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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
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Kung Fu
"King of the Mountain"
Originally aired October 14, 1972
Series premiere
Wiki said:
Caine finds work with a widowed ranch woman and also finds he has romantic feelings for her. But the arrival of a bounty hunter (John Saxon) and the likelihood that others will follow cast an ominous shadow on their love. Winner of the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Drama (to Herman Miller).
Did somebody say "flashback"...?
What if Caine had gotten lucky and snatched the pebble while he was still a kid and hadn't finished his training?
The flashbacks here connect particularly strongly with the origin business in the pilot, helping to catch viewers up and firmly establish the premise. There's one rather awkward piece of voiceover shoehorned into a scene from the pilot, though.
Tigers feel pity? I have a hard time picturing that, Master Kan.
Lara Parker's been getting referenced prominently over in the MeTV thread. Well, here she is! The Wiki description overplays the sexual tension as a full-on romance that it doesn't quite become...but along the way, we get the Shaolin version of the birds and the bees....
Caine: Master, our bodies are prey to many needs. Hunger, thirst...the need for love.
Master Kan: In one lifetime, a man knows many pleasures. A mother's smile in waking hours...a young woman's intimate, searing touch...and the laughter of grandchildren in the twilight years. To deny these in ourselves is to deny that which makes us one with nature.
Caine: Shall we then seek to satisfy these needs?
Master Kan: Only acknowledge them, and satisfaction will follow. To suppress a truth is to give it force beyond endurance.
In the pilot, a Shaolin-trained Chinese bounty hunter comes after Caine. Here we get more of a Western type for variety. Caine beats the armed bounty hunter with his feet chained together, which is pretty badass.
The fugitive angle is in full play here, but one important ingredient is missing--They've yet to set up Caine's quest...he's just staying on the move at this point. I know there's an episode in which he visits his American grandparents and learns about his half-brother, but I'm not sure how soon it comes up.
TOS guest: Ken Lynch
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All in the Family
"Lionel Steps Out"
Originally aired October 14, 1972
Wiki said:
Archie is furious when his visiting niece Linda (Dianne Hull) goes out with Lionel.
Linda, the daughter of Archie's brother who lives in Baltimore, is having dinner with the Bunkers between flights in her job as a stewardess. While Archie's out getting cigars at the corner store, Lionel come by to pick up Linda for a date, and Edith has a multiple
ohhhs moment. When she's clearly taken aback by this, Gloria kindly makes the point that Lionel has all of the qualities that Edith would approve of in a man who's dating her niece. When Archie comes home, Edith tries to hide, and then draw Archie's attention away from, a picture of Linda and Lionel that the latter dropped off...which is sitting on the table between Archie and Edith's chairs. Noticing how strangely Edith is acting, Archie brings up the "change thing" that she'd previously gone through. Eventually Archie sees the picture. His initial expression is priceless, and then he's beside himself.
Archie calls the Jeffersons, then goes on with the family about everything that's wrong with the situation.
Archie: If God had intended white people to dance with c****** people...
Mike: He'd have given us rhythm, too.
Henry Jefferson arrives, and he's just as upset about Lionel seeing a white girl, along with the prospect of adding more "cream into the coffee". When Lionel and Linda return, Archie has a condescending talk with Lionel in the kitchen, during which Lionel makes clear that he values his friendship with Archie, but won't tolerate his bigotry anymore. Linda informs Archie that her father isn't so strict about who she sees, and Archie can't believe it. After Lionel leaves, she refuses to let Archie sit her down to have a talk.
In the coda, all's well with the family as Archie gets a thank you letter from his brother for hosting Linda.
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Emergency!
"Peace Pipe"
Originally aired October 14, 1972
Wiki said:
A drunk driver (William Campbell) rams into a car, trapping a little girl inside, and the doctors are concerned the girl may have brain damage...as well as paralysis, if surgery is successful. Firefighter Chester B. "Chet" Kelly pesters Gage about his Native American heritage. The firefighters have to rescue a man on a scaffold while a sniper is pinning them down. Other rescues include a boy getting his hand stuck in a gumball machine, a woman whose extremely tight girdle is causing breathing problems, and a fire caused by a workman mixing fuel into water lines.
The episodes open with Station 51 arriving at the scene of the auto accident, where the driver, Sam Jenks (Campbell), protests that he only had a couple of beers. The owner of the other car, Nancy Taylor (Brooke Bundy), comes up crying that her little girl Debbie was in the car while she was handling groceries. Johnny pries open the door with the jaws of life and they find the girl trapped comatose under crushed dashboard. Jenks is taken to Rampart escorted by a recurring deputy (Vince Howard), who has blood taken for a test. After she's freed, Debbie (uncredited Jennifer Lesko) is taken to Rampart, followed by her mother and father, Stan (Kip Niven). Brackett doesn't like the risks of performing surgery--not surviving or potentially suffering brain damage if she does--but it's her only option. Dixie consults the parents, learning that they'd already lost a son in an auto accident and adopted Debbie afterward. Stan signs his consent and Brackett proceeds.
Debbie remains comatose afterward, the results uncertain. Stan goes into Jenks's room with the intent of doing harm, and has a talk with Brackett instead.
Stan: How can a person drink himself to oblivion and then drive a car?
Brackett: That's the problem--they can't.
Back at the station, the firefighters finish watching a Western. Chet thinks the film is a classic, but Johnny denounces it as propaganda, giving Chet a piece of his mind about the historical mistreatment of Indians. When Roy tries to cool things down, Johnny accuses him of siding with a fellow Irishman. When Chet protests that he allegedly has some Indian blood in him via a princess down the family line, Johny mocks him for evoking this common family myth. (Seems like maybe the show is trying to emulate a certain timeslot rival, perhaps...?)
Squad 51 heads to a food stand where a sassy kid (uncredited Richard Steele) has his hand stuck in a gumball machine while being berated as a crook by the owner (uncredited Ken Lynch). While the owner advocates cutting the kid's finger off, the paramedics have no choice but to break the glass, for which they wrap the kid's arm and face in a protective tarp, then take the dispenser apart. The kid points out where his penny is stuck in the machine. The kid negotiates for a free hot dog a day for two months in return for not suing.
Back at the station, Chet has been reading an anthropological study of Native Americans and questions Johnny about why he left the reservation. Johnny expresses his disapproval of the academics who came around every summer to observe his people in their attempts to prove new theories, and cites the millions of dollars that the one who wrote the book spent on his research, arguing that it would have been better spent directly on his research subjects.
Squad 51 goes to an apartment to help a woman who's having trouble breathing (Renee Lippin). The full-figured, bathrobe-clad woman reveals that the problem is her new girdle, which Johnny has to cut off from the side, causing it to snap off in his face.
The squad is called with a couple of engines to a home where there's a bathroom fire. Arriving first, the paramedics try to use a garden hose, and find that the water has something flammable in it. Outside, a bystander tosses a match in a puddle of the tainted water and it goes up, by which point the engines have arrived to put it out with their hoses. The paramedics check a hydrant on a nearby street and find that the local water has fuel oil in it. They proceed to a location where they've seen a fuel pipeline routinely being worked on, to find a worker there using a water hose attached to a hydrant. Roy explains how the pressure difference between the two is causing a backup into the hydrant.
At the station again, a suspicious-acting Chet makes a show of promising to stop making Indian jokes. When Roy and Johnny get into an argument over whether the jokes are funny, Chet delivers his punchline--offering them the episode's titular object.
At Rampart, just as Brackett is admitting to being out of answers regarding Debbie's condition, he's summoned to her room, her parents having noticed movement. At Brackett's instruction, the girl moves her fingers and toes...then she opens her eyes and addresses her mommy and daddy, to their joy.
At the station, Chet is setting up his next joke, offering a treaty over a fire axe dressed in feathers, when the station is summoned to a construction accident. They find another man lying on a scaffold, this time having to climb up the exposed girders of a rooftop sign to get to him. Just as Roy declares that the man's been shot, a sniper starts taking shots at them from another building. The paramedics have a tarp passed up and set it up to conceal themselves while lowering the victim on the Stokes. Police arrive to apprehend the sniper.
At the station, the paramedics get a call from Rampart that the bullet has been removed from the victim, and Johnny plays into Chet's running gag when explaining how he got the idea to use the tarp.
I was wincing when I saw what they were planning to do in this episode, but I thought they handled it pretty well, having Johnny be so aggressively informative on the subject.
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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"It's Whether You Win or Lose"
Originally aired October 14, 1972
Wiki said:
When Lou is kept from joining his poker pals in Las Vegas, he insists Mary set up a poker game at work, which becomes a problem for Murray, a former compulsive gambler.
It's now blizzard season in Minneapolis, and the airport is shut down, canceling Lou's flight to Vegas. Lou is the last to find out...for a seasoned news guy, he's slow on the uptake regarding the situation. When he's filled in, Lou tries to blame Gordy, then rants to the entire newsroom about snow. Gordy suggests getting a poker game going after hours at the station to cheer Lou up, and Murray avoids the subject. Mary makes arrangements, which include using the table on the set of the children's show
King Artie's Castle. When Murray learns how clueless Ted is about the rules of the game, he agrees to play. That night, Marie comes to Mary's unable to find Murray at the newsroom, and when she learns what Murray's doing, she informs Mary of Murray's compulsive gambling...and Mary is forced to admit that she persuaded him to play.
Mary drops in on the game to try to talk to Murray, who's intensely into it. When she tries to take Murray home, Lou sees her out. Ted ends up bumbling his way into winning the game, with Murray owing him $375. Murray offers Ted a wager that involves canceling his debt if Ted blows a Japanese finance minister's name on the air. Ted flubs his way through the rest of the news, and while he worries everyone by flawlessly practicing saying the name, he ends up blowing it as usual on camera, causing him to curse and break into tears during the broadcast.
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Mission: Impossible
"TOD-5"
Originally aired October 14, 1972
Wiki said:
In order to recover a stolen bioweapon canister and ferret out a diabolical scientist's (Ray Walston) terrorist organization, the IMF makes the organization's courier believe he has been infected himself.
Gordon Holt (Peter Haskell) meets with Paul Morse (Ross Elliott) in a hotel room about obtaining a container of TOD-5 on behalf of his people in an organization called Alpha. Afterward Holt makes a call to Dr. Victor Flory (Walston). A pay phone go-between, Ralph Davies (Michael Conrad), eavesdrops on the call, after which a female scientist (Susan Brown, whose character is colorfully billed as Alpha Woman) informs Flory that Davies has been asking questions about TOD-5.
The record on an old-fashioned phonograph in a museum said:
Good morning, Mr. Phelps. This man, Paul Morse, is a government scientist who intends to sell a top secret biological weapon called TOD-5 to a terrorist ring called the Alpha Group. It is headed by this man, Dr. Victor Flory. We believe the Alpha Group intends to use chemical and biological weapons to terrorize the nation in a bid for power within the next few days. Ex-intelligence officer Gordon Holt is Alpha's contact with Morse and the one man who can lead us to Alpha headquarters. Conventional law enforcement agencies have not been able to locate the Alpha Group. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to is to find the Alpha Group and destroy their bio-warfare operation. This record will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim!
It looked more like the needle was going up in smoke, but whatever. This is a Mimi episode, and Casey's said to be monitoring a European satellite of Alpha.
Jim and Willy nab Morse in the garage across from the hotel where he parks his car, after he's retrieved the TOD-5 canister. Holt returns to the hotel to be told that nobody's been staying in the room where he met Morse, so he picks the room's lock and has a look around. Then he returns to his own car in the garage to find Mechanic Willy working on a problem he noticed, with Sheriff Jim intervening on Willy's behalf. Everyone's attention is drawn to a woman screaming outside, where a man stumbles into the street and collapses with nasty-looking sores covering his face. Mimi appears as the man's distraught-acting girlfriend, and Army Doctor Barney is among the crew that takes him away in an ambulance.
Holt visits the bar where Mimi's working as a waitress to ask questions about her boyfriend, Morse, and how to get a call out of town, as the phone lines are down. Afterward Davies comes in asking about Holt, while Sheriff Jim sits at the bar. It becomes clear that Davies isn't an IMF informant, and they later identify him by his fingerprints. Davies calls Flory to report his own observations about what's going on in the town, and Flory dismisses the idea of an outbreak because the TOD-5 is potent enough that everyone would already be dead. Meanwhile, Holt sneaks around the garage and finds Morse's car with an IMF-switched counterfeit TOD-5 canister in it. He tries to drive out of town to find the road blocked, with Sheriff Jim advising him to return his stolen car. Holt goes back to the bar to question Mimi about what's really going on in the town, and she confirms what he suspects about a breakout being covered up, and the sheriff being an imposter. Mimi has a rendezvous with Holt in his hotel room and starts to get romantic so she can stick him with a knockout drug, after which the IMFers inject him with something that will later cause nasty sores to develop on him. A tape of a news broadcast hidden in his room radio and a turned-back watch give Holt the impression that no time passed while he was out. Mimi tells Holt that Willy was just found dead, and Holt follows the ambulance crew that picks him up to their facility, where he finds a morgue locker of sore-faced bodies, including Willy's.
Holt is caught by Doctor Barney, who confirms the outbreak, demonstrates a sore indicating that he's one of the lucky few who are immune to the contagion, and then shows Holt that he's got a sore of his own. Holt busts out too easily and returns to Mimi, whom he reasons is one of the immune, and offers to take her to a place that can help them. Sheriff Jim shows up at Mimi's door with sores on his face and collapses, and they use his car to too-easily get through the roadblock. They're followed on road by the IMF Van with the help of a homing transmitter in Mimi's watch, and offroad by Davies in a Jeep. Davies blows out the sheriff's car's tire and takes shots at Holt when he and Mimi get out, demanding Holt turn over the canister. The IMFers catch up and witness the shouted negotiations from concealment, concerned that Davies is a rogue element who'll blow the whole operation. Holt surrenders and tosses Davies a bag with the fake canister in it. While Davies is inspecting it, Holt rolls for his gun and shoots Davies, whose rifle fires a wild shot that wounds Mimi. (I think we have a rule for the M:I Season 7 Drinking Game.) Mimi, who somehow knows where the others are watching from, visually signals them that her watch is broken. Holt puts her in Davies's Jeep and heads for Alpha.
The IMFers get the location of Alpha's lair out of a surviving Davies by threatening to expose him to the TOD-5 by firing on the canister from a distance. Holt takes Mimi to the lab hidden in a church basement and shows Flory his worsened sores, using his deliberate exposure of everyone in the facility as leverage to get them to develop a cure from Mimi's immunity. Contrary to his earlier skepticism, Flory actually buys this indirect ruse, hook, line, and sinker. Then Holt appears to die--an intended effect of what the IMF shot him up with--and Mimi's transmitter is discovered by the female scientist's Alpha Vision. Holt then recovers and starts peeling the temporary sores off his face. Just as Flory is ordering both visitors killed, the IMFers storm in, shoot him, and rescue Mimi, who's shown recovering in a hospital bed in a coda scene.
This was was definitely a very pre-Syndicate episode.
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Shouldn't a secret sub have a secret boarding facility?
Spies, perhaps?
The scene that popped into my mind was
The Omega Man.
Did he drive a car out of a showroom window? Was this already a thing?
Seriously, the Department couldn't spring for a half dozen bikes? They had to borrow them?
Supposedly they were up for auction, but I didn't catch why Wells's had an owner to contend with.
