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The Saint
"The Ex-King of Diamonds"
Originally aired January 19, 1969 (UK)
Xfinity said:
Templar uncovers a king's cheating while at an international card party in Monte Carlo, and could pay with his life for the discovery.
At the party/tournament/whatever, Simon strikes up a rivalry with handsome Texas oil baron Rod Huston...who's actually played by an American actor, Stuart Damon, so I can tell that he's trying to do a Texas accent.
One of the other players is mathematician Henri Flambeau (Ronald Radd), who can calculate complex odds while at a card table, mostly in his head (with a little bit of writing on his sleeve), and is reluctantly using that talent to pay the bills. He figures that King Boris (Willoughby Goddard)'s run of luck is too far afoul of probability and immediately goes to personally investigate the conveniently local factory that made the cards to find that they're rigged...which seems like a bit of a stretch in more than one way. He and his daughter, Janine (Isla Blair), who'd previously had a flirtatious encounter with Simon and Rod, are caught by the baddies...chief among them being an aide of the king, Col. Rakosi (Paul Stassino, a.k.a. Palazzi in
Thunderball), who was pressing the king to raise money to pay for a mysterious consignment.
Simon convinces Rod to help him investigate the cheating angle after a fistfight, and the two of them run into "Professor Plum" on the road, about to be burned alive in his car by the baddies. (It seems like the heroes in British shows always just run into the baddies doing their foul deeds on country roads.) Going back to the card factory with the rescued professor, they discover that the cards have an overprint that can be seen by the King's infrared monacle; and a find an entrance to a watery underground catacomb in which a guy in a wetsuit is persuaded to tell them that the consignment is going to smuggled in via the King's yacht.
The professor informs Simon that the infrared gimmick can be thwarted by an ordinary sunlamp...
Simon said:
That's rather like bringing coals to Newcastle in Monte Carlo...however, I shall get one.
...so Simon installs one in the baccarat table's overhead fixture before going back to the catacombs with Rod for Smuggling Hour. Relieving a couple of goons of their wetsuits, they discover that the consignment is a set of detonation charges to be used in a revolution, then rescue Janine. Before leaving, Simon also sets one of the charges and puts it back in its box in the yacht's hold.
Back at the table, the Professor has been having a run of "luck" at the expense of the King, who goes into a panic when Simon whispers what he's done in His Majesty's ear. Later Simon and pals are watching a fireworks display when the yacht goes up.
Simon said:
I suppose one must expect this sort of thing when one is revolting.
Had the series gone on, I think that somebody like Huston might have made a good recurring foil for Simon. Their chemistry kind of reminded me of Bond and Felix Leiter (who was a Texan in the books, something that was lost in his various screen portrayals).
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"The Earrings"
Originally aired January 23, 1969
Wiki said:
Donald buys Ann some expensive earrings for Valentine's Day, and insists that she wears them on a date that night, in spite of her fear that she might lose them. Sure enough her worst fears are realized, and now both Ann and Don try to hide replacements for them.
The timing seems a bit off for a Valentine's Day episode. Continuity point: Ann's allergic to roses. And you'd think Donald would have learned that by now.
Jerry gets upset when he hears about Donald's gift to Ann because he only got Ruth peanut brittle; Ruth gets a cracked tooth and muses that cheapskate Jerry'll just have to pay for a gold crown.
Looking for the right place to plant his replacement earring, Donald goes into Ann's apartment when she's not home and attempts to retrace her likely movements that night, which includes acting out her crying in bed over losing the earring.
Short-term continuity point: Ann buys her replacement with money she's been saving for her taxes. See next episode. Donald knows that Ann's faking having found her earring because it's not where he planted his, and he retrieves that one. Then the restaurant where they went on their date calls to say that they found the original and both come clean.
"Oh, Donald" count:
11 (including a big exclamation when she gets the earrings); and while I haven't been counting them, there are also 2 "Oh, but, Donald"'s
"Oh, Ruthie" count:
2
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The Avengers
"The Morning After"
Originally aired January 29, 1969 (UK)
Wiki said:
A double-agent, codenamed Merlin, steals a new sleep gas and tries it out on Steed. Awaking 24 hours later, with Merlin his prisoner, Steed can find no one to hand him over to: everywhere he goes the streets are completely deserted.
It seems like I've seen that before...and on the same series!
The episode begins with Steed and Tara running an operation to capture Merlin (Peter Barkworth). When Steed recovers from Merlin's sleep bomb, he leaves Tara sleeping in the apartment where they captured him. On the streets of the town, Steed finds hastily abandoned vehicles and other signs of quick evacuation, like milk left on doorsteps and money blowing out of a bank. He catches and handcuffs himself to Merlin, but they come across soldiers chasing a straggler down and executing him on the excuse of assuming that he's a looter. Sergeant Hearn (Brian Blessed) then finds Steed and Merlin and tries to execute them.
Having gotten out of that bind, the duo find a pair of TV reporters in a van (Penelope Horner and Philip Dunbar) who fill them in on the evacuation of the town, supposedly because of an enemy-planted atom bomb. When Steed decides to go to the offincer in charge, Brigadier Hansing (Joss Ackland) and show his credentials, Merlin blows the plan when he claims that he recognizes a major as an Eastern agent. They confirm that they're dealing with imposters when they subsequently find the actual troops drugged unconscious. Steed and Merlin learn that Hansing has gone rogue and is actually building a bomb, with the plan of using it for extortion once everyone's back in town.
In the meantime, Sgt. Hearn has somehow found Tara, still sleeping in the apartment. When Steed and Merlin go there an are cornered, Tara comes to just in time to overpower the sergeant, but Merlin lobs another bomb and knocks her back out. Steed and Merlin then team up and make use of Merlin's sleep bombs to defeat the bad guys, after which Steed lets Merlin go. There's a gag in which they try to fake Steed using legerdemain to make a handcuff key appear in his hand, but the camera edit is very obvious.
In the coda, Steed's switching off a television while saying "Sock it to me"...is he supposed to be watching
Laugh-In?
Steed finding himself in a tight situation while handcuffed to an enemy agent would have been more interesting if it had been a recurring nemesis.
And that'll be the end of
The Avengers for our purposes here. If and when I might fit in trying out the pre-Peel seasons again, only time will tell. 75th anniversary retro...?
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"Many Happy Returns"
Originally aired January 30, 1969
Wiki said:
Ann is faced with a sudden audit from the IRS.
And this one seems a little too early for tax season. The agent who comes to inform Ann of her audit, Leon Cobb (Jack Mullaney), is kind of meek and unsure of himself, leading to Ann misunderstanding his motives. When he finally tells her, it turns out that she owes $2600 and hasn't been opening the mail they've sent her, thinking it was advertisements. The taxes owed are from 1965, which they say was her first year in New York. That's a year before the series started, though maybe the episode that shows her moving away from home was supposed to take place that much earlier than the rest of the series. Another odd continuity issue: Ann has Ruth Bauman's phone number in her old checkbook from 1965, even though she wasn't on the show until 2nd season.
Tomfoolery includes Donald spilling flour all over himself because Ann keeps it on her hall closet shelf next to her records; and Donald learning while attempting to piece together Ann's finances that she always over-records checks by 50 cents so that she never overdraws from the bank. Also, Ann and Donald have to sneak around Mr. Marie in their efforts to work things out before the deadline, and he's being extra-suspicious that Donald's trying to stay at Ann's place, to the point of following Donald home and staking out his place.
And it turns out that Ann exaggerated her income on that year's tax return to fool her father into thinking that she was doing better in the city than she actually was.
The episode's ending punchline uses an unusual multiple freeze frame device.
"Oh, Donald" count:
9
"Oh, Daddy" count:
0
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That's too bad, because the incident became an instant part of the lore of Woodstock and that window of time.
There are audio-only clips on YouTube. "Get off my fucking stage!!!"
I wonder what they served. I would have been ready for some fried eggs and corned-beef hash at that point.
Looked like rice or some kind of hash. Wavy specifically said that it wouldn't be steak and eggs.
I wonder how much bragging he did about his attendance at Woodstock.
He did better than that, he was in the film! (Though the shit-sucking scene might have been exclusive to the Director's Edition.)
And most people missed it.
They say that people were still leaving during his set...that those who'd stayed that long had done so just to get a glimpse of him.
It wasn't that bad...
Heh. Imagine Ed broadcasting live from Yasgur's Farm.
Well, he did introduce the Beatles at Shea Stadium....
I'm pretty sure it had part of the cheer when I saw it on TV in the early 70s, but who knows?
