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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing
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The Mod Squad
"A Time of Hyacinths"
Originally aired December 1, 1970
Edited Wiki said:
Julie becomes involved with a mysterious stranger (Vincent Price), whom she believes was a movie actor who died twenty years earlier.
A Julie episode with Vincent Price--Is it the end of October or the beginning of April? And per the usual M.O., when Julie gets an episode focused on her, she's off duty. What's really rich is that she's on medical rest leave to unwind from the tensions of the job that we practically never see her doing!
The other Mods help move her into a really nifty Malibu beach house that she's renting from its caretaker, which Pete objects is too isolated. As Julie's settling in by channel surfing with a clicker remote, she comes upon a black-and-white movie featuring Vincent Price as the villain (1951's
His Kind of Woman, with a cast that also includes Jim Backus, though we don't see him here). Waking up amidst a dark and stormy night and a power failure, Julie gets a hang-up phone call, and is them startled by a surprise visitor on the deck...
He introduces himself as John Wells and explains that he's a neighbor who borrows firewood from the caretaker, Castor. He eases Julie with his charming manner and tells her that if she needs anything, she can ring the ship's bell on the porch, which he'll hear. The next day she drops by his house to find him not there and is followed in by the taciturn Castor (Charles McGraw), who's been busily engaged in painting and seems to be keeping an eye on her. She subsequently rings the bell and John appears on the beach with freshly caught fish. They have dinner at her place that night, and the next day he shows her a rock formation that's his favorite spot on the beach, while also mentioning some nearby caves. At an evening campfire, Julie expresses the serenity that she's found since she arrived, and John directly references the episode title when quoting from an Oriental poem about the ability of the flower in question to restore the soul. After he cryptically mentions how her companionship has helped give him the strength to do what he's come back to do, she tells him that her friends will be visiting the next day, and he becomes upset to learn that she's told them about him. The next day she tries to make an excuse to discourage the guys from coming, and John doesn't come when she rings the bell, so she goes out to the rocks to see him making his way out to the furthest ones, where she sees him seemingly disappear under a crashing wave. She limits herself to running out on some rocks in a shallow spot, clearly not being a heroic sea rescuer like Gilligan.
The beach patrol is unable to find a body, and when Julie takes Greer and the guys to Wells's home, it's suddenly emptied of furniture and looks like it's been deserted for some time. As the guys are starting to look concerned about her psychological well-being, she goes to Castor to back her up, but he claims that the house was empty when she visited it and not to have seen her with John...even producing a sketch he made when she was on the beach with John, which shows only her. She insists on staying until John is found, and the guys insist on staying with her. As Linc's channel surfing, he comes upon the same movie, which includes Price's character quoting the poem about hyacinths just as John did with Julie. (I get the impression that this bit was dubbed in and not part of the original film, as the TV is offscreen during it.) Julie comes in from the next room and recognizes the actor in the film as John. Back at HQ, the actor is identified as John Wentworth, a '40s star who's supposed to have died in a boat explosion in 1951...!
Julie's unable to provide practical details about John's activities, but we get some exposition about how Wentworth has a daughter as Wells said he did--Diana Wentworth, now a rising star who's about to marry industrialist Howard Haines, an old friend of John Wentworth's who owns the beach house that Julie rented. Julie's taken back to her pad where she's given a sedative by an uncredited shrink. While in her drugged-up state, she gets a call from John, who apologizes for the spot he's put her in, but talks about having to help a she that he loves very much and says is in danger, and ends the conversation with a supportive reference to the titular blossoms. Julie calls the movie studio to arrange a meeting with Diana and Howard (Cynthia Hull and C-57D medical officer Warren Stevens), where she tries to convince Diana that her father is still alive, though her credibility is strained by her trouble staying on her feet. When she sees a painting of the rocks on the beach in Diana's dressing room, with a distinctive path of rocks leading back to the area where John went, she splits, having realized where he's hiding. (Believe it or not, she's actually driving in her condition!) After Julie leaves, Howard gets a call from John, who says something that only Wentworth would know to prove who he is and threatens to go to the police if Haines doesn't get out of Diana's life. Eyeing the painting that Julie took interest in, Howard arms himself and makes a parting excuse to Diana.
Julie heads back to the spot and follows the trail in the painting to find the cave where John has been laying low. (Hiding out in caves must be in Price's contract.) He explains to Julie how, when he was an aspiring young actor, he witnessed Howard killing his mistress and allowed Haines to buy his silence by backing Wentworth's rise to stardom, Haines having owned a studio at the time. When John's conscience finally compelled him to threaten to go to the police, Howard threatened to harm his wife and baby daughter, so he faked his death and left the country with Castor's help. Haines walks in, having arrived in Julie's wake, recognizing the cave as a location where they'd shot a scene in one of John's films. John smashes his lantern and a struggle ensues over Haines's gun. Julie runs out for help to find that the guys have followed her, and they watch as Haines stumbles out of the cave, still holding his gun but sporting a head wound, and collapses, giving Linc's stunt double a week off. Julie runs back into the cave to find that John has split.
Julie returns to the beach house and fishes for information regarding John's fate from Castor, who's working on another painting of the rocks that he lets her have. Castor walks off and the male Mods walk up to join Julie, accompanied by a voiceover of Price reciting the poem.
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Which turned out to be more elderly proof than childproof. "Ricky, can you help me with my pills, please?"
I didn't already have it but am planning to get it.
A distinctive bit of period business and the band's last hurrah hit single-wise.
I don't remember this. Kinda forgettable.
I can remember how it goes, but it's enjoyable when it's playing.
Classic Epic Rock'n'Roll.
This track opening the album always had a sort of cinematic quality to me, like it was the soundtrack for an unmade film. While the commercially available single was apparently the full-length track, would you believe that a radio edit was released as a promo single? This is the guy who brought us "Hey Jude"!
One of the reasons the space aliens avoid us.
And I actually already had this one! It mainly sticks out in my head as the subject of an oddly off-chronology reference on
Friends, in which Ross, then a recent divorcee, implies that he hasn't dated since "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" was a current song. David Schwimmer would have been turning 8 in 1974, and Ross was supposed to have been a college student in the late '80s.
If they were required to show the titles, maybe they wouldn't be so lazy about them!
They clearly put a lot of effort into the title for the episode above.
I know we've had John Denver around recently, but I guess it wasn't that one.
Nope, that one's still to come.
I don't think anybody was at fault, but you'd think that with an officer involved that she would be in the equivalent of police custody. But who knows?
As far as they knew at the time, she was just an innocent bystander. She wasn't a suspect or a witness to a crime.
The Tiffany season. Bad, bad.
I didn't watch the show regularly after Farrah left, having had an early childhood fixation with her.
That one, too!
