50th Anniversary Viewing
The Six Million Dollar Man
"The Bionic Woman"
Originally aired March 16, 1975
IMDb said:
Steve Austin reunites with his childhood sweetheart only to have her suffer a crippling accident which can only be rectified with bionic implants.
Contrary to Wiki, there's no expressed "Part 1" in this episode's title. It opens with Oscar providing Guy on Tape-like instructions via voiceover while Steve watches as "the Onassis of organized crime," Joseph Ronaugh (Malachi Throne dialing up his mustache-twirling), accompanied by his right-hand fellow Trek guest Timberlake (Paul Carr), takes covert woodland delivery of a stolen Denver Mint plate of a $20 bill, which could be used to cause economic chaos! (Remember when we needed foreign agents to do that?) Steve leaps onto Ronaugh's armored car and tears open the back, and Ronaugh watches with a night vision scope as he hops out the back with the encased plate. Ronaugh vows not to get the plate back, but to find and kill whoever did this to him.
An upbeat country song called "Got to Get Loose," sung by Lee Majors, plays as he skips out on a citation from the Secretary of Treasury to drive out to buy a ranch property in his old hometown (reportedly Ojai, CA, though I didn't catch any identification in the episode) from friendly local broker Jon Ellerton (Harry Hickox). Cut to a montage of Steve doing some bionic fixer-upping of the property, until he has to downgrade to normal human pace when his mom and stepfather, Helen and Jim Elgin (Martha Scott reprising her role from Season 1's "The Coward" and Ford Rainey), come out to see him--Ellerton having ruined the intended surprise. While the folks help him with the inside of the house, Mom shows him that his old friend Jamie Sommers (that chick from
The Paper Chase, Lindsay Wagner), now a top five women's tennis pro, also happens to be in town. Steve goes out to a court to see her, striking up a conversation with a little admirer of Jamie's (the debut of future Drummond daughter Dana Plato), who makes the Obligatory Billie Jean King Reference.
Tennis girl: Boy, Jaime's the most important person that ever came out of our town.
Steve and Jamie take a walk while comparing notes about the loneliness of their careers; but it turns out she already has a date, a manfriend who came to town with her, which she keeps despite Steve's attempt to get her to break it via a bad Bogey impersonation. A pined-over yearbook signature indicates that Steve was always in the Friend Zone with her; and Steve watches from the sidewalk as Jamie and David Welsh eat outdoors at a restaurant. Elsewhere, Ronaugh goes through pictures of Interpol agents, failing to find Steve. (A pic they show us a great big closeup of looks like James Darren.)
At the Elgin home, Steve lifts the fridge for his Mom to clean under while she's out of the room, following which he makes lame excuse about eating his veggies. (This is one of those cases where the role that his other arm and back play in his feats of strength looks especially problematic.) Steve probes his mother about Jamie's expressed interest in him, then goes to favorite lake spot to think things out. When he sees Jaime walking on the shore, he bionic-rows his canoe to her, learning that Mom tipped her off and that she's dumped the other guy offscreen. (The inclusion of this lineless uncredited minor plot complication in the story seems like complete filler in what's generally a pretty laid-back episode.) Steve admits that he was jealous, to her pleasant surprise, and as she reminds him of the one time they kissed, things start to get romantic...but they keep getting interrupted by a group of kids tossing a football, one of whom (Jeremy Robert Brown, I presume) always arrives to retrieve it after it hits them. Steve ditches them by throwing his version of a long pass...making a lame excuse about the wind catching it. Then things heat up and we proceed to the Obligatory Romantic Montage of Steve and Jaime riding horses to the accompaniment of Lee Majors singing a ballad called "Sweet Jaime," which is set to an arrangement of the show's theme. Back at the ranch, which is coming along, they discuss how they're going to make a relationship work with all the travel she does on the tennis circuit, even as Oscar makes the Obligatory Call to Remind Everyone That Richard Anderson's the Co-Star under the excuse of pestering Steve about coming back to work.
Then Steve and Jaime go skydiving.
After they jump out of
N5794A, they engage in some low-contact displays of affection in freefall before pulling their cords. Steve's already on the ground when he looks up with his bionic eye to see Jaime having a mishap with her chute, her potentially fatal fall being broken when it gets caught in a tree. They do that little staggered zoom-in familiar from the opening credits of her show as she lies comatose on the ground.
At an Air Force hospital, the doctor (Wouldja believe Scott B. Wells?) tells Steve of the injuries that unbelievably parallel his. (There's a recurring bit of awkwardness every time her injuries are mentioned of putting her ear injury front and center, when it seems like losing hearing in one ear would be pretty small potatoes in the company of losing three limbs.) When Steve goes in to see Jaime and she talks about it all being over, he stares at his right arm and gets her permission to pursue an unspecified way of preventing that. He summons Oscar, who objects to the notion, indicating that in Steve's case the expense was justified. Steve volunteers the idea of using her as an agent, but Oscar questions his motives. Ultimately Steve resorts to teary-eyed begging and Oscar relents.
The procedure commences with the fictional Dr. Wells (still Alan Oppenheimer) in charge. Afterward, Wells encourages Steve to tell Jaime about the procedure himself. He gradually informs her of her replacement parts, and when she questions why he didn't let her die, he demonstrates his understanding of her situation on a metal chair. Cut to Jaime's first day of bionic physical therapy, with Oscar and Rudy in attendance.
Jaime: Steve, do you think I'll be able to play the violin when my hand gets better?
Steve: Well, sure.
Jaime: Oh, that's so great, because I have never been able to play it before.
She proceeds to accidentally bust a tennis ball, also used in her show's credits. Later Steve makes a point that he doesn't feel any differently about her in her present condition than she does about him.
Steve (with Western drawl): Besides, you was bow-legged.
Rudy calibrates her ear (also in the credits, IIRC), and demonstrates to Steve how she can hear an ultrasonic tone, as well as what they're saying in the observation room. After some practice on the treadmill, she dons her contrasting blue jogging suit so the Bionic Duo can run. When Jaime makes a reference to being the Bride of Frankenstein, the subject of marriage comes up, and Steve proposes. Their engagement makes the local paper, and the Non-Bionic Mom takes charge of the arrangements. Jaime accidentally breaks a juice glass during a toast, and Steve admonishes her for not having Rudy check out her arm after the ball-busting.
Steve's engagement also makes it into the international news--giving an ominously pleased Ronaugh the opportunity to learn who his enemy is.
BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!!!
I'm pretty sure that I didn't see Jaime's origin in first run, whether or not I was watching the show yet when it aired. It remains to be seen if Part II bionic-jogs any brain cells; but I definitely did see at least one of her pre-series appearances on SMDM. I specifically recall a moment when Steve wanted information on what was going on with her and threatened to put Oscar (or maybe Rudy) through a wall.
Adam-12
"Suicide"
Originally aired March 18, 1975
MeTV said:
Malloy and Reed are on the lookout for a traveling businessman driving a green Pinto, who called his wife in Nebraska and told her he was going to commit suicide at 2 PM. Meanwhile, they search for a woman who abandoned her newborn baby in a garbage can, and get a tip from an elderly woman about a group of car strippers.
Mac informs the officers of a telephone call from Mrs. Douglas Hanley about the threatened suicide. While on the lookout for his car, Jim and Pete express sympathy for the wife and potential kids, while Pete shares that older suicide attempters tend to be more successful because at that age, they really mean it. The officers get called from their search to an apartment manager (Milton Frome) who found a baby in a garbage can, an ambulance (never paramedics) arriving at the scene after them. The officers head to a clinic that the baby's blanket is from, where the administrator (Armand Alzamora) digs up that the mother is 18-year-old "Jane Smith" and identifies her Chevy, which belongs to a John Penrod. This leads them to a hotel room where they find the disheveled young mother, Dee Hawkins (Ronne Troup), who explains that Penrod is her "business manager" and expresses regret at her actions, which she saw as her only choice because the child was a high health risk whom she didn't have the means to take care of and assumed nobody would adopt. She tells them that John's bringing her a fix and planning to drive her back home.
At HQ, Mac informs the officers that Penrod's been picked up, and of a new call from Mrs. Hanley with the time of intended death. Back on patrol, the officers are called to see elderly Grace Robertson (Sheila Bromley), who tips them off about having seen a group of young men strip a neighbor's car and identifies their pickup, while also sharing that they planned to return with a hoist. While Reed's away calling it in, Malloy watches from concealment as the party of five returns, jacks up the car, and takes the engine. (Looks like a Porsche model, engine's in back.) Pete draws his weapon and orders them to freeze, but their leader (Bruce Watson) expresses defiance because of his group's superior numbers. They're cowed into surrendering when Reed returns, covering them from another angle. Handcuffs being in short supply, Pete literally pulls zip ties out of his hat!
The officers finally find the right green Pinto at a fleabag motel run by an unsympathetic guy billed as Hutton (Walker Edmiston), who points them to Hanley's room and provides the keys for that and the adjoining room, which Jim enters While Pete knocks on Hanley's door to talk. Pete identifies himself by his name rather than occupation and relays Mrs. Hanley's concern, then ducks behind a corner as Mr. Hanley (Tom Drake) opens the door with a gun in his hand. Revealing himself, Pete keeps Hanley occupied by trying to talk him out of it. When Hanley tries to close the door, Pete kicks it open, putting him off-balance so Reed can burst in and cuff him for his ride to a hospital.
M*A*S*H
"Abyssinia, Henry"
Originally aired March 18, 1975
Famously shocking season finale
Frndly said:
Sentimental moments mix with bon voyage hoopla when Henry learns he's going home, and Frank prepares to take command.
This is one of those TV moments that you've heard all about even if you've never watched the episode. I don't have a distinct memory of having seen it first run, though it's quite possible I was in the room when it originally aired; but its reputation precedes it.
Blake's just snapped at Burns during an OR session when Radar comes in to excitedly deliver the news that the colonel has earned his discharge and will be going home via Tokyo, which is met by a congratulatory reaction from the others. While putting off a call home based on his knowledge of his family's afternoon routine, Henry gets Radar worked up by going into TMI territory about how he plans to reunite with Lorraine. Meanwhile, Margaret is characteristically more ambitiously enthusiastic than Frank about the prospect of his being promoted to colonel in Blake's place. When Henry makes the call, he asks Lorraine to keep his homecoming a surprise, anticipating the reaction from their friends when he shows up at the country club on Saturday night.
(In a comical exchange about the time difference, Radar is oddly in error when he corrects Blake by asserting that Illinois is 14 hours ahead of Korea; but goes on to say that it's yesterday in Illinois. It's also broad daylight in Korea when it's supposed to be 1 p.m. in Illinois.)
While Henry's arranging for his things to be shipped home, Radar tries to express how he sees Blake as a father figure and presents him with a keychain made out of an inscribed Winchester cartridge (again identifying the year as 1952, though IMDb informs me that a later episode will have the 4077th under Potter's command ringing in 1952). The guys and Radar treat Henry to a private Japanese dinner, expressing their appreciation for him as a human being and getting him loaded with sake. While he's outside relieving himself, they bring in a trio of local women to provide a hummed chorus of "America the Beautiful" and throw a mock discharge ceremony in which they present him with the gift a brand-new suit.
By day, Major Burns arranges a more formal assembly to see Blake off. The guys characteristically show up in their bathrobes, while Henry comes out in his suit. As Henry goes down the line exchanging goodbyes, Hawkeye gives Henry a kiss on each cheek; while Klinger, dressed in an outfit topped by a Carmen Miranda fruit hat, gives Blake a picture to keep in his wallet; and at a whispered suggestion from Hawkeye, Blake plants a big one on a surprised Hot Lips. The company escorts Blake to his chopper--which brings in a casualty for the guys to work on--while singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". Henry's about to board when he sees Radar giving a tearful salute, and goes back over to hug him.
Cut from the assembled cast waving at the departing chopper to a stunned, maskless Radar stumbling into the OR during surgery to deliver the infamous message.
Radar (breathing heavily with each pause): Lieutenant Colonel...Henry Blake's plane...was shot down...over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.
The camera pans around to everyone's reactions...Hawk and Trap having to absorb the news while not taking a pause from working on their patient.
The coda consists of a montage of comical Henry moments preceded by a brief PA announcement.
Appropriately for the occasion, this is a main characters-focused episode with no credited guests outside of Jamie Farr and William Christopher, who weren't regulars yet...though that'll be changing for Farr next season.
Wiki said:
When Stevenson decided to leave the series partway through the third season, producers Gene Reynolds and Larry Gelbart decided to make a statement regarding the unexpectancies and horror of war, especially with the Vietnam War fresh in viewers' minds.
To evoke genuine emotions of shock and sadness, the final O.R. scene was kept a secret from the cast until immediately before filming; only then did Gelbart hand out the last page of the script. As a result, Stevenson was still on the set and saw the final scene being filmed. After shooting was completed, a season-ending cast party was planned. Stevenson left the set almost immediately after the end of filming, and the party was canceled due to the dour mood of the cast.
This ending prompted more than 1,000 letters to series producers Gene Reynolds and Larry Gelbart, and drew fire from both CBS and 20th Century Fox.
CBS's distaste with the episode was so great that during a later rerun...the final O.R. scene was cut from the episode.
While the ending certainly would have been unexpected from a sitcom of the time, a savvy TV viewer should have been able to tell that they were setting up some sort of twist. Otherwise the story was a little too straightforwardly focused on Henry going home without incident. I suppose the more anticipated twist would have been the common trope of something falling through at the last minute, maintaining the status quo.
(Actually from the 1975-76 variety series
Cher, as the poster points out in their description.)
Wiki said:
In 1997 and 2009, TV Guide ranked this episode #20 on its list of the 100 Greatest Episodes.
Though not planned at the time, this will also be Wayne Rogers's last episode, as he departs from the series during the hiatus--reportedly because he felt that Trapper had become too much of sidekick to Hawkeye, and enabled by never having signed his contract.
Wiki said:
These combined departures and their subsequent cast replacements also signaled the beginning of a shift in focus of the M*A*S*H series as a whole, more centered on the character Hawkeye Pierce played by Alan Alda [oh, goodie...] and with stories and tone increasingly from the dramatic side of comedy drama.
Or so I've been told a few times.
Hawaii Five-O
"Diary of a Gun"
Originally aired March 18, 1975
IMDb said:
A Saturday night special handgun that appears to have a mind of its own goes from one person to another, leaving a trail of dead and injured people in its path. McGarrett and the Five-O team work frantically to find the gun, and stop the shootings.
And here's the hour of TV that bore the direct burden of following that historically gut-punching moment. It opens with Joey Rubato (Thomas Fujiwara) overseeing a smuggled shipment of Saturday night specials labeled as machine tools being loaded into a truck and taken to a warehouse; interspersed with cuts of Steve giving a presentation to John Manicote about a new proliferation of the weapons being used in a variety of crimes on the islands, while expositing that they're cheaply foreign-made, low-caliber weapons that are acquired by petty criminals on the streets, as legitimate dealers won't sell them. Steve's mission is to track down where the guns are coming from.
Elsewhere, a character billed as 1st Kid (Remi Abellira) buys his from a dealer (I know you're still getting over that
M*A*S*H thing, but pay attention here, it's Lee F. Stetson) who drives up to where the kid and his friends are playing dice. Afterward, a couple of tourists (B. Lee Gaber, whom at first glance I thought was Special Guest Star William Conrad, and Jo M. Pruden) with a little girl stop their car while looking for the Aloha Tower. Lou gets out to ask the kids and they playfully accost him, starting to size up and grab at his valuables. When Lou pushes 1st Kid to the ground, the kid pulls his new weapon in anger and shoots him in the gut. The kids make a run for it as police come to the scene, and the culprit is caught right after having disposed of his evidence by dropping it in a mailbox. 1st Kid is brought to Lou's hospital room as part of a makeshift lineup and successfully identified, following which the distraught wife tries to attack him, to be held back by Our Steel-Haired Hero.
A postal carrier named Michael Briggs (Ramon Bieri) finds the gun in the mailbox and pockets it, then returns home to his attractive but disdainful wife, Louise (Lauren Levian), dolling herself up, supposedly to babysit for a sister. After she leaves, he finds evidence dropped from her purse that she's seeing another man. The number on the napkin turns out to be for a hotel, which he proceeds to with the gun, finding her car there. Meanwhile, 1K has divulged where he dumped the weapons, so Danno takes a postal inspector (Thomas L. Mui) to open the box, finding that the mail's already been picked up. The inspector identifies the route's carrier, Briggs.
Five-O is called to a double homicide via SNS at the Palm Garden Hotel; the victims being a pro football player and Louise Briggs. Driving away from the scene in an emotional state, Michael Briggs tosses the weapon out his car window. It's found by a curious young boy, Arthur Chang (Gregory Scott Dela Cruz). Steve and Frank proceed to the Briggs home to find Michael sitting in a state of shock. He slowly describes what he did and why while they try to find out what happened to the weapon. He's only able to provide a vague description of having tossed it out near a white church. Frank and Duke run down the likely location, but the weapon isn't found. The boy's young mother, Ellen Chang (Susan P. Stewart), comes home to find him playing with the gun. He runs into the bathroom and she calls the police, then hears a shot fired. He opens the door to reveal that he shot himself in the foot. While she carries him out to the hospital, the janitor, Eddie Larkin (Richard Morrison), enters the open apartment and pockets the gun.
Upon being notified of this incident, Steve proceeds to the Chang apartment to question the boy and his mother, who've since returned. Verifying that he picked up the gun they're looking for, they find that it's no longer at the latest scene. Ms. Chang indicates Eddie's presence at the time, and they investigate his squalid supply closet apartment in the basement to find that he's dealing in small but hot appliances on the side. Eddie proceeds to a bar to barter his latest finding for whiskey. The bartender, Alfie (What's it all about, Lee F. Stetson?), won't buy it because the grip is damaged, but calls someone who might. After a cut to the Governor pressuring Steve to give him some info he can share with officials and the public (one of a couple of location scenes conspicuously shot from a distance with obviously voiced over dialogue), the dealer (Beau Vanden Ecker, whose character is billed as Frito) shows up to have a look at the gun, while also reuniting with a bikini-topped bar dancer (Brooks Almy, who's repeatedly described in-story as sandy-haired but billed as Redhead, though we'll just call her Bonnie). Frito, being recently out of the stir and devoid of cash, haggles with Eddie, arriving at a paltry selling price of $7.50. When Larkin insists on immediate payment, Frito smacks and then shoots him with the weapon, while Bonnie watches with a malicious smirk.
While Five-O tries to run the couple down based on an eyewitness description and Steve is pressing another bargirl (Jody Mishan) for info about the bartender present at the time, Bonnie & Frito carjack a ride and engage in an armed robbery. Danno and Chin tail Alfie to a warehouse where he worriedly reports to Rubato about the murder that may be traced back to one of their pieces. The armed robbery spree continues...
...with Steve and Frank tracing their movements from HQ and coordinating a dragnet. Danno and Chin go into the warehouse with a warrant and HPD backup, finding actual tools in the boxes, while Rubato watches with amusement. Eventually they skip to the bottom of a stack and find one of the weapons. Meanwhile, Bonnie & Frito are having the time of their lives being pursued and shot at by HPD...
...until they run through a police roadblock and are subsequently blasted off the highway by rifle fire. Frito takes cover behind the car door and tries to hold off the surrounding officers with his weapon, and McGarrett arrives at the scene to call for his surrender via bullhorn. When Frito fires another shot, he's killed by a police rifleman...which is what it takes to evoke a horrified reaction from the otherwise thrill-stimulated Bonnie. While she's being taken into custody, McGarrett walks to the body and picks the pistol up with a pen, showing it to the camera as the final shot.
BUMMM-BA-DUMP!BUMP!
"Danno, cancel my handball appointment with this guy."
An IMDb contributor questions the ammo situation, counting at least 12 shots fired from the 7-shot weapon. While Frito was the last and most frequent user, he may have had the opportunity to purchase ammo after his first robbery.
This penultimate episode of the season is Douglas Mossman's final appearance as Frank Kamana...though he'll be popping back up for a few guest appearances as other characters in later seasons. The finale will be Al Harrington's last-aired appearance as Ben Kokura. He won't be returning in this series, though I see that he'll have a recurring role in the 2010s remake.
