_______
Dragnet 1968
"The Big Amateur"
Originally aired January 25, 1968
Xfinity said:
A phony police officer is discovered when he wins a businessmen's club's "All-American Policeman" award.
Sgt. Joe Friday said:
This is the city: Los Angeles, California. Like cities everywhere, visitors accept it at face value. And like cities everywhere, all is not what it appears to be. A high school can hide a gang of car thieves. A slum can be the home of a poet. A quiet suburban street can be the scene of a double homicide. The trained observer takes nothing at face value, he learns to look beneath the surface. Some observers look for their own game. I look for yours. I carry a badge.
Monday, May 5 (1958 or 1969): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of Frauds Division, Bunco Section, when Captain Lambert brings in Mr. Finch (Del Moore), who wants to present an award on behalf of the Southwest Businessmen's Association to an outstanding neighborhood police officer, Gideon C. Dengle. Lambert informs him that there's no such officer or on the force or badge number on issue. Finch is asked to stay mum about what he's learned while Friday and Gannon go out to question other members of the association who've dealt with Dengle routinely, while not letting on to them why they're asking about him. The first is a Chinese restauranter (Keye Luke!); the second a nursery school teacher (Carol Byron); the third a banker (Bert Holland). All seem completely taken in by Dengle and describe his helpful deeds, from keeping an eye on the man who cuts the restaurant's ducks into portions, to helping the kids cross the street, to rescuing a cat from a tree for a customer at the bank! Back at the station, it begins to seem to the detectives that Dengle isn't necessarily doing this as part of a criminal scam, but may just be some sort of a kook. Then Captain Lambert comes in with a handful of phony tickets that Dengle has been writing up--which the recipients have insisted on paying--and a couple of high school students report in for having been caught by Dengle for violating curfew!
Just as the bank manager has come to the police administration building to inform Friday and Gannon that Dengle has quit the force, Lambert informs them that he's gotten a report from the scene of a fire of Dengle posing as a fire department battalion commander. The detectives go out to arrest Dengle (Stuart Nisbet), who maintains his impersonation the entire time, even mentioning that he used to be a cop!
The Announcer said:
On June 15, trail was held in Division 86, Municipal Court, Los Angeles Judicial District....The suspect was found guilty of violating sections 538 D and E, Penal Code of the State of California, in that he willfully impersonated both a peace officer and fireman, misdemeanors which are punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months or by a fine not exceeding $500, or by both.
_______
The Wild Wild West
"The Night of the Death Masks"
Originally aired January 26, 1968
Wiki said:
James West is attacked and knocked unconscious. He awakens in a strange deserted town filled with assailants wearing masks in the likeness of Emmett Stark, an escaped murderer whom West had imprisoned years earlier — and now Stark wants revenge.
At a stagecoach stop, Jim rescues a pretty young lady named Amanda (Judith McConnell) from some rowdy soldiers, and she addresses him by name, claiming to have been present at an incident five years earlier when Jim and Artie stopped a man named Emmett Stark. Jim doesn't remember her, but accompnies her to the coach, which, after she excuses herself to powder her nose, turns out to be rigged for abduction, with shutters closing over the windows and doors and gas filling the compartment. Jim wakes up to find himself in the coach, now open, wearing different clothes that show off his chest. He's in a seemingly empty town named Paradox, where he wanders the streets in a
Twilight Zone-ish manner, with the requisite music being heard in the saloon and so forth.
Artie's on a date in Virginia City when Colonel Richmond informs him that Stark, who'd vowed revenge on West and Gordon when sentenced, has escaped. Amanda shows up at the train, claiming to have had a date with Jim and making a show of acting stood up, but Artie and Richmond see through her ruse and the colonel says he'll have her followed.
There are multiple incidents of Jim being shot at (and hit in the leg in one case) and chasing the shooters to find dummies wearing masks of Stark. (It's not made clear if the dummies are mechanisms or decoys for the actual shooters.) He's also jumped by several men in the seemingly empty saloon and overcomes them, but falls unconscious. After he awakes, a young woman named Betsy (Patricia McCormack) wanders in, claiming to be lost. She gives Jim the idea to go to the telegraph office, where he tries to send out a message, but gets a threatening one back signed by Stark, saying something about how Jim will regret what he's going to do. The next day Betsy seems to get shot outside and then disappears when Jim's trying to pursue the shooter. After that a stage rides in with a driver and three strangers who all act like normal passers-through. Jim is initially skeptical of them, but lets one of them, a doctor, take care of his leg...and gets drugged up, with the four make a show of leaving on the coach without him.
Artie goes to the coach station from which Jim was abducted and finds the trio whom Jim had just met in Paradox, who claim to have run into West on the road. Artie sees through them after they try to gas him, but is knocked out by something they'd put in his coffee while he was chatting with them. Artie wakes up on the stage in Paradox, unaware that he's wearing an unconvincing disguise that somebody else put on him, which I assume is supposed to make him look like Stark. While Jim is temporarily unconscious again in the hotel, a man dressed in the same clothes comes out of the establishment and shoots at Artie. When Jim comes to and stumbles out, disguised Artie shoots at him and the two engage in a gunfight, in which Jim wounds Artie and then is seemingly shot down by Artie. But when Artie approaches Jim's body, realizing what he's done, it turns out that Jim is faking, having been cued in by Artie's initials on the empty pistol that he's previously thrown at Jim. When the real Stark (Milton Selzer) and some goons arrive to gloat, Jim and Artie surprise them, but they're held at bay in turn by a shotgun-weilding Betsy, who turns out to be Stark's daughter. Jim and Artie nonetheless find an opportunity to overcome their captors, and they wind up using the shutters on the trick stage to take Stark and Betsy prisoner.
This one sort of reminded me of an
Avengers episode.
_______