50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 2)
Shazam!
"The Past Is Not Forever"
Originally aired December 7, 1974
Wiki said:
Poor Jackie is being accused of robbing the gas station he works at because he has a criminal record, plus it was done using the keys. Tough guy Vinnie does not want Jackie hanging around his sister, Mellie.
Just before the Elders call, Mentor's sore that Billy made him miss a ball game because there was a documentary on Billy's network. Solomon alludes to Achilles, like he's not right there with them, in indicating that Billy has a vulnerable spot in his mind. (Mighta been a good time to give Achilles a couple of lines instead. I assume they hadn't bothered giving him mouth animations.) Mercury adds how a man can escape danger but not those who don't want him to exist. Meanwhile, at the gas station where Jackie (Greg Mabrey) works, he's filling in the audience via his girlfriend, Mellie (Carol Anne Seflinger), about his year in reform school for robbing another station. Then his probation officer, Mr. Samuels (Jimmy Hayes), comes out with Jackie's boss and a police officer to confront Jackie about how the place was just hit by someone using a key. Jackie runs for it and Samuels and the officer pursue in their car. The van almost runs the fleeing Jackie over (DRINK!), and Billy gets out to catch up to the stumbling lad just as the fuzz have stopped the car to close in on foot. As Jackie's saying something about needing to find someone, everyone, including Millie, converges, and Jackie's taken in for questioning. Gang tough Vinnie (Jack McCulloch) then pops out of nowhere with a couple of cronies (Tom Ruben and Chad States) to take Millie with him, and without knowing why, Billy attempts to intervene but backs down because he's outnumbered as Billy.
Billy and Mentor proceed to the 'hood where Jackie's known to hang out, and an escort of nonspeaking extras herd them to Jackie just as Vinnie pops up with his posse to warn Jackie to stay away from his sister. In the aftermath, Mentor warns Billy to use reason rather than assume Jackie's innocence, just to trigger an obligatory Elder flashback. Billy drops in on the released Jackie, who's playing basketball. Jackie tells Billy how he thinks someone's framing him, and Billy finds that Jackie's in the habit of leaving his keys lying at the side of the court while he plays, as well as that Vinnie sometimes hangs out there. Elsewhere, on stakeout as a friendly neighborhood gardener, Mentor eavesdrops as Vinnie admits to Mellie that he's the one who set up Jackie.
(The young actors on this show can be hit or miss, but the Millie actress is particularly grating. She has exactly one setting: "Whine.")
When Billy and Mentor confront Millie about going to the authorities, Vinnie and cronies pop up again. This time the trio makes a break for it, and Billy has Mentor proceed with Millie as he takes an opportunity to change to Captain Marvel. Vinnie is quick to back down when he runs into the Big Red Cheese, who revisits a conversation thread from Billy's earlier run-in.
Cap: Now tell the truth, Vinnie--What book did you ever read where the dragon beats the knight?
Millie finds Jackie and offers to go to the authorities, but Jackie leaves to go after Vinnie himself. As the Shazamic Duo are searching for Jackie in the van, Billy gets out to change to Cap again to speed things up. (He's got have some form of Marvel-Vision to see anything on the ground from up in his cloudy stock footage.) Tailing Vinnie into a warehouse, Jackie finds himself trapped and is tricked into catching the station's cash box so that his prints will be on it. Jackie tosses it away, severing a power cord right over a pile of rags and starting a fire--No need to say it!
After an airborne "Holy moly!," Cap swoops down and lands on the roof to confront Vinnie's gang, who claim that Jackie's trying to burn the evidence and continue to split, only to be nabbed by the fuzz, who were called by Millie. Cap busts into the warehouse and carries Jackie to safety, but nobody seems too concerned about the fire...the police just drove off with their suspects without waiting for the fire department or anything. Officer Vince knows better!
In the coda, an exonerated Jackie is filling up the van at the station when Samuels drops by with next-episode foreshadowing of trouble brewing among Vinnie's gang and how it would be good for Captain Marvel to be hang around. In a humorous van coda, we get a memorable bit of business of Billy winning the argument over what to watch that night by changing to Captain Marvel, right there in the passenger seat!
Lou Scheimer: Don't miss the exciting conclusion of this story, in the next episode of Shazam!
Cap: Hi. Today you found out that making one mistake isn't the end of the world. You often get a second chance, just as Jackie has. Just make sure you don't mess it up, or let others mess it up for you. See you next week.
I was really hoping for a rumble with a catchy musical number and gang members doing pirouettes...maybe next week.
Emergency!
"Details"
Originally aired December 7, 1974
Edited Frndly/IMDb mashup said:
Gage falls for an alluring woman who is treated by the paramedics after being hit by a car and thinks about settling down. A woman is badly burnt in a fire. A belly dancer overdoses on diet pills. A child bites a dog and the dog bites back. At a structure fire, Roy and John must jump to safety.
Written by Michael (Cap'n Stanley) Norell.
After a dinner at Roy and Joanne's, Johnny's starting to become envious of Roy's married lifestyle, noting that he's a few years from 30 (which would make him at least a couple of years younger than Mantooth). After the station and other units are called to an explosion and fire, the squad is passing a station wagon when the wagon hits a woman who bolts across the street in front of the traffic. Squad 51 stops to assist, leaving Stanley to request another squad. The young woman, Valerie (Michele Noval), is conscious and indicates a hip injury, but still has movement and sensation in her lower extremities. When the driver (Charles Quinlivan) profusely apologizes, the woman sincerely offers in her bubbly manner that if his wife were ever hit, she'd hope it was by someone as nice.
Meanwhile, back at the burning ranch that they seem to use for all the shows in this era, the engine units find a worker with his eyes injured (Win a Dream Date with uncredited Erik Estrada!), another man dead, and a woman with third-degree burns. After the ambulance van arrives, Squad 51 is able to get to the ranch ahead of the sub squad. Marco calms the worker in Spanish and indicates a metal fragment in the worker's now-bandaged left eye. The ranch owner, James Barnes (Walter Brooke), wants his wife (the burn victim) to be taken in an ambulance right away, but Stanley explains that the paramedics can treat her faster on the scene; while the captain of Engine 36 finds gas cans that were stored a couple feet from a water heater.
At Rampart, the worker asks a nurse who speaks Spanish about his friend, whom Marco didn't want to tell him is dead. When Barnes comes in to ask about the worker, Early, while acknowledging that he's not supposed to get involved, expresses his disapproval of Barnes, who's assumed to be responsible for the explosion, and indicates that Mrs. Barnes may have a long psychological recovery from her burns that her husband may not be there for. Johnny runs into Valerie in the hall after she's discharged, and following some awkwardly flirtatious small talk, she rather forwardly gives him her number.
A couple of days of later at the station, Johnny gets ahead of himself as usual when he declares to the guys that he's thinking of getting married, having received a photo from Valerie that makes the others envious. At Rampart, Early and Brackett see a Mr. Dando (Tom Reese), who thinks he has carcinoma of the stomach, but Brackett diagnoses "videochondriasis"--watching too many medical programs, as Rampart has gotten eight people thinking they had the same ailment after an episode featuring it.
While the squad is returning from a call that was canceled, the station is called to help a woman at a cocktail lounge. Arriving first, the paramedics find that the older woman,Ginger (Barbara Nichols), collapsed from taking too many diet pills while practicing with younger belly dancers. Early remote-diagnoses hypoglycemia, while a younger belly dancer flirts with Chet, making Marco jealous. At Rampart, Ginger flirts with Early, which Dix (his RL wife) teases him about. Ginger confesses to Dix that she used to be a stripper, and that the belly dancing she's tried to switch to is for younger woman. Dix recommends she switch to a career at the hospital's daycare center.
The squad is called to assist a surly, uncooperative boy named Jackie (uncredited future young-Spock-in-heat Stephen Manley) who's been bitten by a dog and whose mother isn't present...a neighbor having called. The dog turns out to be a small terrier-type female who's hiding under the porch and is found to have bite marks on her, which are deduced to have been from Jackie biting her first. As Johnny's trying to get tough with Jackie to discourage such behavior, Jackie's mother rushes in--Valerie! After some awkwardness over the situation, Johnny expresses his surprise that Valerie has a kid, and she proceeds to introduce him to two more, younger ones, including a toddler. When Jackie learns that Johnny's one of his mother's boyfriends, he proceeds to bite Johnny on the leg, and Johnny makes excuses to promptly depart.
In the aftermath, Johnny loses sleep from fretting over whether he should marry or dump Valerie.
Roy: Yeah, you oughta go back to being dumped every few days, you were a lot easier to live with then.
The station and other units are called to the usual climactic structure fire, this one in an upper level of a downtown building with a storefront (which looks less like a backlot than usual). As the paramedics make their way in, Roy predicts an impending smoke explosion, and they evacuate to a ledge just in time, then have to jump down onto a life net (as I've learned that the handheld trampoline thingy is called). Afterward, Stanley admits that it's the first time in his thirteen years in the department that he ever used one.
In the coda, Johnny updates Roy that Valerie dumped him for a lawyer she's using to sue the man who hit her. Roy thinks that Johnny got off lucky, but Johnny's angry about it.
Roy: You know, I really appreciate the way you know when to reaffirm my faith in your basic insanity.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Neighbors"
Originally aired December 7, 1974
Frndly said:
Lou moves upstairs into Rhoda's old apartment and creates tension with Mary when the line between work and home is breached.
Lou's in a lousy mood from having to deal with home repairmen and is unexpectedly receptive to Mary's offhand advice that he sell his home and get an apartment. Mary's taking care of Bess while Phyllis is out when Lou stops by while his agent is showing the house. When Lou talks about just wanting a small, one-room place, Bess brings up that Rhoda's old place is still vacant, and Mary tries to intervene, taking Bess aside to confess that she doesn't want her boss as her neighbor. Mary ends up taking Lou up and he declares that he'll take it as soon as he walks in. She tries to dissuade him by pointing out the small space's shortcomings, but he's set on it, and emphasizes how it'll be easier to visit Mary.
Lou's soon coming down to Mary's casually for trivial reasons and talks of scraping off Rhoda's pink paint not because he doesn't like the color, but because he can use the extra space. Lou interferes with Mary's temporary guardianship of Bess, and Mary finds him crashed on her couch in front of the TV when she brings home a date, David Boyd (Clifford David), who gets punched waking Lou up.
Lou: But...you don't sneak up on a person who's been in a war, a world war. I once got a medal for being awakened by a German.
Mary is straightforward about how Lou's ruined her evening and emphasizes the need for boundaries.
Back at the station, even Ted's surprised when Ed brings animosity toward Mary to work with him by agreeing with Ted in a dispute. Mary gets into an argument with Lou in his office, which Ted interrupts because he's paranoid of what Lou's trying to pull by agreeing with him. Ultimately Mary tells Lou that she wants him to move out of the apartment. As Lou's in the process of moving out, Mary tries to smooth things over with him, and he expresses his regrets in a way that sounds like they've been in a failed relationship.
In the coda, Lou's found a new apartment and his workplace relationship with Mary is returning to normal...which includes pulling the rug out from under Ted, who assumes it was all part of the plot.
Ted's beef of the week is that his cue card boy is being replaced with a girl. At one point he complains that he won't be able to engage in the same sort of bawdy humor with the crew during the breaks, which he ostensibly does to keep them relaxed.
Ted: I need a loose crew, Mary.
Murray: Ted...if you don't have a loose screw, nobody does.
The Bob Newhart Show
"Jerry Robinson Crusoe"
Originally aired December 7, 1974
Frndly said:
Jerry decides to give up his practice and follow his girlfriend to Tahiti.
Jerry comes into Bob's office wearing a bow tie and sweater vest to talk about a date he's got that night.
Jerry explains that he's been contacted out of the blue by an old favorite girlfriend, Courtney Simpson, an adventurous free spirit whom he hasn't seen in ten years while she's been traveling the world. Jerry realizes as he's talking it out that she's probably over the hill and wants to settle down, and thanks Bob for helping him to figure it out.
Bob: See you at the malt shop!
Jerry subsequently brings Courtney by the apartment, and it becomes evident that he was wrong (Gail Strickland). She's now a marine biologist, still moving from remote area to remote area. Jerry then takes her to his office to self-consciously shows it to her, and asks if she'd want to stay and assist him at the practice. When she says that she has plans to move on to Tahiti, he asks about coming with her.
During office hours, Elliot Carlin, having lots of experience in the area, diagnoses Jerry as being under emotional distress and gives up some of his office time with Bob so that Jerry can get help. Jerry gives Bob a chance to talk him out of going to Tahiti, and Bob tells him a story of how he once had a failed ambition to be a tap dancer. Ultimately, it comes down to Bob not thinking Jerry can go through with leaving his life in Chicago.
Jerry: Bob, in Chicago a man can't follow the sun.
Bob: Jerry, in Tahiti a man can't follow the White Sox.
As Jerry proceeds with his plans, Bob insists to all that he won't go through with it, emphasizing a history of similar plans that Jerry always backed out of at the last possible minute. When the regular gang accompanies Jerry to the airport, Bob just tries to convince Jerry to get on with backing out to save himself undue embarrassment, and even as the plane taxis for takeoff with Jerry on it, Bob insists that it'll be turning around.
A month later, a bearded, sailor-suited Jerry shows up at the apartment, telling Emily that Courtney moved on to Uganda and he didn't want to go; and indicating that he couldn't work in Tahiti because the natives deliberately lose their teeth in adulthood (which a quick search indicates to be a complete fabrication).
Bob (after walking in and expressing his surprise): I knew you wouldn't go.
I was thinking along those same lines.
"Excuse me, officers? My name is Mr Poundfoolish...."
Cap looked it up.
Ah. Nigh enough for them to know? I'm thinking also of the Team 12 thing.
Good question, but I'm assuming that they must have had some idea by this point. The season does end with a series-climactic two-parter.
Of course! * Smashes right fist into left palm *
I was picturing the stereotypical ineffectual old timer with a shaky flashlight and pistol.
I think he was active-duty HPD.
"Okay, boys, remember to keep sound effects disabled during this gig."
"And keep in mind, it'll be a little disorienting because the floors won't be tilted."
The S&H episode is notable because somebody says to Starsky that the captured double "could be your brother," and Starsky replies, "I don't have a brother." Sure enough, in season four, his brother shows up.
His brother Chuck, who's been living with a family in Milwaukee.
I want to use the "Only his hairdresser knows for sure" line, but I think I just did that recently.
You did.
Surely that's too little, too late.
Captain Oveured.
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