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50th Anniversary Viewing
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Mission: Impossible
"Recovery"
Originally aired March 17, 1968
Wiki said:
When [a] U.S. bomber crashes behind the Iron Curtain, the IMF must recover its fail-safe before a brilliant U.S. defector (Bradford Dillman, who previously starred in Court Martial alongside Peter Graves) can reveal its secrets to the communists.
Another day another reel-to-reel tape in a parking lot attendant's booth said:
Please dispose of this recording in the usual manner. Good luck, Jim.
The "usual manner" is putting it in an ashtray where it bursts into flames. They skip the portfolio scene this time and go straight to the team briefing, with the additional credits following the briefing scene.
Dillman is quite the chameleon...I just saw him in a TMFU episode this season, and he's nearly unrecognizable as the same actor playing the defected scientist, Shipherd.
Jim's first role in the scheme is to play a captured pilot from the American bomber, for which he sports darkened hair. But just when I was fearing that we wouldn't be getting what I'd expect from a behind-the-Curtain premise, Jim switches to a different role as a local, with Willy joining in on the entertainingly-bad-accent fun.
Rollin plays a wheelchair-bound American scientist with a heart condition who "secretly" manufactures the failsafe unit, making him and his wife/doctor, Cinnamon, bait for Dillman's character. Barney pulls some in-role trickery and TV Fu as Rollin's assistant.
Once again we get the novelty of somebody else being disguised as Rollin, as Rollin fakes death and switches identities with Shipherd to escape while smuggling Shipherd out of the country.
The show ends its season in good form. I quite enjoyed it and look forward to more. I managed to pull together a full set of Season 3 episodes from what looks like three different Decades binges. Hopefully they'll get around to running more Season 4 episodes in the meantime, as my collection of those is very gappy. And I wouldn't mind catching those seven Season 1 episodes that I missed.
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The Avengers
"The Forget-Me-Knot"
Originally aired March 20, 1968 (US); September 25, 1968 (UK)
Wiki said:
A new drug which causes instant amnesia makes his fellow agents forget Steed. Diana Rigg bows out as Mrs Emma Peel and her replacement, Miss Tara King, is introduced – the two women pass each other on the stairs and Peel advises King about how to prepare Steed's tea – together with Steed’s new boss: a plump, jovial man, code-named Mother (who, in a spoof of the US television series Ironside, runs the department from his wheelchair).
I didn't see much of a Mother/Ironside connection beyond the wheelchair.
It's nice that Peel is in so much of the episode...they use her opening credits for the last time. I saw references in IMDb reviews to this episode not having been shot as her last, but the show's Wiki page says that it was actually filmed a few episodes into the season, and that they got Rigg back especially to do it.
Tara makes a cute debut...she's a spunky agent-in-training and all of that. A common complaint that I read in reviews is that she's much more deferential to Steed than his previous partners were. The designation "Agent 69" is a bit thirteen-year-old.
The story is a bit padded with too many scenes of characters trying to remember who they are and who they know. The part where Peel wakes up next to Mortimer might have been considered too risque for American TV at the time.
The bit of business about Peel's long-lost husband turning up comes out of nowhere in the epilogue. The parting scene between Peel and Steed is nice. We don't get a good look at Mr. Peel, but the episode ends on the gag that he bears some resemblance to Steed, sporting a bowler and umbrella.
THE END
of
EMMA PEEL
but Diana Rigg will be back
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
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Ironside
"Trip to Hashbury"
Originally aired March 21, 1968
Wiki said:
A conspiracy complicates Ironside's investigation of a hippie's fatal beating - that was allegedly administered by Ed.
Our top-billed guest is William Windom as attorney Eldon Chase, the father of Barbara, the girl who was allegedly beaten by Ed...but to clarify the episode description, she's alive, hospitalized, and actively accusing Ed following the incident...she dies of complications halfway into the episode.
This is a very sign o' the times episode revolving around "weekend hippies" hanging out at the pad of a groovy cat named Freddie (Cliff Osmond), who refers to Ironside as "Ol' Fuzz-on-Wheels". We get some decent live-in-episode psychedelic music from what IMDb identifies as the Hook, a band under contract with a record company owned by Universal Studios. During Ed and Eve's initial foray into Freddie's Pad, they briefly break into the show's theme.
Trying to flush out a fellow student whom Barbara may have called that night, Ironside takes a private school classroom on a field trip to Freddie's Pad. The confidante is outed, and identifies the likely assailant as a character she hasn't seen nicknamed Prince Valiant. Team Ironside deduces that he was thus named because he blended in by wearing a "Beatle cut" wig, and he turns out to have been Barbara's letterman sweater-wearing boyfriend David. I suspected him early, partly because he was kind of conspicuous being in the episode at all, but mainly because the IMDb page for the episode chose to use a picture of him.
There's a subplot about the underage girl whom Ed and Eve were trying to find at Freddie's in the first place. She rebelled out of an expressed need for her parents to care enough about her to enforce some discipline. In the episode's coda, when Ironside relates how she's returned to her parents, he surmises that she's gotten her first spanking. Kind of an odd beat to play with a 15-year-old character being portrayed by a 21-year-old actress.
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"If You Were Almost the Only Man in the World"
Originally aired March 21, 1968
Wiki said:
After being hit by a fly ball at a baseball game, Ann meets a doctor who bears a striking resemblance to Donald.
Waking up in the hospital to see the familiar face of Ted Bessell looming over her, Ann initially thinks that Dr. Rex Kennedy is Donald, and the doctor thinks that she's crazy. Once it's all straightened out, Kennedy takes advantage of her pre-conditioned attraction to him to start hitting on her...I think that wouldn't go well for him today.
When Kennedy visits Ann's apartment, Mr. Marie comes by and thinks he's Donald, too. Kennedy comes back to her apartment with no glasses and lightened hair to prove that Ann couldn't tell the difference between him and Donald. This is one of those cases where you have to think that there'd be a million things she could ask him at this point that only Donald would know.
Ultimately Donald returns from his trip and we get the obligatory split-screen meeting of the Bessells.
"Oh, Donald" count:
6 (mostly for the wrong guy)
"Oh, Daddy" count:
0
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Tarzan
"Trina"
Originally aired March 22, 1968?
H&I said:
A girl enlists Tarzan's help in locating her long-lost uncle.
Here's another bit of episode order confusion....IMDb and Wiki agree that this episode aired on this date, but H&I swaps the order of this installment and next week's, leading one to wonder which was actually the series finale. One other online source indicates that this was the earlier episode in production order in any case.
Tarzan happens upon the titular character and her entourage of six other pretty young women. This is sort of a pseudo-hippie episode...the young ladies aren't hippie types per se, but much emphasis is placed on them being representatives of the general youth culture of the time. Trina uses the word "groovy" a lot, mentions not trusting anyone over 30, and has a conversation with Tarzan about picking up vibes. One of the other girls has a cassette player that serves as an excuse for source music that's uncharacteristically poppy for the show. Another of the girls is a TOS guest I wouldn't have spotted without online help: Susan Howard (Mara, "Day of the Dove") as Gloria. Gloria and a pal help Tarzan in a fight, being disciples of karate...or TV Fu.
Trina's long-lost uncle turns out to be a non-native tribal leader played by Nehemiah Persoff. Uncle Ben, who has a reputation for being a humanitarian but has developed an overbearingly paternalistic relationship with the tribespeople, has been using forced labor to bring in a cannon. He thinks that what he's doing is for the people's own good.
The girls help free Trina from being kept under guard in her uncle's house, and she in turn helps Tarzan by getting word out to a rival tribal leader. This sequence includes the photographer in Trina's posse having Tarzan's guard pose for pictures. The way he mugs for the camera, it's evident that his people don't believe in that soul-stealing business.
After Uncle Ben falls victim to poetic justice, Trina stays around to continue the good work that he'd previously been known for.
Trina said:
My uncle was a groovy guy, in spite of the way it all ended for him.
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Get Smart
"The Hot Line"
Originally aired March 23, 1968
Wiki said:
A KAOS voice impersonator (John Byner) fires the Chief over the phone while pretending to be President Johnson. Max becomes the new Chief; the Chief reverts to his old status as Agent Q, and realizes he can only save his old job by discovering the location of a KAOS communications center. The title refers to telephone connection between the White House and the Kremlin set up after the Cuban missile crisis that almost caused nuclear war. In this episode Edward Platt uses his operatically trained singing voice. Regis Philbin appears as a CONTROL operative in a bakery.
Contrary to popular conception,
the Moscow-Washington hotline originally used a teletype device, and has never used a telephone.
Byner's character is name Gorshen; in addition to playing the Riddler, Frank Gorshin was a well-known impressionist at the time. Now Byner does a distinctly recognizable LBJ...and that's not the only gag revolving around our soon-to-be-lame-duck CIC...In addition to the Chief's hotline to the prez being disguised as a cattle horn, the hotline's speaker phone is a Texas Longhorn head mounted on the wall behind a sliding bookshelf.
Putting Max in charge of CONTROL is certainly a good plan on KAOS's part; OTOH, they have to deal with a more competent than usual field agent infiltrating their operation.
Gorshen sends a KAOS agent to CONTROL posing as LBJ's efficiency expert.
Max: I can trust him like I can trust L.
99: L?
Max: LBJ--We're on a first-name basis now.
Max has an ice cream cone phone in this one. We also get...
Max said:
The old "communications equipment in the French bread" trick.
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