50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
The Six Million Dollar Man
"The Seven Million Dollar Man"
Originally aired November 1, 1974
Wiki said:
The episode opens at a restricted OSI facility--footage of which was used more than once in the nonsensical filler sequences of the syndication edit of one of the TV movies. Steve is undergoing a psychological evaluation conducted by Rudy (Was his honorary degree in psychology?), who's assisted by Carla Peterson (Maggie Sullivan), a nurse Steve's had a relationship with who's said to have tended to him when he was in the hospital after first getting his bionics. (This would appear to make her a retcon of Barbara Anderson's Jean Manners character. What's more, Steve also references Oscar as having been part of his origin story.) Steve witnesses Carla handing a tape of his evaluation to Monte Markham in the parking lot, and runs outside to briefly chase after the man's sports car (with more footage reused for the TV film edit as he jumps fence). After Steve relents, the gate guard (Marshall Reed) denies seeing the man or his car, and Rudy watches from a window with concern.
Steve has Carla questioned, but Oscar and Rudy are both quick to dismiss the situation.
Steve: The three people I trust most in the world are gaslighting me!
I think we're the ones being gaslighted with the blatant retconning of the pilot movie. After an unsuccessful attempt to identify the man from OSI files, Steve catches Carla--who's packing up her things after being fired--looking at a picture of the man as a race car driver, helping Steve to recognize him as Barney Miller (strike up the bass). Steve tails Carla as she proceeds to a bar rendezvous with Barney, who indicates difficulty adjusting to his unspecified condition, both physically and psychologically. Steve approaches them and is recognized by Barney, who drunkenly alludes to Steve's abilities in front of the crowd and backs him into accepting a challenge to arm wrestle...which, after a good deal of back and forth that's clearly surprising to Steve, Barney wins, obligatorily breaking the table. He then makes clear to Steve that he's Oscar's Bionic Man Mk II.
Oscar comes clean about him and Rudy attempting to cover the truth up, and is apologetic to Steve about superiors having insisted on the creation of a backup/replacement bionic operative; while also indicating that Barney has four bionic extremities. Oscar then tries to make lemonade by asking Steve to have an encouraging talk with Barney while accompanying him on his first mission, which involves thwarting an exchange of stolen plutonium. Steve talks with Barney while they stake out the exchange location posing as telephone pole workers, and learns Barney's titular price tag--which Steve chalks up to inflation, though I'd think that the extra limb would be more of a factor. (There's no indication that Barney has a bionic sensory organ, however.) When three baddies arrive in a van to deliver the plutonium to a man in a pickup truck, the duo leap down off the pole and into action, Barney busting through a fence gate and roughing up the baddies, despite the mission calling for a nonviolent nabbing of the cargo, which Steve sees to. The bionic sound is used only for a few instances of Barney tossing around the baddies. I was hoping that it would fully kick in by this point, as the use of slo-mo seems to have. Barney clearly enjoys exerting his power, and Steve has to intervene when he threatens to go to town on the pickup man.
Barney: It's wild, Steve! It's wild!
During a post-op examination by Rudy, Barney seems concerningly enthralled by the rush of bionic action; and requests that Rudy turn his bionics up to full strength so he can engage in some regular working out against Steve. Considering Barney to be unstable, Steve tries to persuade Oscar to have the bionic power of Barney's limbs reduced to normal human level--an option that he indicates Oscar had previously given him. Back at the bar, Steve tries to sell this course of action to Barney as being for his own good, while indicating that the "neutralization" process is irreversible. Barney laughs at this option and threatens to put his abilities on the market. Then an OSI man named Jerry (Fred Lerner) makes an ill-timed appearance to bring Barney back with him, and Barney pushes him across the room. Steve goes outside to straighten Barney out, and learns that Barney's still resentful of his abilities not truly being his own...as well as of how much better-adjusted Steve is to being in the same situation. Barney gives Steve a sucker-elbowing to ground and takes off.
Now motivated to make himself irreplaceably unique, Barney goes back to OSI and breaks into a vault in Oscar's office looking for the files about his bionics. He finds a document indicating that the files are at the restricted facility from the opening, where he threatens Rudy to cooperate in unlocking a computer memory bank so he can destroy its contents. Oscar and Steve separately proceed to the facility. Oscar wants to use military force to stop Barney, but Steve insists on taking him on less lethally, indicating that Barney's also motivated to kill him. Steve pursues inside as Barney breaks his way into the computer vault, with Oscar and some agents trailing behind them. Steve catches up with Barney as he's attempting to break down the vault door with multiple kicks, and the anticipated all-out bionic brawl ensues. The sound effects are used for a few of their opening exchanges, but disappear after that. Barney manages to get the door down near the climax, but when Steve ultimately gains the upper hand as Oscar and crew catch up, Barney begs Steve to finish him...which Steve, of course, refuses.
In the coda, Steve visits Barney after his reduction procedure, expressing his investment in seeing that Barney makes his way through it psychologically. Outside, Oscar expresses his appreciation for Steve's uniqueness apart from his bionic hardware. Indeed, this episode really highlights a strength of the show that I've come to appreciate--just how gosh-darn likeable Lee Majors is in the role.
Shazam!
"The Doom Buggy"
Originally aired November 2, 1974
Wiki said:
The episode title sounds like something that a Jack Kirby character would have rode around in.
The episode opens with Cathy Moore (Lisa Eilbacher) trying to persuade Don (Wink Roberts, whose delivery is cringily spotty) not to quit school so he can work full time at his auto shop. Back in the van, the Elders tell Billy that he has to help someone who scorns knowledge to become a dedicated pupil, and that a dark shadow will show him the light. (Willie was a few episodes ago.) As the van gets going again, Don nearly hits it while racing off-road in his buggy. After examining the van, he offers to take Mentor and Billy to his shop to fix their cracked water pump.
At the shop, they learn from Cathy about how Don plans to quit school, which triggers an Elder flashback. Don determines that they need a new pump, and offers to drive his buggy to the nearest parts store, fifty miles away. Billy volunteers to accompany him. Cathy becomes alarmed when she learns after they've left that Don plans to take a shortcut through Perdition Flats, which is full of old mine shafts. Over the noisy ride, Billy tries to convince Don that continuing his education could help him to keep up with newfangled advancements like electric cars.
Meanwhile, Mentor prepares to join Cathy in trying to catch up with them by using Billy's dirt bike.
Mentor: Elders never told me I'd have to do a thing like this.
[Angry thunderclap.]
Don gets lost, and with the sun high, they have trouble determining which way is east. A second Elder flashback inspires Billy to put a stick in the ground to determine east from the direction that the shadow moves, telling Don that he learned this method in ancient history class. But this takes them through a mine area, where a deep hole causes the buggy to overturn, and Billy to be thrown from it and knocked out. Unsure where Billy landed in the brush, Don shoots up a flare, following which an underground eruption occurs, catching Mentor and Cathy's attention. Billy comes to only to find flames shooting out of an old shaft.
Billy: Holy moly, this whole place could explode! SHAZAM!
Cap finds Don, whose leg is injured, and carries him to the buggy; which has lost its fuel, so Cap pushes it to where Mentor and Cathy are. When Don says that there's no water around to put out the fire, Cathy contradicts him, noting that there's water everywhere if you know where to look for it. This inspires Cap to take to the air and then dive down into the ground, creating a geyser of underground water that puts out the fire, after which Cap plugs it with a boulder. After we get a novel shot of Cap shouting "Shazam!" and changing back into Billy, Cathy notes that she learned about the water table in geology class, and Don, having been hit over the head enough times, declares that he'll stay in school. When the party realizes that they're still lost, Billy turns their attention to some skywriting that Cap left to point the way out.
Cap: Hi. Today we saw that if you close your mind to learning, sooner or later you're going to have it opened again in surprise at just how you've shortchanged yourself. So if you should ever think about dropping out of school, just remember, you're only hurting yourself. See you next week.
Emergency!
"Daisy's Pick"
Originally aired November 2, 1974
IMDb said:
As paramedic Tom Dwyer (uncredited Brian Cutler) is handing over the squad at the station, he tells Johnny about a pool among the firefighters that goes to whoever can get a new nurse at Rampart to go out with him. The amount being up to $70 catches Johnny's interest. The station is then called to an ice house, where an engineer who'd been inspecting the refrigeration equipment is lying comatose with his arm frozen to the floor by spilled water. Despite an ammonia leak making it difficult to breathe, the man is freed by spraying warmer water on the ice. The paramedics then drag him over stacks of ice blocks to get him out and treat him. The man is defibbed in the ambulance, and Brackett diagnoses hypothermia. At Rampart the man is shivering so hard that Brackett injects a dose of curare to induce mild paralysis. He also detects signs of frostbite, though it's too soon to tell how serious it will be.
At the base station, Johnny meets the nurse, Daisy (Brit Lind), and learns that Dix has been telling her about him. While Daisy acts friendly but disinterested, Johnny becomes confident that he has an inside angle. Back at the station, the squad is called to a stately suburban home to assist former ship captain Jonas Larson (John Carradine), who's accidentally glued his fingers to a model he was working on of the Northern Star, the ship that he sailed on as a cadet. Unable to unstick him with alcohol or to get the tube of cement off the table to learn more about it, they call Morton, who deduces that it's a type that's been recalled. Larson is brought in with the ship still attached, and is outraged when he learns that Morton plans to break away the ship to treat him.
As an alternative, they have Larson lie down and raise the Northern Star above and behind his head, enabling Morton to get at his hands.
While Johnny's trying to make his play with Daisy, the squad is called to assist Jerry Goldberg, a comatose three-year-old whose mother, Ruth (Dolores Mann), indicates that the boy has been lacking in energy, though his father insisted that he not be taken to a doctor. The boy is put on oxygen, and when the father, Bernard (Steve Franken), returns home at the same time that the ambulance is arriving, he doesn't want Jerry taken to the hospital. At Rampart, Bernard objects that he wants his son to die at home...then explains to Brackett and his wife that Tay-Sachs Disease runs in his family. Brackett informs Bernard that there's a good chance that Jerry hasn't inherited the disease, which tests can determine. Brackett later informs the Goldbergs that Jerry has ketoacidosis, and that Bernard risked his son's life by delaying seeing a doctor.
Johnny asks Daisy out, and she so readily invites him to a picnic on Friday morning that it makes him suspicious. At the station, he learns from Chet that she extended the exact same invitation to Dwyer. Then the station and other units are called to a fire under the stage of a theater, where they're met by a foreman (Stack Pierce) whose men were installing electrical gear. Explosions rock the theater, causing one worker to fall from a catwalk onto some pipes. Johnny manages to get a line attached to him despite the pipes giving way, and they're raised to safety and the man taken to the roof, from which he's lowered in a Stokes to a bucket ladder.
In the coda, the crew returns to the station after the weekend with Dwyer sporting broken fingers, Johnny a sore back, and Chet an injured foot. Daisy arrives with a cake for them, but none of them are interested in a follow-up engagement with her. They explain to Roy that they and nine others were lured in by her to do repair work at an orphanage. Marco scores what's supposed to be a solo date with her, though the others try to warn him that it has to be a set-up.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Menage-a-Phyllis"
Originally aired November 2, 1974
Wiki said:
The long, hard early winter in Minneapolis continues as Lou visits Mary's to brainstorm the subject of a documentary. When Phyllis drops in to borrow earrings and generally disrupt things, Mary learns that she's going to the ballet with a guy named Mike. Phyllis explains that he's a friend with whom she enjoys culture that Lars doesn't appreciate. Mike then conveniently comes to the door for introductions. Mike soon makes an excuse to drop by the newsroom and asks Mary to dinner, which she uncomfortably turns down. When Ted learns of Mike's interests and platonic relationship with Phyllis, he assumes that Mike is gay. Phyllis soon comes down with something and volunteers Mary to sub for her in going to the opera with Mike.
Rhoda gets referenced again when Lou catches Mary trying to call her long-distance from the office for advice. Mary soon finds herself having a talk with Lou, Murry, and Ted about her discomfort with having now dated Mike several times. At the apartment, a recovered Phyllis passive-aggressively expresses how she feels threatened, though Mary insists that her relationship with Mike is also strictly platonic. Mike subsequently visits Mary to break the news that he's just gotten back together with a fiancée whom he was on the rebound from when he was seeing Phyllis...who can't help coming up while he's there, trying to console Mary afterward for what's actually more of a loss to her.
The Bob Newhart Show
"Brutally Yours, Bob Hartley"
Originally aired November 2, 1974
Wiki said:
Emily's annoyed at Bob constantly taking pictures with a camera that she bought him for his birthday; while Bob's put off to learn that Emily's invited a couple who work at her school, Ed and Janet Hoffman, over to a dinner they're having with Jerry and his girlfriend. At the office, Bob keeps Elliot Carlin and Michelle Nardo after a session to address their disruptive hostility toward each other, encouraging them to be completely honest in expressing their issues. They accuse Bob of hypocrisy when he won't stand up to Carol, so he does to prove a point, then applies the same method to Jerry when he bows out of the dinner to take his girlfriend to The Great Gatsby instead, though Jerry seems unaffected by Bob's approach.
At the dinner, the Hoffmans (Lawrence Pressman and Rose Gregorio) are getting under the Hartleys' skin with their overbearing praise of the apartment and Emily's cooking, as well as their insistence on scheduling a dinner at their own "tacky" place on the next available date. Bob initially tries a polite and tactful approach, but when they won't take a hint, honestly lays out how he'd rather spend that night with just Emily than them. Howard drops by and Bob brings him in to try to engage the now upset guests, but they promptly leave, following which Emily storms out of the room to go to bed early. In the bedroom, Bob tries to explain himself, but just gets himself in deeper.
Meanwhile, Elliot and Michelle have started seeing each other, bonding over their mutual mean sides while they practice Bob's honesty approach. Emily's so desperate to avoid the Hoffmans that she goes to Bob's office at lunch. Bob promises to call them and patch things up, but the Hoffmans arrive at the apartment in a more low-key and conciliatory manner. Bob ends up bonding with Ed over a golf program that he's watching, Ed revealing that he was the player's caddy in the classic match from the '50s being featured. While they head for a range for Ed to give Bob some pointers about his handicap, Janet starts practicing the honesty approach with a relieved Emily.
In the coda, Bob unintentionally insults Carol when he makes a comment about Jerry's dates, and it turns out that she's the next one.
I mean, I guess it's okay to rework your own material, but altering somebody else's creation rubs me the wrong way.
