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Post-50th Anniversary Viewing
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The Mod Squad
"Can You Hear Me Out There?"
Originally aired November 9, 1972
IMDb said:
A rash of car thefts appear to be connected to a particular radio station and a puzzling code.
Jimmy Gowdy (Cal Bellini) steals a car off the street, and while he's picked up by the police after getting out of the vehicle, the owner (Ed Call) is unable to identify him without the long wig and bright jacket that he'd been wearing. The disguise is found in the vehicle, but Greer says that putting it on Gowdy would be entrapment. Pete volunteers to be put in the lineup, and afterward approaches the thief at a food stand, claiming to be an ex-con who's looking for shady work. Despite Gowdy's defensiveness and suspicion that Pete's a cop, Pete passes his test. Meanwhile, while looking for the significance of a group of letters found on a note that Gowdy was carrying, Linc and Julie discover in the police impound yard that three recovered vehicles from the rash of thefts all have their radios tuned into the same small underground station.
Julie goes to the station, which proudly supports the psychedelic Lennon poster, looking for work--Wait, is she on the clock?--and is taken under the wing of the hip disc jockey, Charley Jameson (Lou Gossett), who tells her of how the station manager, Harry Burns (Larry D. Mann), helped sober him up, and also conspicuously writes the station's commercials, which he insists be read in order. Charley takes Julie home for dinner at his luxurious home with his straight-laced wife, Mildred (Kim Hamilton), and fifteen-year old daughter, Laurie (Tina Andrews). Charley's inability to be strict with Laurie is a cause of friction with Mildred. Meanwhile, Linc goes to a community center to consult a young genius named Walter (Ty Henderson), who pauses his chess games against multiple opponents to show Linc on a blackboard how the letters likely stand in for certain numbers via a tic-tac-toe grid-based code. At Gowdy's pad, Pete has to get tough to maintain his cover while pressing Jimmy about when they'll see some action...Gowdy indicating that they only work when their corporate employer sends them orders.
When Laurie drops by the station, we learn that the one thing Charley will come down on her about is disrespecting Mr. Burns, whom she dislikes. Mildred later dramatically questions Charley about this, asserting that Burns and the bread and butter he provides are more important to Charley than his family. When Linc shares the code's meaning with Greer and Julie, Julie makes a connection with the station's commercial codes, thinking that it could be the number of the commercial and the time that it will be played. A little investigation into which commercial that would have been indicates that the commercials are conveying the places to pick up and drop off the stolen cars, with the operation on the day that Jimmy got caught having been botched by Charley having read the commercials in the wrong order. Jimmy brings his new orders to the sleazy pad and shares the code scheme with Pete, but then catches Pete retrieving the note from the garbage and makes him for a cop again, forcing him at knifepoint to drive to the ring's hot car warehouse near an auto wrecking yard.
While Linc tails Burns to the warehouse, Greer enters the station, ignoring Julie's presence, and questions CJ about Burns, confronting him about what's been going on and having him read some police-provided spots, designed to help put the sting on the operation. Afterward Charley is mortified at having been Burns's patsy, but Laurie consoles him, and he admits to being a middle-aged fraud, pulling off his afro wig to reveal a balding head. (Oddly, while this corresponds with what will be Gossett's signature look, he appears to be wearing a bald wig under the afro wig; and they're dialing up his age to the tune of ten years.) Burns meets Pete and orders Gowdy to dispose of him along with one of the hot cars. As Jimmy's driving the car with a knocked-out Pete in the trunk back to the wrecking yard, Greer swoops in with CLE to bust Burns and his crew. Lucy goes to Pete's rescue, taking down Gowdy and a forklift operator to save Pete from a car smasher.
In the coda, Julie parts ways with Charley, who's now sporting a still hip but more age-appropriate look while sticking with his gig at the station, and Julie gets in the Charger with the other Mods.
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Ironside
"Nightmare Trip"
Originally aired November 9, 1972
Wiki said:
Ed experiences jail from a prisoner's point of view when he gets booked on a misdemeanor.
This is the second of two episodes directed by Raymond Burr.
Ed shakes down and arrests a suspect named Tony Watts (Jonathan Lippe) with the intent of turning him over to L.A. authorities as part of an exchange. Ed escorts him there via plane while a post-break opening credits song plays--"The Other Side," written by Marty & David Paich, sung by James Griffin from Bread--and turns him over to Lt. Roy Dacker (Bill Williams). Ed delays taking back his exchange prisoner to look up an old Marine Corps buddy, Dale Madigan (Steve Sandor), whom he finds has picked up combat fatigue in his continuing military career, having become frustrated with too many years of impersonal killing and questioning what it's like for Ed with his police career. (Ed is said to have been serving in 'Nam seven years prior, which would have been a couple of years before the series pilot.) As Ed's leaving the base, he's lured to a van by the sound of a man groaning in distress, TV Fu'd by a second man, and loaded in. The pair strip him of his ID and police accoutrements, then toss him out the van down the side of the road.
After coming to, a disoriented Ed stumbles to a road and is quickly picked up by a pair of sheriff's deputies, Dewey (Jack Ging) and Buckner (Rudy Solari), who are initially interested in him because he matches the description of a 211 suspect and isn't carrying ID. While that search is called off, their aggressive attitude is worsened by Ed acting indignant about them not letting him identify himself without getting around to doing it. To underscore the point of the episode, Ed hears Dale's words about feeling like a cog in machinery and, as he's being read his rights, has little flashes to his own history of arresting suspects. Ed is taken to desk sergeant Andy Badger (John Goddard), who just took a call from a colleague on the city force, Sgt. Joe Richards (Vic Vallaro), that his son, Danny (Casey King), was picked up for possession of marijuana. Apparently motivated to see what it's like on the song's titular location, Ed makes a point of letting himself be booked as John Doe and waiving his right to make a call. The song reprises as he's stripped, showered, given a prisoner's uniform, and put in a crowded cell where he's quickly harassed by a belligerent cellmate, Wolf (Bill Fletcher); whom a smart-talking operator--I'm going to assume this is Fixer (J. H. Lawrence), though I couldn't find any photos--has been taunting about being a killer.
Back in Frisco, an angry Chief has been running Mark and Fran ragged trying to find out where Ed's at, and ends up taking a flight to L.A. with Mark. While they try to retrace Ed's movements with Dacker's help, a frustrated investigating detective, Sgt. Tulley (Paul Carr with a 'stache), tries to get Ed to cooperate, but is questioned by Ed about how a John Doe ends up in such a dehumanizing situation for not having done anything. While Fixer is gleefully released by a pal, Ed is privy to the thoughts of some of his remaining cellmates, the viewers to the other's. A drunk vocalizes his struggles with the bottle; Wolf thinks of his wife calmly pleading with him before he apparently killed her for allegedly cheating on him; and a third, Caine (Don Stroud), talks to himself about how he tried to get the police to hold onto him last time to prevent him from compulsively doing something to a child. Ed sympathetically engages the last in conversation, while continuing to refuse to talk about himself.
The Chief has Mark and another local detective let him out of their car to follow the path from the base to a nearby Chinese restaurant he has reason to believe Ed was headed for, and is soon accosted by the two men from the van, who are pounced on and arrested by the others in the act of attempting to mug the Chief. Having an idea of what happened to Ed, the Chief ends up at the sheriff's office, where he takes an interest in an uncooperative John Doe who was picked up in the area after claiming to have been mugged. The Chief is taken to Ed's cell, where, after an intensely wordless exchange of stares, he moves on, explaining to Mark afterward that "this is Ed's walk to Cavalry". When a nervous young prisoner named Benjy Davis (Frank Michael Liu) is brought into the cell, Ed offers his bunk, and soon gets into a fight with Wolf to stop him from harassing the new cellmate. While Ed is victorious, he has a series of flashes to his experiences during the episode and, having only gotten to this point by playing it super-cool, unconvincingly breaks down, shouting to be let out.
Cut to Dacker giving a Joe Friday to Ed about the stunt he pulled, with Ed explaining that he had to learn what it was like to be a civilian again. As he's escorting out the exchange prisoner, Ownie Karp (George Conrad), Ed passes by Dewey and Buckner, exchanging only meaningful glances.
This one was strikingly different, but not as well-executed as it could have been, seeming a little too contrived in both how Ed got into the situation and what motivated him to get out. And the title describes trying to identify all of the actors, most of whose characters weren't named.
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Ah, one of Englehart's masterpieces, leading to one of the all-time great comic book hero speeches:
The gravitas is somewhat undermined by the silly Nomad outfit...which appears to have gotten sliced up here, showing still more skin.
It was only heavily implied that Nixon was the secret leader who committed suicide-- presumably showing it outright would have been too much of a deviation from reality, even if it wouldn't have brought the Right-Wingnuts down upon their heads. The fact that Nixon was still present in real life gave the whole thing a bit of a Twilight Zone feel, but as far as I know it was never addressed.
I figured as much, given that they didn't outright establish who Number One was. In addition to playing oddly in the short-term over in
The Avengers, it implicitly establishes a significant discrepancy between Marvel and real-world history, though one that would only have been ignored in the long term because of Marvel's sliding timescale, which wouldn't keep the events grounded in their specific historical moment.
I guess I just accepted it as a work of fiction based on real events. The viewpoint character could have been in his 60s or 70s.
That's the thing, no effort is made to have him sound like it.
I was kinda hoping they had to fend off an alien invasion or something.
They were sent to Korea to find and bring home the 4077th, and disappeared until 1961.
I think the only active duty Navy ship I've ever been on (although I think the Constitution is still considered active) was a submarine that my infamous Uncle Mike served on, which was the Triggerfish.
Battleship Massachusetts isn't active duty, she's a museum ship. The cool thing that always stuck in my head was how on one deck they had mess seating situated around one of the 16-inch gun turret cylinders.
015923.jpg (734×476) (navsource.org)
What were they assembled for?
