_______
50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
_______
Mission: Impossible
"The Pendulum"
Originally aired February 23, 1973
Wiki said:
In order to prevent a secret terrorist organization known as "The Pendulum" from disrupting the power centers of the United States and executing a major attack on the country in a plan called "Project Nightfall," the IMF must convince a brilliant but ruthless member of the organization (Dean Stockwell) he's being recruited by a more powerful organization. This was the last episode produced for the original series.
General Weston (Frank Maxwell) is driven into a reclamation project, shot by Gunnar Malstrom (Stockwell), and buried with a bulldozer. Malstrom reports to the directors of Pendulum--a really small-scale SPECTRE whose evil boardroom table is more of an evil card table; whose leader known only as Leader is played by Jack Donner; and one of whose members has had plastic surgery to impersonate Weston. We learn that Project Nightfall is a plan to take control of the US military.
The reel-to-reel tape in a wine cellar within sight of the Daily Planet said:
Good morning, Mr. Phelps. Gunnar Malstrom is one of the leaders of the Pendulum, a secret terrorist organization seeking to dominate the power centers of our country. We have been unable to identify any other members, but we have learned that the Pendulum group is putting into action a plan code-named "Nightfall," involving a major attack on our government. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, will be to prevent this catastrophe by discovering what "Nightfall" is, and stopping it. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
At the time of the briefing, Casey is already seeing Malstrom, who's a young electronics genius by day. At their next date, she makes an enigmatic recruitment pitch to him, and Willy steps over from the bar to chastise her for overstepping her bounds. Barney later pays Malstrom a visit at his office, in the role of a contact that Casey namedropped, expressing an interest in meeting the leaders of Pendulum while planting a bug. Investigating Barney, Malstrom's secretary, Allen Bock (Scott Brady), relieves a hotel switchboard operator who's really an IMFer (Beverly Moore) to eavesdrop on a phone conversation between Barney and Willy in their roles. On his next date with Casey, Malstrom expresses an interest in her offer, so she takes him to meet Barney at the headquarters of her organization, World Resources Unlimited, which has got the evil poker table beat all hollow...
IMDb said:
An establishing shot shows that the headquarters has an unusual "inverted double pyramid" design, in which each lower floor gradually becomes wider than the floor below it until the middle level, after which each floor becomes proportionately smaller for the same number of stories. This building is actually the library on the campus of the University of California at San Diego as it looked in the early 1970s when this was filmed.
Geisel Library - Wikipedia
Named after Dr. Seuss, no less!
The place is bustling with repertory foreign dignitaries brokering arms deals and such. Malstrom is allowed to sneak around and finds a vantage point from which to spy on a presentation being made by Willy in an envy-evoking evil lecture hall. Barney takes the podium to expose Malstrom, declaring him to be a prisoner. Malstrom is tied into a chair that's rigged to serve as a polygraph. In his conversation with Gunnar, Barney fishes for information, and Jim signals him regarding the results via lights behind Malstrom. They narrow down Pendulum's interest in Weston, who's chairman of the Joint Services Intelligence Staff. Meanwhile, Bock, who's supposed to be in Europe, reports to the Leader and Fake Weston about Malstrom's whereabouts, then heads out to infiltrate the place.
Malstrom is taken to see the organization's Chief--Jim, of course, who'd look great with a white cat. Pretending to know more than he does, Jim expresses an interest in acquiring Pendulum and making Malstrom its puppet leader. Malstrom isn't easily swayed, but Jim deduces from Malstrom's reactions that Nightfall is happening soon, and they have to find out when. The IMF is more ahead of things than they know as an IMF member (uncredited Max Kleven) who doesn't do voices dons a Bock disguise to stage a rescue attempt.
IMF agent: What if Malstrom starts askin' me any questions?
Barney: Don't worry, Willy'll kill you...using blood-capsule bullets, of course.
Using an alias with government credentials, Jim goes to see Fake Weston, thinking that he's real Weston, to warn him of an assassination attempt. Weston invites him to sit in on a meeting of military brass that he's hosting--and secretly planning to bomb while he and the Leader, posing as Weston's aide, wait outside.
Sneaking around WRU's parking garage, the real Bock spots and takes out his imposter, then makes an attempt on Malstrom. When Willy sees that one of the guards has been shot by a real bullet, he realizes that he's dealing with Real Bock. While Willy's taking care of him via firefight, Malstrom commandeers a car and screeches out. Barney and Casey tail Malstrom with the help of a bug that Casey planted on him, and he proceeds to Weston's house in Beverly Hills, where military VIPs are known to live. Fake Weston goes out to see Malstrom after planting his bomb, and listening via the bug, Barney and Casey realize that Weston's a phony, learn of the bomb, and hear the Leader shooting Malstrom with a silenced pistol--boy, is Jim gonna be jealous! Barney alerts Jim via an earpiece, and Jim hurls the suspiciously unattended briefcase out the window just in the nick of time. A living and conscious Malstrom is wheeled out to an ambulance in the aftermath.
I was disappointed that no repertory agents were fake-electrocuted or fake-fed to piranhas.
_______
Love, American Style
"Love and the Crisis Line / Love and the Happy Family / Love and the Vertical Romance"
Originally aired February 23, 1973
"Love and the Crisis Line": When Sydney Wimple (Gary Burghoff must be on our radar from something...) reads about a crisis line in the paper--which shows pictures of the operators, who make house calls (I'm pretty sure it never worked like that)--his roommate, Steve Stone (Fabian), gives them a call, describing psychological symptoms that Sydney actually suffers around women. The operator who pays a visit, Janet (Carole Ita White), is nerdish and aggressive, not like the ones in the paper. When Steve makes the date sound better than it was, Sydney decides to give the crisis line a try. He specifically requests Janet, but gets a sub named Peggy (Linda Kaye Henning) instead. She's more than Sydney bargained for, so he passes her off to Steve. While Steve talks to her, Sydney wanders the apartment exhibiting the symptoms that Steve described on the phone, including nervous hiccups and distractedly putting his food in his seat and sitting on it. Sydney ends up going out on the ledge, considering himself hopeless. Peggy goes out after him and brings him back in. At this point she's more interested in talking to Sydney, and when she admits to her own hang-ups, Sydney offers to listen and the two experience mutual attraction. Steve goes out on the ledge for attention, but Janet drops in and enthusiastically goes out after him.
"Love and the Happy Family": See Jane (Sian Barbara Allen) kiss Dick (Ed Begley Jr.). Kiss, Jane, kiss. It turns out that Dick and Jane are step-siblings, her father, Walter (Murray Hamilton), having married his mother, Ruth (Kim Hunter). The kids are only in town for a break while attending schools in separate states, and while the parents are concerned about the two of them not getting along, Dick and Jane are actually feigning sibling spats so they can get away to make out...until Walter catches them in the linen closet. The parents sit them down for a talk and they argue that they're not really related. (Do I sense some shade being thrown in the general direction of
The Brady Bunch?) The parents end up getting into a fight defending their children, so Dick and Jane agree to cool things down and just act like siblings for the remainder of the visit.
Hoping to get the two of them interested in other people, Walter brings home Bert (Murray MacLeod), an awkward young man who works at his firm. Dick insists on hovering around as a chaperone while Bert spends time with Jane, creating actual tension between the step-siblings. Walter brings Bert over again, and this time Jane throws herself at him to make Dick jealous. But when Bert brings her home from their date, Jane pushes him away and he leaves angrily. See Dick wait up for Jane. Wait, Dick, wait. The two of them make up, and the parents, pretending to be okay with it at this point, are relieved that the kids will be going their separate ways the next day...but anticipate things heating up in the summer.
"Love and the Vertical Romance": It's only after Victor (Albert Salmi) and Elizabeth (Karen Morrow) return from a two-week camping honeymoon that Elizabeth learns that her husband suffers from bedaphobia--he hasn't been able to sleep in a bed since his brother trapped him in a convertible sofa as a kid, so he sleeps leaning against a wall. She tries to join him, but has trouble staying upright when she starts to fall asleep. Elizabeth comes up with the idea of having Victor's long-estranged brother, Alfred (David Ketchum), over so that, under pretense of wanting to mend fences, Victor can trap Alfred in a sofa bed as a release. Afterward, Victor gains enough confidence to get into bed, but still suffers from anxiety about it, so Elizabeth pushes the button to retract their pull-down bed into the wall, so that they're lying in bed while standing up...the catch being that she suffers from claustrophobia.
_______
All in the Family
"Archie Is Branded"
Originally aired February 24, 1973
Wiki said:
Archie discovers a swastika painted on his front door one Sunday and dismisses it as a prank, but Mike believes it's something far more serious.
NOTE: Jean Stapleton's son, John Putch, appears in a small role as a Boy Scout.
Archie does a delayed double take after bringing in his Sunday paper. Assuming neighborhood kids are responsible, he calls the cops...and Edith wants to wipe off the door before they come. Archie opts to hang Old Glory over it instead. Edith discovers a vaguely threatening note outside, and when the mailman (on Sunday?) delivers a package that sounds like it's ticking, Mike puts it in the kitchen sink with the water on and everyone runs outside. When they go back in to check on it, they hear the ticking again and it turns out to be a kitchen timer in Edith's apron. The package had been a gift of cigars to Archie from the husband of Edith's cousin Amelia.
A shady character named Paul Benjamin (Gregory Sierra) shows up to offer protection, but it turns out that he's under the mistaken impression first that Archie is Jewish, and then that his name is Bloom. It turns out that Bloom is a Jewish school board member who lives up the street, and that the vandals got the wrong house, but Benjamin still expects them to return to follow up on their threat. Benjamin reveals that he's with the Hebrew Defense Association, a vigilante group, and some heated argument ensues with Mike and Gloria over his group's violent methods, with Archie backing Benjamin--and even coming to tolerate Paul's habit of referring to him as "bubbie". An associate of Benjamin's drops in to inform him that the vandals are headed to the actual Bloom house. After Benjamin leaves, the family hears an explosion outside and, in an unexpectedly grim ending, look out the door to find that Paul's been the victim of a car bombing...soberly underscoring Mike's argument that violence only begets more violence. The initial end credits play over silence rather than applause.
_______
Emergency!
"Seance"
Originally aired February 24, 1973
Frndly said:
Bizarre calls for help involving a woman who thinks her husband is being stalked by the spirit of her dead sister.
Seems like this one wanted to air in October. The station crew are watching
Frankenstein when the squad gets called to help Dorothy Teal (Fintan Meyler), an unconscious woman at a titular occult gathering that's still in progress--led by a medium, Mrs. Butler (Suzanne Charny), who insists that the circle not be broken to help her. Harry Teal (Charles Aidman) comes home and breaks the party up, sending everyone on their way, though Butler warns of dire consequences...and tries to get payment, claiming that every psychic experience causes her to shed pounds. At Rampart, the conscious Dorothy explains that she was trying to reach her recently deceased sister, and insists on returning home rather than seeing a shrink.
A young man named Ken (Bruno Kirby, billed as B. Kirby Jr.) who's exhibiting strange behavior--including difficulty balancing and his eyes rolling back in his head--is dropped off at Rampart by friends who think he's putting them on, but he collapses at check-in. After consulting with Ken's personal physician via phone, Brackett gets Ken to admit that he's been taking his mother's prescription tranquilizers...motivated by being hung up on Jill (Laurie Brighton), the girl who stayed with him at the hospital despite assuming that he was faking it.
The paramedics are awakened in the middle of the night by a call to return to the Teal home (while the engine crew gets to roll over and go back to sleep). Dorothy insists that her sister Alice is haunting the house, and a skeptical Harry explains that the sisters became estranged over Dorothy marrying him. Dorothy insists that Harry has to leave the house, and he agrees to stay at a hotel if she'll return to the hospital. Back in the truck, Roy admits to having experienced a funny feeling when they searched the house to humor Mrs. Teal.
By day, the squad is called to the Teal home yet again, where Harry has suffered a head injury. He says that he tripped in the dark, but Dorothy is convinced that it was Alice. Johnny convinces her to take her husband to a doctor as a ruse to get her to a doctor. While she's getting her things together, Harry consults the paramedics about what he should do.
After the squad attends to a worker who was trapped under a stack of boxes at a warehouse, and at Rampart is discovered to have suffered a tear in his heart lining, Roy asks Brackett for his advice about the Teal situation. He recommends psychiatry or getting her away on a trip. Later, the station is called to a fire at the Teal home. They find the drapes burning and Harry lying unconscious from smoke inhalation with burned hands. When he's revived, he says that Dorothy set the fire, though she blames Alice.
The squad and another station are called to Marina del Rey, where a car has sunken in a channel. Roy and Johnny dive in to find the driver trapped in his VW with a small pocket of air. Rescue boats arrives to assist, and the paramedics go back down to insert an air hose through the small roll-out window; then come back down with the jaws to pry the door open and, taking turns diving all the while, help the driver to the surface.
In the coda, Brackett informs the paramedics that Mrs. Teal is under observation in a psychiatric ward.
_______
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Put on a Happy Face"
Originally aired February 24, 1973
Wiki said:
Once Mary gets nominated for a Teddy Award, everything starts going disastrously wrong at work and the awards dinner.
In the week leading up to the ceremony, Mary has trouble securing a date for it; accidentally throws out the newsroom's obituaries file and has to rewrite them all on her own time; and injures her leg on the slippery hallway floor at the station...in addition to various other, more minor mishaps. As she's calling old boyfriends to try to get a date, she's nursing a cold from soaking her sprained foot. Rhoda comes to enjoy letting Mary be the miserable one for a change. Mary's banquet dress gets badly stained at the cleaner's and she has to borrow a less flattering one from Rhoda; and when she tries to accept an offer from Ted to fix her up with a guy he knows, she's baited and switched into going with him...but a bad hair incident on top of everything else has Ted passing her off as his sister at the event.
Mary inevitably wins the award for her Sunday program, and in her brief, nasally acceptance speech mostly apologizes for her appearance. On top of everything else, Mary's name is spelled wrong on the award. (Ask me about my spelling bee placement trophies!) In the coda, Ted takes the microphone after the presentation to give a speech about himself. In a tie-in with a gag earlier in the episode, the ending MTM logo features Mary imitating Porky Pig.
There's a reference to Ted wearing contact lenses. Rhoda is still seeing Jonas Lasser (Steve Franken reprising his role from "The Courtship of Mary's Father's Daughter").
_______
The Bob Newhart Show
"You Can't Win 'em All"
Originally aired February 24, 1973
Wiki said:
Bob becomes a local hero when his therapy helps a Chicago Cubs pitcher end a losing streak.
Jerry's upset when he learns that Bob's been having sessions with Cubs pitcher Phil Bender and didn't tell him (apparently a fictitious Cub, as he's played by Jim Watkins). After Bender breaks his losing streak by wrapping up a five-hit shutout, he credits Bob by name in an on-air interview. Bob immediately starts getting calls, first from Jerry and also from his mother (who really shouldn't have appeared so early as she's better unseen in the phone gags). Bob ends up getting an office visit from Moose Washburn (Vern E. Rowe), a Cubs catcher with a terrible batting average who has his share of issues. In a subsequent game, Bob watches tensely as Moose is called to the plate to pinch-hit and strikes out.
Bob: I gotta get out of baseball, I can't take the pressure anymore.
At the office, everybody treats Bob like he lost the game. In a phone gag, Moose informs Bob that he's been traded to a Japanese team. Bob has Moose over for dinner, after which Bob, Jerry, and Emily argue about Moose's career as if he's not there; and Moose ultimately talks himself into looking forward to his new opportunity. Howard drops in on his way to a flight...
Bob: Listen, if you're leaving right now, would you give our friend here a lift?
Howard: Sure! Where you going?
Moose: Japan.
Howard: I'm sorry, I'm only going as far as Cleveland. Bye.
In the coda, Bob dictates a response letter to Moose's new psychologist in Japan...and we learn that sports fans there have taken to calling Moose the Japanese equivalent of his Chicago epithet, "bum".
_______
A controversial event for both fans and creators.
A couple of decades before "fridging" became a buzz-phrase, we had Gwen. I understand the reasoning behind the new creative team's decision, though. I love Stan, he gave us so much, but in his later years of active writing, he'd gotten noticeably stale...particularly in endlessly regurgitating the same old plot contrivances between heroes who kept secret identities and their supporting casts. He was pulling tricks to keep Pete from letting Gwen get too close that he'd originally pulled with Betty Brant when Ditko was drawing the series. The new creators didn't see anywhere left to go but what Stan had been trying to avoid, so they cut the Gordian Knot and gave us a seminal turning point in Spidey lore that informed the character for years to come.
Alas, my comic reading is roughly just as behind as my TV viewing, so I won't be getting to this issue on schedule unless I skip ahead.
Too bad, but that's what they get for killing
Star Trek.
Please tell me you're not one of those who holds
Laugh-In responsible for not surrendering the timeslot in which they'd become a smash hit!
Trek was already living on borrowed time in its third season, and NBC was only going to put it in that slot because it was TMFU's death slot before
Laugh-In came in as the mid-season replacement. The needs of the breakout hit outweighed the needs of the show that was on the chopping block either way.
Lots of guys coming home from Vietnam and China this year.
Maybe Tricky Dick deserves some credit for that.
Never heard this one before. Good chance I never will again.
It's a new one to me...and notable for being the Jacksons' first single to chart below the top 20.
Verily!
Yeah, definitely a completely different situation. I still think shooting first is only asking for trouble, though.
You and 1990s George Lucas--who forgot what he already knew about justified self-defense in the '70s.
I recall one of my great aunts having some of his albums.
