We could do worse. And have. On multiple occasions.
The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread
- Thread starter The Old Mixer
- Start date
Well, It would be nice if they played with this trope at least once. Instead, the only times that they subverted the formula were with the Ed McBain 87th Precinct novels' adaptations.
I would loved if a killed said, only one time in thirty years, "Lieutenant, I don't know what you're talking about and I want see my lawyer. And I think that this elaborate ruse with which you're trying to frame me could be considered 'entrapment'".
ETA: I found that I'm not the only one who made these considerations...
Columbo: you were great, but that case would never hold up in court
ETA2: This is interesting too:
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That's not true. As I mentioned the other week, there were two Jackson Gillis-penned episodes, "The Last Salute to the Commodore" in the classic series and "A Bird in the Hand..." in the revival, that broke the usual formula. The former made us think we knew who the killer was as usual, then had him killed so that it became a classic whodunit. And I discussed the latter's breaks with formula just a couple of weeks ago in this thread.
There were also a couple where Columbo let killers get away -- one in the classic series where the killer was an aging movie star whose encroaching dementia caused her to forget the murder by the end of the episode, and the Faye Dunaway/Claudia Christian one that I discussed here back on Valentine's Day. Indeed, as I've mentioned over the past few months, a lot of the revival episodes broke with, or at least experimented with, the standard formula in one way or another.
You must be thinking of that other thread.We could do worse. And have. On multiple occasions.
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Adam-12, "The Surprise" (Nov. 15, 1972)
Officer Pete Malloy said:
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Actually, I was thinking of Jimi taking over as in "Jimi For President." His version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was more patriotic than anything that most of our leadership has ever done, or ever will do.
^ If you're not much of a Jimi fan, you might not have gotten my reference.
4:40-ish.
4:40-ish.
...and so the once random antagonist becomes the center of the DS universe, or at least he's orbiting someone no one suspects.
In comes Joe...Hey, I can tell them apart! But for how long...?
This could be the first time a TV vampire was said to feed on more than human victims.
Various east coast accents. You will probably notice other words not sounding quite right as the show progresses.
Willie's absolute refusal to be examined takes him out of the "crazed Renfield" zone (at least the Dwight Frye version) and powerfully illustrates just how much he fears the thing in the Collins' crypt. Yes, at this point, he's acting as if his mysterious attacker is a thing and not really a man at all. That went a long way in building up the fact that Barnabas' cultured act is merely a veiled illusion, barely hiding the creature's true nature.
...ah, but it all ties up in one the most effective conclusions in DS history....
John Karlen was a bit on the weathered side to be called "boyish".
,
Not at this point; audiences knew what was happening, but he only really gained sympathy once he moved into the Old House for the nighty ritual of verbal (and occasional physical) abuse from Barnabas. At this point, he's more of a mystery man the Collinwood residents still fear/resent.
...and that was the first successful introduction of how a vampire would be perceived (until too late) set in then-modern times. Other attempts (in low budget films) were (up to 1967) just more scare-fests, with no care in building a believable supernatural element in a "real" world. Without the ground broken here (and rapid world building), there would be no guiding hand which helped productions such as the Hammer Dracula films set in the 70s, AIP's Count Yorga & Blacula, and even Janos Skorzeny from The Night Stalker. All benefitted from DS showing how vampirism would grow right under people raised/trained to disbelieve, then in the wake of strange attacks, try to apply science (as we will see) to uncover that which was comfortably beyond the "rational" explanations of medical professionals.
Its interesting that Barnabas is--in one sense--protecting "his turf" since the residents are, after all, his family. In the other sense, he already knows who and what Jason is (through Willie), so he's allowing Jason to play his little probing / chess game, but is already looking ahead to the possibility of killing him.
I think you first guess is correct--he's suspected Willie found some "action" on his own before meeting Barnabas, and this curiosity certainly intensifies as the weeks pass and his old friend is working for a very wealthy man. To Jason, that's no coincidence.
Yep, actor Dana Elcar, who faced another fantastic (green) creature a over a decade later ...
I was referring to his role as Colonel Lard on Black Sheep.
Oh, I was just linking his fantasy roles.
Oh, yeah, I got it, I was just riffing on it.
A triple-purpose post this week--why not? Might as well proceed chronologically....
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This Week's Sidelist Viewing
What was going on the week these episodes aired.
_______
Batman
"The Contaminated Cowl"
Originally aired January 4, 1967
Originally aired January 5, 1967
The warden is definitely becoming something of an in-joke by this point.
Is that a new front shot of the Batmobile when they're heading into Gotham?
Batman and Robin trying to sneak into the ball unnoticed was pretty funny.
The Mad Hatter's radioactive spray didn't seem focused enough to affect Batman's entire cowl and only his cowl like that.
I'll agree with what that guy said in the other thread awhile back...all the stuff with Batman and Robin being presumed dead doesn't make sense. In-story, the Dynamic Duo's elaborate ruse doesn't serve a good enough purpose to justify upsetting the entire world the way they did. It's not for the element of surprise, because the Hatter finds out that they're alive before they meet again. The whole gimmick feels all the cheaper given how it happened in the first place. At the end of the first part, there's no Bat-Fight, the Hatter's goons just shove Batman and Robin in the fluoroscope machine like a couple of hapless bystanders.
When Batman finally calls Gordon on the Batphone, Gordon and O'Hara might have assumed that they were being called by the man who always answers it.
And yeah, what was in the water tower that they spent two episodes making such a fuss about it? As for the fight on the outside, that seems like something they should have saved for a Catwoman episode, so she could have fallen from it in her usual manner.
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Tarzan
"Track of the Dinosaur"
Originally aired January 6, 1967
The official, a man named Bergstrom, is ostensibly trying to provide clean drinking water to a tribe via underground springs, but is being stymied by their belief in an underground monster. He's secretly trying to scare them away because of osmiridium deposits that he found, and to that end is using a fakey-fake paper mache monster with a flamethrower inside, shades of Dr. No. We're told at the end that it was a dressed-up bulldozer. I didn't catch any references to the monster as a dinosaur in the episode...they missed an opportunity to squeeze in a little education for the family hour.
The episode centers around drama between Tarzan and a couple of old acquaintances whom we've never met: an ex-hunter who's an old rival and his wife, a nurse who's an old friend. It turns out that Mrs. Grayson's the one who was already in cahoots with Bergstrom, though Mr. Grayson gets in on the scheme during the episode. It turns out that the missus has gotten selfish because she's dying, but she still has a heart. When Jai finds Bergstrom's cave-set lair, she escorts Tarzan in to rescue the boy. When Tarzan & comapny are fleeing the monster, it's cute how the the show tries to make the little pool in the cave set look bigger by doing a dissolve-type cut while they're swimming to the other end.
Jai's suffering from a lost voice for most of the episode, though Padilla does get some lines. Bergstrom's assistant Charlie, on the other hand, never speaks and doesn't even get a credit, though his presence is substantial in a few scenes.
In the climactic battle, Tarzan uses flaming spears to set the fake monster on fire. Berstrom and Mr. Grayson both buy the farm, neither directly at Tarzan's hand. Mrs. Grayson gets hauled away by the government police.
TOS guests: None
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12 O'Clock High
"A Long Time Dead"
Originally aired January 6, 1967
In this episode, Graves plays Captain Dula, a bomber pilot with only a couple of combat missions under his belt. His mission with the 918th, should they choose to accept it, is to prove that his days as a pilot aren't over after losing his previous crew and being branded a jinx. I guess we should wish him good luck.
The bomber loses no time getting shot up on his first mission with the squadron, so he takes oveur as pilot...fortunately, he didn't have the fish. In the heat of battle, he charges the insubordinate Sgt. Komansky with mutiny. Surely he can't be serious! Sargeant, have you ever been in a military prison...? But Komansky has an eyewitness that Dula deserted his previous crew before giving a bailout order, causing Dula's log page of the mutiny charge to self-destruct in five seconds. But when their plane gets shot up again on their next mission, Dula pushes the injured Komansky out of the plane with a parachute, which leads to an investigation of Dula.
The episode description gives away an Act IV revelation regarding the true nature of Dula's behavior. Being a regular character, Komansky is found alive of course...even though there's only one episode left, so they could have killed him off if they'd wanted to. When the gang flies over to pick him up, Gallagher starts suffering from a concussion that he received in the episode's first mission, so Dula has to fly them back home. There's mention of Dula potentially getting treatment, but also of that flight possibly being his last one, so the character's fate is left very much unresolved.
As for the fate of the actor...his striking leading-man presence suggests to me that perhaps there's a regular starring role in his near future...though some might say that's impossible.
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Last Week's 50th Anniversary Viewing
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Dark Shadows
Episodes 225/226-230
Originally aired May 8-12, 1967
Cut to Maggie and Joe entering the groovily-soundtracked Blue Whale, where she describes her dream in a level of detail that the audience is already familiar with. Joe tries to get at the source of Maggie's fears, when in walks the source of her fears with her father, Sam. The presence of Barnabas seems to put her on edge as he attempts to make small talk laced with innuendo for the benefit of the audience. After Maggie and Joe have a brief dance, she doesn't want to return to the table. Sam and Barnabas compare notes about Maggie's virtues.
In walks Burke to demonstrate that he's not Joe, as well as to meet the new Collins in town. The first thing that comes up in their conversation is, of course, Willie. Maggie and Joe leave, with Barnabas pointedly wishing her sweet dreams.
Back at home, Maggie avoids going to bed. Eventually she gives in and tries to hit the sack, and no sooner does she turns off the light than the children of the night get started.
At the Blue Whale, a conversation with Burke likening Barnabas's cane to a tamed beast seems to spark an idea in Barnabas. Cut to Maggie's bedroom. As she fitfully tries to sleep, Barnabas sneaks in the patio doors...and his eyes move between the beast on his cane and his next conquest.
If he's only now thinking about going after Maggie, I have to wonder what his original plan was.
We come back from the credits and commercial break to daytime; Sam goes into Maggie's room because she's overslept and the coffee shop has been calling. She feels weak and cold and remembers having bad dreams, but she's driven to prove she's alright and specifically to leave the room.
Cut to Maggie working at the coffee shop, wearing a scarf around her neck, when Joe enters. She's edgy and having accidents. When Sam comes in to check on her, she collapses.
Back in her bed after dark, she seems in better spirits, but doesn't want to see a doctor. Joe's mention of bringing her flowers, however, triggers a traumatic memory of her nightmares.
Meanwhile, Barnabas lurks around dramatically at the Old House, eventually staring out the window in Maggie's general direction, even as Sam finds her up and about. She wants to take him to the Old House to work on the portrait, and there's a winky-nudgy reference to her hearing having improved--is that a vampire thing?
At the Old House interacting with Barnabas, Maggie seems much more composed, and a bit sly...like she's willingly sharing a secret with the lord of the manor.
When Maggie returns home and tries to sleep, Barnabas does the stare-out-window-in-her-general-direction gig, then convinces Sam to stay at work on the painting while he gets some air. Maggie opens the patio doors and bares her neck in anticipation of her visitor.
Meanwhile, Carolyn discusses her impressions of Jason with Victoria. Cut to Victoria and Carolyn pressing Roger for information about Jason's background. All Roger knows is that he was friend of Carolyn's father, whom Roger didn't know because he was at school for most of their brief marriage. He brings up Mr. Stoddard having left things in a locked room in the basement that none of them have been in, which gets Carolyn very excited with the possibility of learning more about her father. Carolyn asks her mother for a key to the room, but Mrs. Stoddard is adamant that everyone should drop the subject.
Later, Liz tries to convince Vicki that the room isn't important, so that Vicki might help to convince Carolyn. Meanwhile, Carolyn searches for the key to the basement room. Vicki tries to talk her out of looking for it, not because she buys Liz's story about the contents being too painful, but because she seems to sense that Liz is hiding a darker secret.
On Thursday, Sam goes into Maggie's room to find her sleeping during the day. He closes the patio doors and calls into work for her. Maggie struggles to get up, but can't. He brings her coffee, but she refuses. She seems alarmed when he tells her that the doors were open. Sam insists on calling the doctor against her wishes.
At the Blue Whale, Burke and Victoria are having a drink together. Burke didn't get the memo that this is Maggie's week, and is still obsessing over Willie being in town. He also gets filled in on Jason's subplot.
Joe pops into the Evans home to find the underwhelming Doc Woodard #1, whose diagnosis is that Maggie's lost a great deal of blood. Sam leaves Joe at the house to watch Maggie. After nightfall, Maggie is up and around and gets belligerent with Joe, forcing him out.
Back at the Blue Whale, Burke and Victoria are still struggling to find something to do on the show, having fallen back onto small talk about the attacked girls and livestock, when Sam comes in to save the day with a recap of everything that Maggie's been through for the past few episodes, right up to the scenes that we just watched. Vicki is making the connection between Maggie's condition and Willie's when Joe comes in. Alarmed that he left Maggie, Sam rushes back home to find her gone.
This would be the third bite, wouldn't it? My vampire lore's a little rusty, but shouldn't she be one by now?
Meanwhile, Maggie wanders the cemetery in her nightgown.
The men go out to search for Maggie, leaving Vicki alone in the house, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the last girl who was left alone there mysteriously disappeared. A couple of cuts to the clock later, somebody comes knocking on the door--It's the much-maligned Willie, warning that Sam shouldn't come to the Old House tonight. Willie is shocked to learn that Maggie has disappeared.
Meanwhile, Maggie wanders the cemetery in her nightgown.
Victoria gets an anonymous call from somebody who sounds a lot like Willie talking through a hanky, telling Victoria where Maggie can be found. When Burke returns, the couple go out to follow the tip.
Meanwhile, Maggie wanders the cemetery in her nightgown, to be met by a fang-baring Barnabas. Willie runs up to warn Barnabas that Maggie's friends will be coming to look for her. She collapses at the sound of Burke's voice calling for her. Barnabas reluctantly leaves Maggie behind, realizing that he'll have another shot at Maggie, and unable to deny that Burke and Vicki really do need something to do on the show. When the plot-deficient duo find Maggie, she comes to, genuinely unable to remember what she's doing in a graveyard in her nightgown. Burke wanders off to play out the requisite beat of thinking he sees someone and following them into the crypt, but being unable to find the entrance to the secret room--No visit to the cemetery would be complete without it! Eventually he returns to carry Maggie out of the cemetery.
Back at the crypt, someone's got some 'splainin' to do...! Seeing through his underling's ruse, Barnabas demonstrates why his motto is "Spare the walking stick, spoil the Willie." Back at the Evans home, the week ends with the dramatic revelation of--*gasp*--strange marks on Maggie's neck! So that's why she's been wearing a scarf the past few episodes!
_______
50 years ago this week:
New on the charts that week:
"Soul Finger," The Bar-Kays
(#17 US; #3 R&B; #33 UK)
"Here We Go Again," Ray Charles
(#15 US; #38 AC; #5 R&B; the Genius of Soul's last Top 20 hit)
"7-Rooms of Gloom," Four Tops
(#14 US; #10 R&B; #12 UK)
"Sunday Will Never Be the Same," Spanky & Our Gang
(#9 US)
"Can't Take My Eyes Off You," Frankie Valli
(#2 US)
And new on the boob tube:
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This Week's Sidelist Viewing
What was going on the week these episodes aired.
_______
Batman
"The Contaminated Cowl"
Originally aired January 4, 1967
"The Mad Hatter Runs Afoul"Xfinity said:
Originally aired January 5, 1967
Xfinity said:
The warden is definitely becoming something of an in-joke by this point.
Is that a new front shot of the Batmobile when they're heading into Gotham?
Batman and Robin trying to sneak into the ball unnoticed was pretty funny.
The Mad Hatter's radioactive spray didn't seem focused enough to affect Batman's entire cowl and only his cowl like that.
I'll agree with what that guy said in the other thread awhile back...all the stuff with Batman and Robin being presumed dead doesn't make sense. In-story, the Dynamic Duo's elaborate ruse doesn't serve a good enough purpose to justify upsetting the entire world the way they did. It's not for the element of surprise, because the Hatter finds out that they're alive before they meet again. The whole gimmick feels all the cheaper given how it happened in the first place. At the end of the first part, there's no Bat-Fight, the Hatter's goons just shove Batman and Robin in the fluoroscope machine like a couple of hapless bystanders.
When Batman finally calls Gordon on the Batphone, Gordon and O'Hara might have assumed that they were being called by the man who always answers it.
And yeah, what was in the water tower that they spent two episodes making such a fuss about it? As for the fight on the outside, that seems like something they should have saved for a Catwoman episode, so she could have fallen from it in her usual manner.
_______
Tarzan
"Track of the Dinosaur"
Originally aired January 6, 1967
Wiki said:
The official, a man named Bergstrom, is ostensibly trying to provide clean drinking water to a tribe via underground springs, but is being stymied by their belief in an underground monster. He's secretly trying to scare them away because of osmiridium deposits that he found, and to that end is using a fakey-fake paper mache monster with a flamethrower inside, shades of Dr. No. We're told at the end that it was a dressed-up bulldozer. I didn't catch any references to the monster as a dinosaur in the episode...they missed an opportunity to squeeze in a little education for the family hour.
The episode centers around drama between Tarzan and a couple of old acquaintances whom we've never met: an ex-hunter who's an old rival and his wife, a nurse who's an old friend. It turns out that Mrs. Grayson's the one who was already in cahoots with Bergstrom, though Mr. Grayson gets in on the scheme during the episode. It turns out that the missus has gotten selfish because she's dying, but she still has a heart. When Jai finds Bergstrom's cave-set lair, she escorts Tarzan in to rescue the boy. When Tarzan & comapny are fleeing the monster, it's cute how the the show tries to make the little pool in the cave set look bigger by doing a dissolve-type cut while they're swimming to the other end.
Jai's suffering from a lost voice for most of the episode, though Padilla does get some lines. Bergstrom's assistant Charlie, on the other hand, never speaks and doesn't even get a credit, though his presence is substantial in a few scenes.
In the climactic battle, Tarzan uses flaming spears to set the fake monster on fire. Berstrom and Mr. Grayson both buy the farm, neither directly at Tarzan's hand. Mrs. Grayson gets hauled away by the government police.
TOS guests: None
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12 O'Clock High
"A Long Time Dead"
Originally aired January 6, 1967
Xfinity said:
In this episode, Graves plays Captain Dula, a bomber pilot with only a couple of combat missions under his belt. His mission with the 918th, should they choose to accept it, is to prove that his days as a pilot aren't over after losing his previous crew and being branded a jinx. I guess we should wish him good luck.
The bomber loses no time getting shot up on his first mission with the squadron, so he takes oveur as pilot...fortunately, he didn't have the fish. In the heat of battle, he charges the insubordinate Sgt. Komansky with mutiny. Surely he can't be serious! Sargeant, have you ever been in a military prison...? But Komansky has an eyewitness that Dula deserted his previous crew before giving a bailout order, causing Dula's log page of the mutiny charge to self-destruct in five seconds. But when their plane gets shot up again on their next mission, Dula pushes the injured Komansky out of the plane with a parachute, which leads to an investigation of Dula.
The episode description gives away an Act IV revelation regarding the true nature of Dula's behavior. Being a regular character, Komansky is found alive of course...even though there's only one episode left, so they could have killed him off if they'd wanted to. When the gang flies over to pick him up, Gallagher starts suffering from a concussion that he received in the episode's first mission, so Dula has to fly them back home. There's mention of Dula potentially getting treatment, but also of that flight possibly being his last one, so the character's fate is left very much unresolved.
As for the fate of the actor...his striking leading-man presence suggests to me that perhaps there's a regular starring role in his near future...though some might say that's impossible.
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Last Week's 50th Anniversary Viewing
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Dark Shadows
Episodes 225/226-230
Originally aired May 8-12, 1967
Monday begins with a recap of Maggie having her nightmare. She calls Joe, who's not Burke, and pleads with him to come over.IMDb said:
Cut to Maggie and Joe entering the groovily-soundtracked Blue Whale, where she describes her dream in a level of detail that the audience is already familiar with. Joe tries to get at the source of Maggie's fears, when in walks the source of her fears with her father, Sam. The presence of Barnabas seems to put her on edge as he attempts to make small talk laced with innuendo for the benefit of the audience. After Maggie and Joe have a brief dance, she doesn't want to return to the table. Sam and Barnabas compare notes about Maggie's virtues.
In walks Burke to demonstrate that he's not Joe, as well as to meet the new Collins in town. The first thing that comes up in their conversation is, of course, Willie. Maggie and Joe leave, with Barnabas pointedly wishing her sweet dreams.
Back at home, Maggie avoids going to bed. Eventually she gives in and tries to hit the sack, and no sooner does she turns off the light than the children of the night get started.
At the Blue Whale, a conversation with Burke likening Barnabas's cane to a tamed beast seems to spark an idea in Barnabas. Cut to Maggie's bedroom. As she fitfully tries to sleep, Barnabas sneaks in the patio doors...and his eyes move between the beast on his cane and his next conquest.
If he's only now thinking about going after Maggie, I have to wonder what his original plan was.
Tuesday starts with a recap of Barnabas entering Maggie's room and showing his fangs.IMDb said:
We come back from the credits and commercial break to daytime; Sam goes into Maggie's room because she's overslept and the coffee shop has been calling. She feels weak and cold and remembers having bad dreams, but she's driven to prove she's alright and specifically to leave the room.
Cut to Maggie working at the coffee shop, wearing a scarf around her neck, when Joe enters. She's edgy and having accidents. When Sam comes in to check on her, she collapses.
Back in her bed after dark, she seems in better spirits, but doesn't want to see a doctor. Joe's mention of bringing her flowers, however, triggers a traumatic memory of her nightmares.
Meanwhile, Barnabas lurks around dramatically at the Old House, eventually staring out the window in Maggie's general direction, even as Sam finds her up and about. She wants to take him to the Old House to work on the portrait, and there's a winky-nudgy reference to her hearing having improved--is that a vampire thing?
At the Old House interacting with Barnabas, Maggie seems much more composed, and a bit sly...like she's willingly sharing a secret with the lord of the manor.
When Maggie returns home and tries to sleep, Barnabas does the stare-out-window-in-her-general-direction gig, then convinces Sam to stay at work on the painting while he gets some air. Maggie opens the patio doors and bares her neck in anticipation of her visitor.
Wednesday finds Elizabeth and Jason arguing about him wanting a position in the family business to cover his continued presence in her life and her payments to him. Carolyn interrupts them and stays just long enough to raise her suspicions before Jason shows her back out. After Jason leaves, Elizabeth makes a call. Cut to Roger at Collinwood, having learned of Jason's appointment as director of public relations. He could use that decanter about now.IMDb said:
Meanwhile, Carolyn discusses her impressions of Jason with Victoria. Cut to Victoria and Carolyn pressing Roger for information about Jason's background. All Roger knows is that he was friend of Carolyn's father, whom Roger didn't know because he was at school for most of their brief marriage. He brings up Mr. Stoddard having left things in a locked room in the basement that none of them have been in, which gets Carolyn very excited with the possibility of learning more about her father. Carolyn asks her mother for a key to the room, but Mrs. Stoddard is adamant that everyone should drop the subject.
Later, Liz tries to convince Vicki that the room isn't important, so that Vicki might help to convince Carolyn. Meanwhile, Carolyn searches for the key to the basement room. Vicki tries to talk her out of looking for it, not because she buys Liz's story about the contents being too painful, but because she seems to sense that Liz is hiding a darker secret.
IMDb said:
On Thursday, Sam goes into Maggie's room to find her sleeping during the day. He closes the patio doors and calls into work for her. Maggie struggles to get up, but can't. He brings her coffee, but she refuses. She seems alarmed when he tells her that the doors were open. Sam insists on calling the doctor against her wishes.
At the Blue Whale, Burke and Victoria are having a drink together. Burke didn't get the memo that this is Maggie's week, and is still obsessing over Willie being in town. He also gets filled in on Jason's subplot.
Joe pops into the Evans home to find the underwhelming Doc Woodard #1, whose diagnosis is that Maggie's lost a great deal of blood. Sam leaves Joe at the house to watch Maggie. After nightfall, Maggie is up and around and gets belligerent with Joe, forcing him out.
Back at the Blue Whale, Burke and Victoria are still struggling to find something to do on the show, having fallen back onto small talk about the attacked girls and livestock, when Sam comes in to save the day with a recap of everything that Maggie's been through for the past few episodes, right up to the scenes that we just watched. Vicki is making the connection between Maggie's condition and Willie's when Joe comes in. Alarmed that he left Maggie, Sam rushes back home to find her gone.
This would be the third bite, wouldn't it? My vampire lore's a little rusty, but shouldn't she be one by now?
On Friday, Sam is fretting at home over Maggie's disappearance when Joe arrives, bringing Burke and Victoria along to give them something to do.IMDb said:
Meanwhile, Maggie wanders the cemetery in her nightgown.
The men go out to search for Maggie, leaving Vicki alone in the house, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the last girl who was left alone there mysteriously disappeared. A couple of cuts to the clock later, somebody comes knocking on the door--It's the much-maligned Willie, warning that Sam shouldn't come to the Old House tonight. Willie is shocked to learn that Maggie has disappeared.
Meanwhile, Maggie wanders the cemetery in her nightgown.
Victoria gets an anonymous call from somebody who sounds a lot like Willie talking through a hanky, telling Victoria where Maggie can be found. When Burke returns, the couple go out to follow the tip.
Meanwhile, Maggie wanders the cemetery in her nightgown, to be met by a fang-baring Barnabas. Willie runs up to warn Barnabas that Maggie's friends will be coming to look for her. She collapses at the sound of Burke's voice calling for her. Barnabas reluctantly leaves Maggie behind, realizing that he'll have another shot at Maggie, and unable to deny that Burke and Vicki really do need something to do on the show. When the plot-deficient duo find Maggie, she comes to, genuinely unable to remember what she's doing in a graveyard in her nightgown. Burke wanders off to play out the requisite beat of thinking he sees someone and following them into the crypt, but being unable to find the entrance to the secret room--No visit to the cemetery would be complete without it! Eventually he returns to carry Maggie out of the cemetery.
Back at the crypt, someone's got some 'splainin' to do...! Seeing through his underling's ruse, Barnabas demonstrates why his motto is "Spare the walking stick, spoil the Willie." Back at the Evans home, the week ends with the dramatic revelation of--*gasp*--strange marks on Maggie's neck! So that's why she's been wearing a scarf the past few episodes!
_______
50 years ago this week:
New on the charts that week:
"Soul Finger," The Bar-Kays
(#17 US; #3 R&B; #33 UK)
"Here We Go Again," Ray Charles
(#15 US; #38 AC; #5 R&B; the Genius of Soul's last Top 20 hit)
"7-Rooms of Gloom," Four Tops
(#14 US; #10 R&B; #12 UK)
"Sunday Will Never Be the Same," Spanky & Our Gang
(#9 US)
"Can't Take My Eyes Off You," Frankie Valli
(#2 US)
And new on the boob tube:
- Dark Shadows, episodes 231-235
- The Saint, "The Power Artists"
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Last edited:
No, Catwoman falling "deaths" only work if they don't find her body, as when she fell down a chasm or into the water. Falling off a water tower only a few stories off the ground would be too unambiguous -- and too gruesome for a family show. (It's actually a lot like the early Batman comics, where Hugo Strange and the Joker were known to be kicked off cliffs or down trapdoors, or to fall into a river/ocean.)
She could have fallen into the tower, and her fate would have been left ambiguous because we weren't allowed to see what was in there. 
She could have fallen into the tower, and her fate would have been left ambiguous because we weren't allowed to see what was in there.
Uhh, it has to be ambiguous to Batman, Robin, and the police, not just to the viewer. Even Gotham's inept police would be able to conduct a thorough search of a bloomin' water tower.
Bummer. That title had me all excited.
Nothing ever happens that fast on a soap opera.
I have no recollection of this one whatsoever.
Hmm. I don't remember this one either.
Strange. Not ringing any bells.
Whew! I was beginning to think I was in an alternate dimension. This is another nice 60s song-- although with oddly happy music for the sad lyrics.
Not bad. It's a Frankie Valli song.
Pretty sure I'd had some occasion to hear it before it wound up in my playlists.
Now this one I'd never heard before in my life before I went digging a bit deeper into Ray.
This one I'd definitely heard on oldies radio back in the day, but they left it off the Four Tops collection that I invested in on iTunes...wound up buying it separately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_pop
Does that weigh for or against it in your book?
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Kung Fu
"Dark Angel"
Originally aired January 18, 1973
Wiki said:
I know I got into this episode back when during a Decades Binge, probably in the other thread. To reiterate, it's a huge coincidence that one of Caine's old monastery buds would just happen to have so recently been killed in the first town where Caine went looking for his brother; and Lin Wu is a pretty common-sounding Chinese name for it to be such a certain match. One can assume from context that it did turn out to be the same man, but the question of whether it might not be the man whom Caine knew never comes up. It might have been a nice twist if Caine had gone out of his way to track down and ultimately seek justice for somebody who turned out to have been a total stranger.
John Anderson must have been slowing down...he only did two roles for Kung Fu...he did eleven for The Rifleman.
It's always funny when four guys try to make trouble with Caine, because you know which four guys are gonna be kissing dirt by the end of the scene.
Caine also doesn't disappoint in the Escape Artist department.
In the flashback contest, I have to wonder, if they were considered equals, why Caine and Lin Wu wore such different robes. Caine had his pimped-out gold robe thing going on, Lin Wu had a black one with a crane on the back, I think. Possibly just different robes for different styles of Kung Fu...maybe that detail was in the pilot and I missed it. Caine's has a hand on the back.
Maybe it varied by state, but in Hell on Wheels Season 5, it was an important plot point that in California, at least, a Chinese man couldn't testify against a white man.
Would there have been a Shaolin temple in America in this period, or was the son of Soong taking Lin Wu's body back to China?
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OT ETA: Holy crap!
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That's great. Happy anxiety. That was the 60s, all right.
For. He's not one of my favorite artists, but he did some nice stuff.
Lin Wu had to snatch the pebble from the beak of the crane.
I don't know, but the temple in The Legend Continues looked like it had been around for a while.
Okay, that's mighty bizarre. A rival band of pirates, competing to be number one?OT ETA: Holy crap!
Columbo: "Strange Bedfellows" is a comfortable return to form after last week's Ed McBain digression. George Wendt, who was best known at the time (and probably still is) as Norm on Cheers, goes against type as Graham McVeigh, a cool, calculating horse-farm owner who murders his brother and the mobster he frames for the first murder. He and Columbo have the usual banter where he begins to suspect the guy but plays it friendly, and there are a couple of nice bits where Columbo subtly hints that he knows Graham is lying, that kind of passive-aggressive confrontation he did so well. The story takes a turn midway through when a mobster played by Rod Steiger gets involved and warns that he'll take matters into his own hands if Columbo doesn't catch the guy soon. The title refers to the climactic sequence where Columbo and the mobster cooperate to get Graham to confess where he hid a key piece of evidence -- although I really doubt any of this would hold up in court, nor should it. It's kind of disappointing that Columbo isn't able to close the case on his own without these strong-arm tactics.
It's also an unusual installment in that it has more action than usual -- there's a car chase, something that's long been anathema to Columbo, and even a sort of fight scene involving Columbo, though it (like the car chase) turns out to be staged.
I remember finding Wendt underwhelming the first time I saw this -- I think I felt he was too blue-collar to work as the kind of upper-class antagonist Columbo usually faced -- but this time, viewing him with more distance from my memories of Norm, I felt he did a reasonably good job, aside from a couple too many "What are you talking about?" lines that got repetitive. Graham does come off as a pretty cold character, not one of the great Columbo villains but reasonably effective -- and he even scores a nearly unprecedented point against the lieutenant by refusing to let him ask "just one more thing." But there are holes in the story where his motivation is concerned. It's never really clear why he killed his kid brother; I guess it was because of all his gambling debts draining their funds, but that wasn't clear. And if the kid brother was in danger of being murdered by the mob for not paying his bills anyway, why didn't Graham just let that happen? Arranging for the "can't-lose" horse to lose the race might've been enough to guarantee that outcome.
Also, one would think a show built around an Italian-American cop would try to avoid the stereotype of the Italian mobster, but this one embraces it fully. It has one character make a token complaint about the stereotype, but it turns out she works for the mob anyway. And Columbo claims he doesn't speak Italian, even though we saw 6 episodes (and 5 years) earlier in "Death Hits the Jackpot" that he's quite fluent in the language -- and I think we even saw a bit of that in "Undercover" just last week. It's hard to know if that's a continuity error, though, given that Columbo routinely pretends to be less capable than he is to get criminals off their guard.
It's also an unusual installment in that it has more action than usual -- there's a car chase, something that's long been anathema to Columbo, and even a sort of fight scene involving Columbo, though it (like the car chase) turns out to be staged.
I remember finding Wendt underwhelming the first time I saw this -- I think I felt he was too blue-collar to work as the kind of upper-class antagonist Columbo usually faced -- but this time, viewing him with more distance from my memories of Norm, I felt he did a reasonably good job, aside from a couple too many "What are you talking about?" lines that got repetitive. Graham does come off as a pretty cold character, not one of the great Columbo villains but reasonably effective -- and he even scores a nearly unprecedented point against the lieutenant by refusing to let him ask "just one more thing." But there are holes in the story where his motivation is concerned. It's never really clear why he killed his kid brother; I guess it was because of all his gambling debts draining their funds, but that wasn't clear. And if the kid brother was in danger of being murdered by the mob for not paying his bills anyway, why didn't Graham just let that happen? Arranging for the "can't-lose" horse to lose the race might've been enough to guarantee that outcome.
Also, one would think a show built around an Italian-American cop would try to avoid the stereotype of the Italian mobster, but this one embraces it fully. It has one character make a token complaint about the stereotype, but it turns out she works for the mob anyway. And Columbo claims he doesn't speak Italian, even though we saw 6 episodes (and 5 years) earlier in "Death Hits the Jackpot" that he's quite fluent in the language -- and I think we even saw a bit of that in "Undercover" just last week. It's hard to know if that's a continuity error, though, given that Columbo routinely pretends to be less capable than he is to get criminals off their guard.
Adam-12, "Clear with a Civilian: Part 2" (Jan. 17, 1973): The new police commissioner who's riding in the back this episode wanted to call in a Code 7...boy, did she pick the wrong squad car!
