Mr. Bunny, while the manager has a Mr. Chicken. The manager expresses his sympathy for Earl having to go cold turkey. After he leaves, Janet helps Earl settle into bed, and at his insistence, she reluctantly agrees to imitate the clock's distinctive "tick-tick" noise to help him fall to sleep. While she's doing this, the manager returns with a box full of alarm clocks...and she keeps going the entire time until the manager leaves and she's sure that Earl's out. But then he's awoken by one of the clocks going off and resolves himself to being up for the night. She promises not to make fun of Mr. Bunny anymore, then starts talking about what she learned in college regarding the psychology of sleep, and finds him quickly out like a light. She then realizes that after twelve years, she can't sleep without the clock either, and resumes tick-ticking.
"Love and the Phobia" has Judith and Arthur (Arlene Golonka and Larry Kert) on their latest in a series of dates at a restaurant, where they drink coffee until the place closes but never proceed to another location. Judith explains that she has a titular psychological condition about men's apartments, which goes back to early childhood and which her mother continues to actively reinforce. On their next date, he tries to help her by adapting a method used for people with fear of flying, presenting her with a diorama of his apartment to familiarize her with the place...but she becomes upset at the suggestiveness of his descriptions and storms out. A waiter who's working his way through medical school and has become frustrated by their situation (Bo Kaprall) sits down to suggest an approach that worked for him in getting over his fear of flying...let Judith have the keys to his apartment and explore it by herself, without the pressure of him being there or anything happening. Cut to Judith hesitantly entering the apartment to be greeted by a recording of Arthur imitating a flight captain making an announcement. Then the waiter arrives at the door and we learn that it's all a scheme to gain access to other men's apartments, as he doesn't have his own place.
I didn't catch Judith's name being dropped, so I'm going by the IMDb listing...but they listed Arthur as Joe, even though his name was spoken several times.
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Star Trek
"The Jihad"
Originally aired January 12, 1974
Season finale
Wiki said:
The USS Enterprise arrives at the Vedala asteroid, where Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock have been summoned to learn about a stolen religious artifact, the "Soul of the Skorr", whose theft could ignite a galactic holy war.
Captain's log, stardate 5683.1: We're making a rendezvous with the Vedala asteroid on a unique mission. The Vedala are the oldest spacefaring race we know. They say something incredibly dangerous to the safety of our galaxy is developing, and they have sent for selected specialists, including Spock and myself.
Kirk and Spock beam down to the asteroid...
This all seems very RPG-ish. As we're a bit early for that to be a thing, I have to assume that the predecessor would be LOTR knockoff novels. Tchar and Sord are voiced by you-know-who; Em/3/Green is uncredited David Gerrold; and Lara and the Vedala female are uncredited Jane Webb. Apparently the Vedala female transports them to the planet somehow, which is abrupt and confusing. The quest party has a wheeled vehicle with a tracking device that malfunctions on them, so they depend on the skills of Lara, who comes on to Kirk in a very brusque manner.
The party soon finds itself endangered by the byproduct of an erupting volcano...
Em wants to call it quits after that, but they have Sord carry him along. Sord thinks he's seen a life form, which contradicts the Vedalan's claim of no life on the planet. The party then locates a Skorr temple. While Em works on a lock rigged to explode, the party is attacked by Obligatory Filmation Shrieking Winged Creatures, which turn out to be artificial when shot. One of them carries off Tchar. The rest of the party gets in and sees the Soul confined in an energy field on a ledge, which they climb up to. They're blocked by a blast from above shooting the section of ledge before them, confirming Kirk's suspicion that one of the party is a saboteur--Tchar, who reveals himself and declares that he wants to restore his people to their warrior ways. Tchar neutralizes gravity, causing the party to float so they can fight him in the air. Kirk and Spock use moves they know from null-gravity combat exercises to subdue Tchar, and Kirk has Lara call for the party's retrieval with the Soul.
The Vedalan promises to have Tchar treated for his insanity and sends the members of the party back whence they came. Somehow the Vedala female causes Kirk and Spock to seem to return only a couple of minutes after they left, to better keep the purpose of the meeting a secret.
This one was pretty confusing. The visuals often didn't clearly convey what was going on, important plot points depended on leaps in logic, and there was a little too much to unpack with the various aliens' abilities and motives. Going by some of the IMDb reviews, apparently I'm not alone.
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Emergency!
"Messin' Around"
Originally aired January 12, 1974
Wiki and Frndly said:
Chet, adopting a persona he calls "The Phantom Bomber," nails Johnny with a number of practical jokes. The paramedics are summoned when a chronic complainer who visits the hospital daily collapses at home; and when a child swallows ant poison.
While Johnny's taking a personal call in the dorm, Chet sets up a bag of water to fall on him when he returns to the kitchen, all in front of the other firefighters and while announcing his pseudonym. Immediately after, the station is called to a tree fire on a dusty rural road. While they're starting to put it out, the firefighters are approached first by the man who put in the call, then by a distraught woman (Ann Prentiss) who says that her daughter has a house in the blazing tree. Johnny climbs up into the structure, puts his hat on the frightened girl, Cindy (Tammy Harrington), and climbs back down with her on his shoulders...earning a hug from the mother. At Rampart, Cindy is chatted up and entertained by a gentleman known as Old Bill (J. Pat O'Malley), who's believed to be a hypochondriac as a front for hanging around the hospital and reading to the kids. Bill lets Johnny know of the perceived interest Cindy's mother has in the paramedic and that she's a widow. In the exam room, Cindy's mother arranges to visit the station later, under the impression that Johnny's a bigger deal in the operation than he is. Meanwhile, Early politely declines to give Bill an exam for the latest pain he's complaining of.
Back at the station, another water prank is sprung on Johnny when the station gets a call to an unknown-type rescue. The woman who answers the door (Joan Shawlee) is surprised to see the fire department, but tells them that her husband (Paul Bryar) has been sick in bed. It turns out that he called them in a panic because she put sap in his medicine to rob him of his voice so he'd stop complaining. Dix is able to confirm that the type of sap is otherwise harmless and its effect should wear off in a couple of hours.
The engine having been reassigned to a dumpster fire at a service station, the squad is afterward assigned to meet up with them because Captain Stanley noticed the proprietor, Gus (Karl Swenson), exhibiting symptoms of a malady. Gus tries to blow it off as indigestion, but Brackett remotely diagnoses an ulcer...and convinces Gus to come in for treatment via a brief, stern lecture over the biophone speaker. At Rampart, Brackett expresses an interest in examining Bill, who's been entertaining kids, when he's called away to see to Gus, who gets more sympathetic treatment for his cooperation.
At the station, Johnny cautiously insists on having Chet open his locker for him, but the water prank is aimed to hit Johnny while he stands aside. After Johnny changes, Cindy and her mother arrive, and Johnny has to explain that his office is the squad truck. Cindy opens a fire coat closet, which springs yet another trap on Johnny. The station is then called to a man down in a modest suburban home, who turns out to be Old Bill, who expresses his surprise that this time it's for real. Brackett diagnoses septic shock, the symptoms of which are general enough that they resembled his usual false complaints.
As the paramedics are returning to the station, Chet is setting another trap in a kitchen cabinet, but Johnny doesn't have a chance to trigger it before the squad is called to tend to a child who's swallowed ant poison at a nicer-looking suburban home. The mother, Mrs. Wheeler (Carol Lawson), insists that it's the lastest of her son's (Lance Kerwin) attention-seeking false alarms, despite his writhing in pain inside. Officer Vince arrives to insist that she let the paramedics in, following which she's horrified to realize that it's serious this time as they treat him. The boy goes into respiratory arrest in the ambulance, where he's tended to by Johnny. At Rampart, Roy has to break it to Mrs. Wheeler that Brackett wasn't able to save her son. Back at the station, Chet prevents Johnny from opening the cabinet, knowing what just happened.
At Rampart, it's determined that Bill's septic shock was brought on by bone disease, which has been caught in time and will give him a legitimate excuse for his routine visits to the hospital. Meanwhile, the station is called to a dump where a bulldozer has fallen down a small cliff onto an occupied dump truck. While Roy tends to the broken leg of the bulldozer driver, the firefighters use the jaws to rescue the truck driver from his vehicle's crushed cab, only to learn that the man's partner was in back of the truck. The firefighters proceed to dig through the pile of debris that the truck had been carrying to find the third man, whom they've gotten to in time to stabilize and take to Rampart with the other two.
Either there's no coda to update us, or a really sloppily placed Frndly ad was completely plastered over it.
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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Cottage for Sale"
Originally aired January 12, 1974
Wiki said:
Phyllis gets her real estate license and targets a reluctant Lou as her first client.
Phyllis drops in during dinner to inform Mary and Rhoda that she just got her license, and broaches the subject of using friends as contacts. Mary uncharacteristically puts her foot down that Phyllis shouldn't come to WJM to solicit her coworkers. When Phyllis picks up the latest of a series of obscene phone calls that Mary's been receiving, she tries to sell to the person on the other end. At the station, the newsroom has been robbed...
Mary: I just don't understand. What kind of people steal things from other people?
Lou: Burglars, Mary.
Lou references his high school football picture when he speculates why his office wasn't burgled. Phyllis drops in against Mary's advice and offers to sell his house for $50,000. While Lou is initially skeptical, he drops by Mary's later to take Phyllis up on her offer. Phyllis histrionically expresses her wonder that somebody actually wants to do business with her.
Phyllis drops by the newsroom again to hit up the others for business, and scoffs when Lou repeats the price that she offered to sell his house for. Mary drops by Lou's on Saturday morning to do some off-hours work, for which he makes her breakfast, including beer-flavored omelets that Mary mistakes for scrambled eggs. Ted also drops in, claiming he's interested in buying the house for his mother. Phyllis comes to show the house to a young couple, Rena and David Russell (Michele Nichols and David Haskell). She's now asking for $42,500, but when Lou insists on the original price, David readily agrees. After Phyllis and her clients leave, Lou falls into depression.
As the movers clear the place out, Lou reminisces about his home, then starts to blame Mary, who's the only one helping him pack. When Phyllis drops in, Lou's outspoken about his attachment to the place and the memories that it contains. When Phyllis tries to get him to sign the papers (which you'd think would have preceded moving), Mary encourages Lou not to. Lou confuses a moving man when he tells him to start putting things back. As Lou and Mary are getting the house back in order, Phyllis comes back to inform Lou that he's still legally obligated to pay her commission.
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The Bob Newhart Show
"The Modernization of Emily"
Originally aired January 12, 1974
Wiki said:
Shaken after meeting a former student who's all grown up, Emily tries to recapture her youth with an embarrassing new wardrobe.
The Hartleys are at a grocery store buying items for an anniversary dinner and find Mrs. Bakerman working at the register. Her box boy, Roy Parkers (Billy Miller), recognizes Emily as his third-grade teacher from ten years prior, addressing her by her maiden name. At home after dinner, when Emily notes how they keep eating their anniversary dinners earlier each year (implying that they were too busy to get around to it for diminishing amounts of time in the previous years), we learn that it's their fifth, which I think slightly overshoots some other references. Emily's disappointed when Bob's present to her turns out to be a blender (though her present to him is silk pajamas, which doesn't seem that much more personal). Howard drops in with champagne and makes a comment about age that upsets Emily enough that she runs into the bathroom. After expressing his trepidation to Jerry about how Emily will deal with whatever's bothering her, Bob comes home to find her sporting an unbecomingly youthful outfit and longer hairstyle that I assume must be a wig or extension. Bob is direct about how stupid he thinks it looks.
When Jerry tries to encourage Bob to dress younger to match, Bob notes that he'd have to dress like Donny Osmond. Emily's still sporting her new look when guests arrive for an anniversary party. Howard brings over a girlfriend, a younger schoolteacher named Rosalie Shaeffer (Sharon Gless), who's surprised that Emily seems younger than she'd been led to believe. Jerry and Carol also bring presents. Everyone gives Emily gag gifts, though Carol is embarrassed because her "tacky" gift--as specified in the card--is the exact garish T-shirt that Emily is wearing...which sobers Emily up. As the Hartleys are getting ready for bed (Emily's hair now back to normal), Bob shares an anecdote about how he tried to change his image as a teenager by subscribing to the Charles Atlas course and bleaching his hair...the message being that you have to be yourself. In the coda, Emily rubs in Bob's gift by suggesting that they spend a wild evening using the blender.
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That's true. It never struck me before how odd that is. I guess suicide is rare in paradise.
Not as rare as it should be when you've got twenty-four major cases a year to write.
You'd think a wire or video would be better evidence. I'm not sure how marking the bills would make a difference unless they wanted to trace what he did with the money afterwards.
It's marked to prove that it's the money he took from Anderson, which he could otherwise deny.
His Ironsense was tingling.
