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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
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Mission: Impossible
"Speed"
Originally aired February 16, 1973
Wiki said:
The team is sent after a powerful drug-dealer (Claude Akins), whose daughter (Jenny Sullivan) is addicted to amphetamines. Partly filmed on location in San Francisco. This was the first episode produced for the seventh and final season of the original series.
That's right--only three episodes until the end and we're still not done with Lynda's pregnancy or Greg's 'stache!
A hood named Phalen (Ron Soble) and an accomplice break into a chemical plant by night, holding up the guard and driving their tanker truck in to fill it up with the titular narcotic. Phalen reports his success via phone to Sam Hibbing (Akins).
The reel-to-reel tape in a railroad engine at a train museum said:
Good morning, Mr. Phelps. Last night, the Stonehurst Chemical Plant was robbed of three tons of D-amphetamine sulfate, commonly known as "speed." Conventional law enforcement agencies believe that Sam Hibbing, the West's largest dealer in illegal drugs, engineered the robbery, and now has the drug hidden at a secret location where he plans to package it in pill form and sell it to the underground at a huge profit. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find and recover the speed before Hibbing can distribute it, and to put Hibbing out of business for good. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
Hibbing's drug-addicted, dirt-biking daughter, Margaret (Sullivan), is waylaid by the IMF on her way to a rally so Casey in disguise can take her place. Being played by another actress gives Casey the freedom to make a show of biking recklessly through the streets of San Francisco (a Quinn Martin Production...which started this season) so that her father will pursue her. Conventional law enforcement and an unnamed operative in a car help Casey to stage an accident, following which Hibbing makes a point of taking her stash so the fuzz won't find it. Fake Margaret is taken to the hospital, where Jim, posing as a biking buddy, offers Hibbing to help his daughter get off speed.
Meanwhile, Barney, posing as a visiting underworld figure from New Orleans, makes a deal with supplier Mike Dayton (Charles Bateman) to put up the bread to purchase Hibbing's newly acquired goods at an upcoming auction. Casey gets an unexpected visit from Zinc (Jesse Vint), a sleazier actual biker boyfriend of Margaret's whose advances she has to fend off and who gives her a new stash while expecting payment. Tipped off by surveillance, Jim pops in and a fight and chase ensue, with Jim losing Zinc in an elevator that the IMF didn't have the forethought to rig for the occasion. Jim then pays the real Margaret a visit at the hospital where she's being held to question her about Zinc, but she won't talk without a fix.
Jim brings home Fake Margaret, who makes a show of having gotten straight with his help. Margaret's new pal catches the attention of Hibbing's top man, Fred Snelling (uncredited Ross Hagen), who's long had an interest in the real McCoy. While the auction takes place, which involves multiple rounds of bidding on paper ballots, Phelan investigates the charter air office where Jim's supposed to be working. He's caught at gunpoint by Willy, posing as a disgruntled employee of Jim's. Phalen claims that he's an insurance investigator, and Willy tells him how Jim was a Korean War pilot who spent ten years in Leavenworth for killing another officer.
Barney and Dayton win the bidding, and Barney hands over the 40% downpayment in marked counterfeit bills, with the rest to be given on delivery, for which Barney sets the condition that the goods have to be delivered to New Orleans very early the next morning. Casey calls Smelling to get friendlier and offer him a tip that his position as Hibbing's delivery expert is being muscled in on. He goes to see first Hibbing, then Fake Margaret, whom he finds having a fake drug-induced freak-out. Margaret implicates Smelling as the one who brought her the pills, and Jim attacks him in a fake rage, mercilessly TV Fu-ing him multiple times and injecting the unconscious man with Barney Juice to simulate death. Concerned that the tight delivery schedule is now in jeopardy, Hibbing corners Jim into handling it for him.
Zinc pays Casey another unexpected visit in Margaret's bedroom in which he tries to force himself on her and loosens her mask. Hibbing catches the two of them and Zinc Scooby Doo's Casey, so she jumps out a window and evades foot pursuit. Realizing that he's been dealing with "the Man," Hibbing races to the warehouse where Jim's picking up the goods, but when Hibbing confronts him, Jim and Barney come to the rescue with a little gunplay to take out his men.
The episode closes with Real Margaret being released, grateful to Jim for helping her get straight.
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Love, American Style
"Love and the Baby Derby / Love and the Burglar Joke / Love and the Favorite Family"
Originally aired February 16, 1973
"Love and the Baby Derby" opens with brothers Paul and Danny Thorndyke (John Davidson and Wes Stern) attending what turns out to be a fake funeral of their Uncle Julius (E.J. André), who's used the occasion to offer via still-living will $1 million to the first Thorndyke to marry and have a baby. Swinger Paul tries calling various girlfriends, but none want to take the chance of losing the challenge while being stuck with a baby. Danny more pathetically tries to call a number of girls from his past who weren't interested in him in the first place. All the while, Julius and his right-hand man, Lorimer (Harold Peary), keep track of the nephews' efforts in a war room.
Danny puts his brains to work, screening applicants from a computer dating service who are rated with the highest fertility quotient (all of whom already have babies). Paul gets a visit from Johnnie Darling, a cross-dresser (Charles Pierce) whom it turns out was paid by Danny as a distraction. Danny in turn meets Jane (Colleen Camp), a very attractive woman who doesn't meet his qualifications, but whom he falls for at first sight. Paul also finds himself smitten with Johnnie's sister, Boni (Barra Grant). This leads to a double wedding, followed by a reception in which both brothers have rigged the food and drinks to gain head starts, knocking everyone attending out. Various other pranks ensue on the honeymoon night, causing both brothers to be too wary of the other to just get on with the usual business.
We jump ahead nine months to both brothers waiting at the hospital while their wives are in labor. Paul is informed first, but it turns out that Jane had twins, and delivered the first earlier. Neither gets the money, however, because it turns out that Julius got married to his nurse (wartime German secretary Cynthia Lynn), who had his baby two days earlier.
"Love and the Favorite Family" takes us to the set of
Meet the Mercers--an
Ozzie and Harriet-style sitcom in which an actual family play TV-friendly versions of themselves. America's favorite family consists of father Steve (William Schallert), mother Susan (June Lockhart), jockish son Buzz (Larry Bishop), and drunk sister Penny (Jenifer Shaw), who occupy a set that looks like another redress of the Brady kitchen. While they project a wholesome late '50s / early '60s image on camera, the actors bicker over their contracts and number of lines between takes. A Mr. Nielsen (William Tregoe) visits the set to inform them that they've been canceled after ten years. The director (James Millhollin) resolves to save the show by making the episode they're working on the best they've ever done, though nothing much comes of this. Amidst the family in-fighting, we learn that Buzz owns controlling stock of the production company and is having an affair with the TV family's wacky neighbor Wilma (Bobbi Jordan) off camera. Nielsen returns to inform the Mercers that he'd gotten them mistaken for another sitcom featuring a family with a similar name. The segment ends with a couch potato couple watching the show, laughing and nodding their heads at the dated onscreen humor.
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All in the Family
"Hot Watch"
Originally aired February 17, 1973
Wiki said:
Archie buys a $300 watch for just $25, but Mike suspects the watch could have been stolen, making Archie an accomplice in a crime.
The episode opens with Mike frustrated because Gloria's been working long hours while her store does inventory, not leaving them time for...you know. Archie comes home in a good mood, showing off his new watch, which includes the time in China, a calendar, the phases of the Moon, and an alarm. Edith scurries to set the table in double time because Archie's timing her. Archie reveals what the timepiece cost and that his friend who sold it to him works on the docks, raising Mike's indignation, which veers into a tirade about how Congress lets Nixon get away with anything without asking any questions. (Hope he likes the taste of his own foot.) Mike's reaction when he learns Archie's friend is an ex-con causes Archie to accuse him of hypocrisy, as he'd be more sympathetic if Tommy were a minority.
The watch stops after Archie pounds his Heinz bottle. Afraid to take it to a legitimate shop where it could be identified as stolen, Archie tries to find a shadier repairman through first a friend of Stretch Cunningham, then Lionel, only to learn that Edith already took the watch to a jeweler. Mike and Gloria come downstairs after clearly having found some time. Archie tries to call the jeweler to get the watch back quickly, but the shop is closed. Then the jeweler, Mr. Abrams (Jack Tesler), drops by to inform him of the bill, and that the watch is a cheap knock-off of the expensive brand that Archie thought it was, making the bill more than the watch is worth. After Abrams leaves, there's some mind-boggling nonsense about Archie thinking that he lost $275 on the watch based on how much he thought it was worth.
Coda continuity: Archie's wearing his glasses to read the paper.
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Emergency!
"Honest"
Originally aired February 17, 1973
The first sentence on Wiki said:
A gas explosion injures a newlywed couple, because the wife had lied to the husband about his cigars, and this leads Johnny on a crusade to be honest in any situation
Station 51 responds to a gas explosion at the home of Martin and Leslie Noble (Michael Lerner and Beverly Sanders). It turns out that Martin lit a cigar when he didn't know that Leslie had left the oven on. Johnny holds the wife's white lie about liking the smell of his cigars responsible for the explosion, on the dubious logic that the whole thing might not have happened if she'd been honest with him from the beginning (though Martin had apparently already had a fight with her after having learned the truth).
A boy who's having severe breathing difficulty is brought into Rampart and examined by Morton. When Morton is bluntly honest with his mother, Mrs. Epps (Anne Whitfield), that Roderick is choking to death and he doesn't know why, she goes into hysterics, causing Roy to argue to Johnny that total honesty isn't necessarily a good thing. At the station, Chet gives Johnny another lesson by telling him what a nurse he's seeing really thinks about him.
The squad is called to a hotel where a man lies unconscious in a pool after attempting to dive in from the roof. The paramedics get him braced up for moving with the help of the pair of clothed bystanders who've been holding him above water. Roy tells Brackett that the patient shows signs of having a spinal injury. A tenuous attempt is made to tie this incident into the episode's theme based on how the diver, Andy, was responding to a challenge from a female companion named Jill (Hilda Wynn), though I wasn't following the logic of it. Andy is rushed to Rampart, where Brackett and Morton are trying to get details from Mrs. Epps about what Roderick and his college-age older brother Curtis have been up to in Curtis's garage lab. Morton later gets details from Curtis on the phone about how they were dissecting a frog and deduces that boy is allergic to formaldehyde fumes.
A 13-year-old accident victim named Teddy is brought in, having been driving his mother's car in a high-speed chase with police. A girl named Cheryl who boards in Teddy's house (Ondine Vaughn) blames herself because she never told his mother that he'd been sneaking rides in her car, afraid of getting him in trouble. This gives Johnny more ammo in his stance on honesty.
Station 51 and other units are called to a house fire in Miller Canyon, where an infant boy named Toby and his grandfather are trapped inside. the firefighters prioritize getting the child out only to learn that the old man (uncredited Vincent Perry), who said he'd find his own way out, is blind, so they go back in to save him...and Johnny fumes over the potential consequences of the man's lie. They get him out in time and get him to Rampart.
At Rampart, Mike blames himself for the Epps boy dying, though Brackett and Dix have belatedly learned that his mother gave him antihistamine before bringing him in, which would have complicated his situation. At the station, Roy argues to a sullen Johnny that the grandfather's lie was a noble one, and Chet strings Johnny along some more about the nurse he's seeing.
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The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Remembrance of Things Past"
Originally aired February 17, 1973
Wiki said:
Against her better judgment, Mary gets drawn into an affair with an ex-boyfriend who previously broke her heart.
Mary gets a call at work from old boyfriend Tom Vernon. She's hesitant to take the call and makes excuses to not see him. Later she describes to Rhoda how he once indirectly proposed to her, and the roller coaster effect that their relationship had on her emotions. He calls her again at home and she continues to avoid seeing him; but the next day she ends up calling him with Murray's encouragement and sets a date.
Mary initially insists on going out, but Tom (Joseph Campanella) romantically breaks down her defenses and she agrees to delivery. The next day, Mary frets over receiving a call from Tom that never comes, but he shows up at her apartment that night with pizza and beer. She tries to make another excuse to cut things short, then breaks down when she finds that he brought her the wrong type of pizza. They have a discussion about his lack of commitment, he asserts that they want different things out of a relationship, and they regretfully accept that it won't work between them.
A subplot has Ted preparing for a visit to Washington to interview Secretary of State William P. Rogers. That's not the only reference to the contemporaneous presidential administration. Mary describes to Rhoda how she switched into an overly formal mode when Tom initially called her:
My voice sounded like Pat Nixon welcoming Eagle Scouts to the oval room.
In the coda, Ted returns from his trip to editorialize on the air because he couldn't get in to see the president:
Something to hide, Richard Nixon?
Umm...
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The Bob Newhart Show
"Emily, I'm Home...Emily?"
Originally aired February 17, 1973
Wiki said:
Emily is rarely home for Bob after she finds a full-time job.
The first words of the episode are totally titular! Emily comes home late to inform Bob that she's hosting a committee meeting, which interferes with Bob's ability to watch a basketball game. He tries taking the set into the bedroom, but Emily thinks it's too loud and awkwardness ensues when Bob has to put his suit on over his pajamas to go out to the kitchen. Trying to watch the game at Howard's doesn't work out when Mary Ellen (Jill Jaress, reprising her role from "The Crash of 29 Years Old") drops in for private time. Emily visits Bob's office the next day to tell him that she's been offered a full-time administrative position, but given his experience the previous night, Bob isn't pleased with the development.
The first words of the second act double the titularity! Three weeks later, Bob comes home to find that Emily's gotten a Spanish-speaking maid, Marina (Alma Beltran). Emily comes home with groceries that turn out to be easy-to-make packaged food, as she doesn't have time to cook anymore. Bob ends up so desperate for after-work companionship that he asks Elliot Carlin to dinner. After unloading his own problems on his patient, Bob returns home very late and very plastered. Bob slurrily asks Emily to quit her job, but relents when she tells him that working makes her feel good.
Bob: I'm sober enough to know...I don't wanna go from the flying plan into the fryer.
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