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50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 1)
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M*A*S*H
"Dear Dad...Again"
Originally aired February 4, 1973
Wiki said:
Hawkeye writes another letter to his father detailing incidents at the 4077th. Note: In the conclusion of his letter, Hawkeye asks his father to give his mother and sister a kiss, but later in the series Hawkeye is said to be an only child and his mother is deceased.
Korea's pretty much the same story. The fighting goes on: the hatred, the violence, the senseless brutality, men behaving like animals. And then, of course, there's the war.
Hawkeye's impressed with a new surgeon who's as good as he is, Captain Adam Casey (Alex ["Not now, Madelaine!"] Henteloff). After helping Father Mulcahy with his back, Casey confesses that he's not a doctor.
Klinger is back in full crossdressing mode, wearing a bridal gown and a '20s moll outfit. On a bet, Hawkeye goes to the mess tent wearing only his cover, dogtags, and boots, receiving an ovation.
Radar's taking a correspondence course and needs Blake to give him a test for which he's peeked at and memorized the answers...in the wrong order. There's a surreal moment in which Hawkeye's internal letter narration is talking about how Radar seems to have ESP and calls him a "little fink"; Radar walks by and asks him if that's a nice thing to say.
Hawkeye and Trapper get Frank smashed after he's rebuffed by Hot Lips, and he keeps them up all night. His "ferret face" nickname comes up as something his brother called him...wasn't it something the guys called him in the film?
Radar shows Hawkeye a communique indicating that a provost marshal is looking for Casey, who's actually a sergeant. Hawkeye gives Casey a heads-up on the condition that he never touches a patient again without a license, and encourages him to get one. Casey explains that he's passed himself off as a number of other professionals. Didn't we get a character like that in one of the other shows recently? I wanna say that it might have been an H5O.
In the episode climax, Hawkeye, Trapper, Radar, and some greenshirt perform as a band for a talent show, with Blake faux-conducting and Hot Lips taking the stage to sing off-key. The coda gag has Casey leaving the camp to impersonate a chaplain elsewhere.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 6, episode 19
Originally aired February 5, 1973
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Phyllis Diller, Oral Roberts, Paul Gilbert, Michael Greer
Asked what he thinks of
Jesus Christ Superstar, Oral Roberts says that he enoyed it, but liked the book a whole lot better.
Michael Greer on how to impersonate Bette Davis:
A salute to the beautiful people:
The news segment:
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Hawaii Five-O
"Will the Real Mr. Winkler Please Die?"
Originally aired February 6, 1973
Wiki said:
An obscure shopkeeper (Nehemiah Persoff) becomes the catalyst in a plot to assassinate a high-level Iron Curtain defector (Mark Lenard).
When a TV reporter (Philip Arnone) who's interviewing people on the street about a new superhighway approaches Peter Winkler (Persoff), the man freaks out upon seeing that he's on camera, using TV Fu on the reporter and attempting to run, but ends up being arrested...still on camera. The reporter drops charges, but Five-O takes interest in how WInkler is obviously living under an alias, as no records exist for him before 1966. Upon being pressed, he tells them that he's really Albert Hoffman, and was set up with a new identity after testifying against a murderer. This checks out with the feds, but when Winkler returns to his souvenir shop, he's confronted by a shady foreign agent type who calls himself Reeves (Malachi Throne), who strongarms Winkler into doing a job for his former employers. As incentive, Reeves shoots an underling and offers a choice between alternate evidence that will either provide him with an alibi or implicate him in the murder. Winkler agrees to do the job.
Questioning Winkler about the man killed at his shop, Five-O confronts him with having dug up that the Albert Hoffman in the witness protection program is somebody else. Winkler confesses that he's actually former spy Paul Helperin, who escaped to the West to start a new life, and displays his credentials by dazzling them with his photographic memory, describing the contents of documents on desks in the office that he only had the opportunity to glance at. Danno calls on Steve, who's in snowy Washington, for help in verifying Winkler's current story. Steve visits a CIA buddy, Bill Druthers (Bill Edwards), who knows of Helperin by reputation and that he disappeared of '66, but can't identify him. The only man in America who can is a man named Rogloff, a former Soviet intelligence head in Eastern Europe who defected and is in deep hiding. Steve arranges a rendezvous with Rogloff in Denver, where he's met by three men. The one who asks for his identification (Peter Carew) subsequently identifies himself as Rogloff, and when he says that he can't positively identify Helperin--who may have had some work done--by photograph alone, Steve makes a pitch for him to come to Hawaii to help them nail the agent, who burned several of Rogloff's associates. Ultimately the man sitting next to "Rogloff" who's more notably being played by Mark Lenard is the one who agrees to come to Hawaii, his stand-in being a security precaution.
Back in Hawaii, Danno takes Winkler to a security compound for material witnesses to wait for Rogloff's arrival. When he's alone on the premises, Winkler is mirror-signaled from a nearby hilltop. Steve arrives with Rogloff and his aides, and Rogloff asks Winkler about things that only Helperin could know. Winkler shares an impressive amount of detail about his part in the capture of a woman named Krista Liebman, who was Rogloff's closest associate. Winkler claims that he was offered a deal for his life to turn her in, expressing his regret, and Rogloff reveals that he and Krista had recently been secretly married at the time. Then Rogloff informs McGarrett that Winkler isn't Helperin, because Winkler didn't know about things that Helperin would, including the marriage...and because the real Helperin wouldn't be capable of even faking the emotion Winkler displayed when Rogloff went into details about Krista's likely fate. When Rogloff's about to leave, Winkler pleads with him not to, identifying himself as Otto Steiner and warning that he was recruited to lure Rogloff out of hiding. (I wonder if I would have seen that last-act-break reveal coming if the description hadn't given it away right up front.)
Winkler submits to a polygraph test to verify his latest story, which involves having actually been a courier who used his photographic memory to deliver intel without carrying documents. While the immediate plot against Rogloff is effectively foiled, Steve expresses his motivation to catch the big fish. What appears to be a dead body is subsequently taken from the compound in an ambulance, following which Winkler is returned to his shop, which is heavily staked out by Five-O. Reeves shows up as the head of a tour group and escorts Winkler out to the tour vechile at gunpoint. Five-O's pursuit suffers a setback when Reeves blocks their path while switching vehicles. Reeves takes Winkler to a shooting range at the base of a scenic volcano and tries to intimidate him into talking about what really happened to Rogloff with the help of shots from a couple of snipers he has set up there. But Reeves soon finds that he's surrounded by Five-O and rifle-toting uniformed backup, who have the high ground. A pistol-toting Rogloff then approaches Reeves and identifies him as the real Helperin...who chooses to surrender rather than be left to Rogloff's mercy.
The episode ends on the humorous note of Steve offering to help Winkler establish the latest in his series of identities to protect him and his unseen family.
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Adam-12
"Killing Ground"
Originally aired February 7, 1973
Frndly said:
Malloy and Reed are taken hostage by robbers.
During a night patrol, dispatch is putting out a detailed report about a robbery when Malloy and Reed pull up to a camper on the side of the road. The driver, Norm (Michael Richardson), takes them around to the back of his vechile and opens the door, and after a dramatic post-credits freeze-frame act break, Malloy gets in a brief exchange of fire with the man in the back, Steve (John Chandler), who takes a shoulder wound while Reed takes one in the leg. The robbers get the drop on both officers, cuffing them and putting them in the back. In another one of those nifty "they don't know us" tricks, Pete and Jim act out of character, pretending to be at odds over Malloy's disregard for regulations. (Maybe they do work these routines out in advance.) The robbers go to pick up their accomplice Susie (Joy Wenner Bang), who's told that these cops blew away her younger brother Bill, who was actually a casualty in the robbery. They then head for her father's place to take a private plane to Mexico, claiming that they'll let the officers go.
Malloy sits in front with Norm, while Reed stays in back with Steve and Susie. Noticing some instability in Steve, Jim starts pushing his buttons, while up front, Pete tries to cut a deal with Norm, fake tipping him off that they got out a call describing the camper, so it needs to be ditched; and Reed acts angry that Pete told him this. While they stop so Steve can steal a new set wheels, which turns out to be a school bus, Reed works at turning Susie against the other two, claiming that Norm left Bill for dead at the robbery. In the new getaway vehicle, Jim provokes Steve into an outburst, and when Norm tries to get him under control, Steve verifies that Norm split the scene of the robbery without checking on Bill. Susie sneaks the handcuff key out of Norm's pocket and into Reed's hand. At the robbers' destination, while Norm and Susie are going to the house, Steve threatens to shoot Pete and Jim jumps him. He unlocks Pete and the two of them run into the brush, still unarmed. The robbers drive after them, so Jim lets himself be found to act as a decoy so Pete can tackle the robbers when they get out of the bus. Assisted by Jim, Pete gets Steve's gun and the robbers are cuffed and put in the bus.
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Kung Fu
"The Soul Is the Warrior"
Originally aired February 8, 1973
Wiki said:
Caine's quest to meet his half-brother Danny leads him to a ranch where his sibling once worked and plunges the priest into a confrontation where he proves his mettle by walking through a pit of rattlesnakes.
Cue flashback...
Here Caine gets a pocket watch of his brother's that was left behind at the ranch in the description. No sign of whatever heirlooms his grandfather gave him yet.
In this one, Sheriff Pat Hingle saves Caine by shooting the son of a wealthy rancher. Makes me wonder what Burton's Gotham City would look like in the late 1800s. Anyway, this leads to a lot of cheery philosophizing about fear and death before any consequences actually happen. This episode, I'm afraid, definitely feels padded, falling into the category of stories that could have been told more succinctly in a half-hour format.
One odd bit of business is that the episode ends with some voiced-over wisdom from Master Po sans a visual flashback (and it's not repeating dialogue from a previous flashback).
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The Brady Bunch
"The Subject Was Noses"
Originally aired February 9, 1973
IMDb said:
Marcia breaks a date with Charlie when "big man on campus" Doug Simpson asks her out. However, after she gets hit in the nose with a football, Doug breaks his date with her.
Wiki said:
In 2009, TV Guide ranked this episode at the bottom of its list of the 100 Greatest Episodes.
When Doug (walloping websnappers, indeed--Nicholas Hammond) asks Marcia out, she's so stricken that she accepts without taking into account her date with Charlie for the same night. Charlie (Stuart Getz) pays a call on the Brady house after school to drop off wallpaper samples for Mike and Carol's bedroom on behalf of his old man; and on Greg's advice, Marcia tells the eager-to-please Charlie that something suddenly came up (which coming from her doesn't sound as much like Bondian double entendre)...though she beats herself up for her white lie afterward. When Doug later brings Marcia home in his maroon Triumph TR8 convertible, Charlie's there again, and Jan makes excuses to keep Doug from coming in, dropping hints that Marcia's too slow in picking up. Later still, Marcia walks outside to call in Peter and Bobby for dinner, and the iconic moment happens.
Marcia's nose isn't broken, but swells up badly. She tries to keep Doug from seeing it at school, and when he does, he tells her that something suddenly came up (which coming from him sounds like an excuse to switch into his custom-patterned long johns). Charlie still wants to go out with Marcia, but she feels too bad about herself to accept. The next morning, Marcia and her sisters are ecstatic to find that her nose has completely healed. When Doug sees her at school, he makes a counter-excuse to try to resume their date. Marcia turns him down, then confesses to Charlie about her what she did to him, and they agree to go out as originally planned.
Marcia comes home late from her date to inform her parents how she and Charlie ran into Doug at the pizza place and the boys got into a fight in which Doug's nose got injured.
Along the way, Mike and Carol decide to repaint the bedroom the same color to avoid having to change the carpet, drapes, and bedspread to match...giving Greg the opportunity to accidentally swipe Alice across the face with his brush.
IMDb says that Maureen McCormick injured her nose in a car accident prior to the episode, but doesn't clarify if the episode was shot around her actual injury.
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The Odd Couple
"The Hustler"
Originally aired February 9, 1973
Wiki said:
Felix's opera club holds a casino night to raise money for new costumes.
Felix hosts a meeting of his opera club, who vote to do a production of
Madame Butterfly. Oscar comes home to tell Felix that he got kicked out of the pool hall on suspicion that he's a hustler, which doesn't deter Felix from volunteering his roommate to use his gambling expertise to play several key roles in helping the club to run a Monte Carlo night fundraiser.
Oscar: Sure, just let me step into a telephone booth, change into my cape, break a date with Lois Lane, and I'll be right out!
Felix manages to convince Oscar to do it, but is horrified on the night of the event to learn that Oscar recruited professional gamblers to attend via his bookie. When Oscar reassures Felix that the house is winning, Felix keeps the place open past the posted hours against Oscar's advice, and one of the gamblers, Arnold (Louis Guss), promptly breaks the house in roulette.
However, it turns out that Arnold used the money to pay a debt he owed to Oscar, so Felix tries to stake a dubious claim on the winnings. Felix manages to persuade Oscar to loan him the money, but Oscar subsequently puts it on a pool game he's challenged to by Sure-Shot Wilson (Stanley Adams). Felix drops in on the game to find that Oscar is losing, but while Oscar is shooting, Felix distracts Wilson by expressing concern about his heavy smoking and coughing. Concerned that he may have emphysema, Wilson tries to shoot without a cigarette, but blows the shot so that Oscar wins.
After the opera's premier, Felix brings the club home to sing a tribute to their benefactor.
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One of my favorites. Nice psychedelic Poetry Rock.
I like the crunchy, acidy wah-wah guitar.
It's very nicely written, in particular the way it involves the bus driver and other passengers in the story, and, of course, the thousand yellow ribbons.
Hundred.
"
"
He met Scotty and Bones on 1986 Earth.
This is very evocative of the era.