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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 3)
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The Odd Couple
"Lovers Don't Make House Calls"
Originally aired January 29, 1971
Wiki said:
Oscar falls for a pretty female doctor who comes to the apartment to tend to Felix.
Felix is suffering a severe but manageable allergic reaction after having eaten mayonnaise on a date with his ex-wife. Dr. Melnitz is out of town, so the doctor who shows up for the house call turns out to be a Nancy Cunningham (Joan Hotchkis).
Dr. Cunningham: Are you Mr. Unger?
Oscar: No, but it's the first time in my life I wish I was...
Ah, the familiar voiceover segment about Felix's divorce and moving in is now part of the opening credits.
Felix, of course, is skeptical about letting a new doctor tend to him. Once she's seen to Felix, Oscar spends some time with her over coffee, and it turns out that she's a sports aficionado, and is familiar with Oscar's column, but Oscar stops just short of asking her to a hockey game. Fretting over the missed opportunity, he ends up visiting Melnitz's office to see her, but a nurse (Nora Marlowe) forces him to undergo an examination, which turns out to be with Melnitz (Bill Quinn in his second of four appearances in the role). Nancy comes in and Oscar comes clean about why he's there, but she's too busy to chat. So Oscar goes back to the apartment and requests that his recovering roomie gets himself sick to bring her back. Felix won't entertain the idea, so Oscar puts some mayo in a tuna fish sandwich that he makes for Felix, but he won't go through with letting Felix bite into it. However, Oscar himself shows signs of sickness from having walked in the rain for hours while thinking about Nancy. Felix calls the doctor's office and has them patch her through to Nancy while she's having dinner with someone. When she won't come, Felix goes to the restaurant and finds her dining with Dr. Melnitz platonically. There's a funny bit of physical comedy that involves Nancy asking Melnitz to dance with her and Felix keeping pace with them while they tango. Felix finally convinces her to come see Oscar even though she's not on call, they bond again, and she incentivizes him to get well so he can take her out to dinner on her next night off.
In the coda, Oscar has Nancy at the apartment for dinner when Felix rushes in to fetch her to tend to Gloria, who now has the flu bug that's been going around. After she rushes out, Felix sits down to enjoy Nancy's plate, while Oscar glowers at him.
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Love, American Style
"Love and the Big Game / Love and the Nutsy Girl / Love and the Vampire"
Originally aired January 29, 1971
In "Love and the Big Game," Bill and Alice (Jack Klugman and Ann Elder) have Fred and Janet (Jack Cassidy and Yvonne Craig), a couple of friends whom they haven't seen since they moved to California three years ago, over for bridge. Bill and Alice are surprised at how mod Fred and Janet now look and dress. When Bill and Alice lose $310, Bill suspects that Fred and Janet were cheating. They go ahead with another game the following night, and lose another $400, following which Bill tries to figure out how they did it. For their final game, Bill and Alice have the local sheriff, Mr. Combs (Hal Smith), over off-duty to watch the game, as he claims to know something about cheating at cards. But Bill doesn't want to listen to him when he and Alice are on a winning streak. Finally Combs (drunkenly, of course) declares that he knows how they're cheating, but the cards in Fred's hand prove him completely wrong. Fred and Janet leave acting shocked at Bill and Alice's suspicion. But once they're gone, Bill discovers that his wallet and Alice's jewelry are gone.
"Love and the Nutsy Girl" opens with Gordon (Jerry Van Dyke) going through pictures trying to find a girl for an ad campaign. His roommate, Larry (Ross Martin, who seems like he should have been Gordon), recognizes one of them as the "Nutsy Girl" from a peanut butter ad, and begs Gordon to pick her. Larry attends the session dressed up, but when the girl, Audrey Woods (Anjanette Comer), arrives, he seems uncomfortable and promptly leaves. When Gordon comes home, he informs Larry that he told Audrey how Larry feels about her and is having her over. When she comes over, Larry once again seems very uncomfortable, but she tells him that she admires him for acting "anti-establishment" by leaving the last time, and then chats him up about astrology. After spending some time together they seem to start hitting it off. But in the kitchen when Larry isn't around, she aggressively comes on to Gordon.
Later Larry acts like he's on top of the world. Gordon goes to Audrey's place to talk, but she only has one thing on her mind. She explains that she was nice to Larry because that was what Gordon wanted. Then she apologetically explains that she's not really attracted to Gordon, but had recently decided that she needed to act "friendly" to potential clients because she's desperate for work, and she was trying to please both Larry and Gordon. Audrey subsequently has Larry over on a date, but her elderly fiance, Harvey (Paul Winchell, actually 48 at the time and wearing obvious age makeup and using exaggerated "old man" mannerisms), shows up...though it turns out that she paid somebody else to come up pretending to be Harvey, and the "old man" was an unexpected substitute. She explains to Larry that she was trying to let him down easily and was just being nice to him for the work. Larry is clearly disappointed but takes it graciously. He finds Gordon waiting out in the hall and they go out for a hot dog together.
"Love and the Vampire" seems like a segment that wanted to air a few months earlier. In it, Wayne and Myrna (Robert Reed and Judy Carne), having suffered a breakdown on a stormy night, take refuge in the creepy house of a very pale-looking gentleman named Mr. Foss (Tiny Tim). Foss tells them to help themselves, as he'll be out all night. Myrna becomes obsessed with the suspicion that Foss is a vampire, supported by a coffin-shaped chest in the room, and has Wayne find some garlic. (Why would a vampire keep garlic around?) But we learn that Foss is just made up to attend a midnight horror show. Foss returns in full vampire costume, frightening the couple, but he promptly explains his situation. Then, when they're alone again, Myrna pulls Wayne's leg by pretending like she's a werewolf under the influence of the full moon.
IMDb mislists Julie Newmar as appearing in this segment.
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Mission: Impossible
"Blast"
Originally aired January 30, 1971
Wiki said:
Jim and Dana infiltrate a crew of bank robbers in order to discover the identity of the mysterious man they're funding, who aims to eventually overthrow the US government.
The episode opens with men in rubber masks working on a bank vault; the demolitions man, Finley (Dick Ziker), is accidentally killed by the blast.
The miniature reel-to-reel tape on a park bench within spitting distance of playing children said:
Good morning, Mr. Phelps. This man, Gregory Tolan [Henry Darrow], is leader of an underground cell specializing in robberies designed to finance an American revolution. Tolan works for a man we know only as Jonathan Brace, who masterminds cells like Tolan's all over the country, and whose eventual aim is the forcible overthrow of the United States government.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to apprehend and destroy Jonathan Brace. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim!
The cell's next target will be Drake's Armored Transport Company, who will be cooperating with the IMF. Jim will be taking the place of the new demolitions expert, William Cabot (Tom McDonough); and Dana will be replacing a former Drake's employee named Monica Anderson (Tamara Eliot). Cabot and Anderson are intercepted by the IMFers at a contact point in a warehouse and relieved of their identifying coin fragments in time for Tolan's arrival. He takes them to his lair, where they meet his chief hoods, Klinger (Kevin Hagen) and Sheels (Larry Haddon), and watch as Tolan takes radio orders from Brace. At the counting house that the cell is hitting following an armored truck delivery, Barney is posing as a security guard, Willy as a suited employee, and Dana is present in her role as the inside woman. The IMFers are cooperating with a Mr. Hendricks (Pitt Herbert). Dana signals that the alarms are off, and Tolan's team, including Jim, moves in. Jim gets to show off some skill with shaped charges blasting the group's way through a barred gate and an armored door. Dana aids in taking the money and joins the robbers in their escape. An alarm unexpectedly goes off because of Klinger's trigger-happiness with his M16, resulting in a police chase.
The gang ends up taking refuge in a random Beverly Hills mansion, while Paris tracks them in a delivery van via his swivel-mounted homing pen. Under the circumstances, The gang is left to their own devices until the designated contact time with Brace, and Jim has to contend with Klinger for stopping him from shooting Willy. The homeowners, the Millers, are intercepted by the police while coming home from a dog show, and Paris and a previously unseen agent named Grace (Susan Odin) pose as them, which includes taking their show dog. The fake Millers are taken captive in their not home, and Brace radio-orders Tolan and Dana to pose as the Millers to make the rendezvous, and for the original Not Millers to be killed. Once Tolan's gone, the IMFers get the drop on Klinger and Sheels. In the tracking van, they follow Tolan and Dana in the Millers' station wagon to another warehouse rendezvous point. Inspecting Tolan's radio left in the wagon, Barney finds that it contains...a concealed reel-to-reel tape, which Tolan uses to "send messages" as Brace. The man that Tolan is actually meeting is Delgado (Charles Picerni), who transported the real Cabot and Anderson, and identifies Dana as an imposter...but Jim and Barney come to the rescue. Mission: Accomplished.
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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"We Closed in Minneapolis"
Originally aired January 30, 1971
Wiki said:
Frustrated playwright Murray has his play accepted by the Twin Cities Playhouse, and Ted and Mary join the cast.
Mary feels sorry for the impersonal rejections that Murray keeps getting, but Lou's perturbed that he's using the company's postage machine. Lou reveals to Mary that each of the staff has an ambition beyond their current jobs, including his own novel manuscript about his experiences at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal...in 1958. When Murray comes in, Mary tries to soften the blow. But when the latest envelope is opened, it turns out that the play has been accepted, though Murray doesn't recall submitting it to the playhouse...it turns out that Ted, who considers himself the playhouse's star, did, and he expects to play the lead. He talks Mary into auditioning for the part that's based on her, and she gets it. Mary's put off by how dumb the character is, but Murray insists that she wasn't entirely based on her. Lou's also upset about the behavior of the character based on him, which is accurate. Ted, on the other hand, wants his character to be more interesting.
Following the first show, Rhoda thinks that Mary was great--convincingly having made Rhoda envious--but that Ted was terrible. Ted drops in and Rhoda lies to him about his performance. Then Murray and Marie drop in, and also lie to Ted. Trying to take the subject off the play, Rhoda talks about how she went to school with Barbra Streisand. Then Lou drops in with a newspaper review: "Bomb Hits Minneapolis". The reviewer says that Ted has no conception of what a TV anchorman is like; but he considers Mary's performance to be the one adequate aspect of the production. Back at the newsroom, Lou tries to bolster Murray's confidence; but Mary brings in some books of the reviewer's old critiques, which indicate that he's pretty much panned everything, including
Death of a Salesman and
My Fair Lady.
In the coda, Ted comes in reading a rave review for his performance...which turns out to have been written by him.
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Any particular reason why?
It seems like there are less complicated ways to procure dynamite.
Apparently they'd just been planning to get it from Franklin, but Gordy being hired was a kink in their plan. For some work regulation reason, they now had to go through Gordy because Franklin was no longer the one minding the dynamite at the optimal time for slipping some out.
It probably would have been more interesting to follow the Temptations' side of the story.
I'd meant to comment that I found it hard to believe that the Simons were well-connected enough to get the likes of the Temptations and James Brown (who was scheduled to appear the following week, I think) to play pro bono, but needed the Partridges to figure out how to raise money to keep the club.
Did they ever explain how he lost his unhip Russian duds?
His scam was that he wanted American clothes so he could blend in better and avoid the Inky Dinky.
But it's really a couple of her fellow mannequins-- they won't let her defect to the world of humans!
Well at least I got that one...
