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Dragnet 1968
"The Little Victim"
Originally aired February 15, 1968
Xfinity said:
After a child is injured, Friday and Gannon discover the parents to be child abusers.
Sgt. Joe Friday said:
This is the city: Los Angeles, California. A great many city-dwellers use a leg or two of the freeway system at least twice a day. Some say it's nerve-wracking...others navigate them with ease. The living can be good, in a modern apartment complex...or in your own home. But there are those, no matter where they live, that never quite become adjusted to living a normal, useful life. Some people start out with good intentions...and they bring new people into the world. And sometimes these are the ones that need help. When they do, I go to work. I carry a badge.
Wednesday, October 18 (1967?): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of Juvenile Division when Friday has been assigned to deliver a speech on child abuse at the monthly luncheon of the Pacific Women's Club. I was expecting this to be one of those expository infodump scenes, but it was surprisingly brief. While there, they get a call from a police liaison at a children's hospital about a nine-month old boy with injuries that seem likely to have been caused by abuse. X-rays indicate prior beatings as well. When she eventually visits the hospital, the mother, Louise Marshall (Brooke Bundy), insists that Andy fell down a flight of stairs.
They go to the Marshalls' apartment building to talk to a downstairs neighbor, Ruth Fowler (Jean Howell), and get their second indication that Louise's husband, Wally Marshall, is known for his bad temper. Visiting the Marshall apartment, Louise's story indicates that Walter didn't want the baby, and that she's walking on eggshells to keep the baby from bothering him. Wally (Kiel Martin) then comes home, and is angry to learn that she took the baby to the hospital. As he calms down and attempts to project a facade of normality, she becomes more hysterical and openly admits that he's been hurting Andy. Wally goes back to being angrily self-absorbed, and is taken downtown.
Wally Marshall: I've got my rights!
Joe Friday: Yeah...even you've got your rights.
Friday relays in voiceover how Marshall was sentenced to a year in jail; and how after a probation period and the beginning of divorce proceedings, the baby was returned to Louise's custody. Then, over a year later, on March 2 (a partly readable wall calendar indicates a Thursday, which would also match 1967), they get a call from Ruth Fowler that the baby's being beaten again. By the time Friday and Gannon arrive, two black & white units are there along with a doctor, who declares the baby dead. Wally's there, having come by for a visit. Louise insists that now everything can be like it was before the baby.
The Announcer said:
On May 11th, trial was held in Department 187, Superior Court of the State of California, for the County of Los Angeles....The suspect was found guilty of murder in the second degree, which is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of five years to life.
Since no criminal complaint could be filed against Louise Marshall, she was not held.
It's noteworthy that the child was never clearly depicted onscreen. We saw a little arm once when the detectives were reacting to his injuries.
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The Wild Wild West
"The Night of the Simian Terror"
Originally aired February 16, 1968
Wiki said:
Jim and Artie visit the plantation of a U.S. Senator who has a mysterious family past that involved a scientist's experiments with apes ... and there is also the secret of one of the senator's sons.
Prior to this episode, Richard Kiel had appeared in three first season episodes as Voltaire, the assistant to Dr. Loveless.
Jim and Artie are working the night watch out of Presidential Errands Division when they pay a visit to Senator Buckley (Dabbs Greer) at his home in Kansas to try to get his butt back to Washington to get some legislation back on track. Jim hears a commotion outside and finds that the Senator's caretaker, Fletcher (James Gavin), has been brutally attacked, and his guard dog is acting spooked. The Senator's sons try to stop Jim from investigating, even resorting to ambushing him at one point, obviously trying to hide what's out there.
The family doctor, Von Liebig (John Abbott) makes a house call to declare Fletcher dead. Artie thinks he recognizes the doctor's name, but he doesn't recall from where. Artie spies on an expository conference of Buckley's Three Sons through the floor of the room above, but is attacked from behind by the Senator. When he comes to, Artie is able to tell Jim that one of the sons, Benjamin (Felice Orlandi), was heading to the church to destroy the family records there, but when Jim finds him he's dead of an attack similar to the one that killed Fletcher. The Reverend (John S. Ragin) says that he saw something that looked like an ape. Neither of them saw that before Jim got there, Benjamin had been approached by somebody named Dimas (Richard Kiel).
With the help of a book of biographies, Artie finds that Von Liebig is a noted anthropologist and expert on apes. He pays a visit to the doctor disguised as a curious colleague, inquiring about his experiments. He then snoops around the place and Dimas comes out of a secret passage. Artie tries to evade Dimas's attacks, learning that the man can break chains and bend bars, but is trapped in a cage, which he later gets out of via thermite. Relating the incident to Jim, he describes Dimas as a "hulk".
Jim and Artie hear from a little girl that the Senator's female ward, Naomi (Grace Gaynor) has been abducted by an ape, whom she insists wasn't just a large man. Jim follows the trail to an underground lair where he finds Naomi in a cage, and then Dimas watches as Jim is attacked by an ape whom we later learn is called Johann (George Barrows). Jim comes to in the cage and learns that the ape takes orders from Dimas, who wants to kill the Buckleys. Meanwhile, at Stately Buckley Manor, Artie learns from the family Bible that Dimas was the fourth Buckley son, and surmises that he's out to take the Buckley fortune and let Johann take the blame.
Jim and Naomi escape, Jim gets into a brawl with Dimas and wins(!), Johann gets turned into Swiss cheese by a mob of townspeople, and there's no coda.
This one strikes me as having been a bit of a mess. They played up the mystery of what was going on for as long as they could, but when it came time for the reveals, everything seemed very perfunctory and half-baked.
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Playing long sets is a lot of material. Figure 12 tunes per hour if you do some banter, song stories, schtick in between, which the Beatles don't from what I've seen. So you do covers too unless you have a ton of originals and they're awesome and your fan base knows them. People like songs they're familiar with. Duke Ellington with his amazing originals also played covers of current hits live.
This brings to mind stories of how they'd fill sets in Hamburg by seeing how long they could keep "What'd I Say" going.
I'd love to hear Paul's answer to the question of why they performed covers in concert. I suspect the answer might be because, in terms of performance, the band didn't see their originals as being much different from the covers.
If we're talking about their touring years, familiarity would be a big motivator. They couldn't hear themselves play over all the screaming in the big venues, so it was probably easier to knock out the stuff they'd played in clubs for years. And by their last touring year, 1966, they were leaning conspicuously on their older material because their newer studio material wasn't easy to reproduce live.
Interesting. I bought the complete set a few years ago when they were re-issued in paperback with cool retro covers. I read the first one and found it kind of depressing (and I knew going in that they would be very different from the movies). I still hope to read them all someday, but my enthusiasm was diminished.
FWIW, most of the books don't end on as tragic a note as
Casino Royale...OHMSS being the noteworthy exception. But in general, literary Bond has a rougher time surviving his adventures than film Bond.
Ah, well. Just for that, I'm going to go stir my tea.
Enjoy your cup of mud!
"I'll Be Back" in 3/4 time. I would have been cool with waltzing to this song. 
