I also love the scene with Pete and the man with a gun. The entire scene is mostly tense close-ups of Malloy's and the mad man's faces. Right before he drops the gun a single tear rolls down the man's cheek because Pete's words have hurt him so much. After the confrontation is over Pete sits down and holds his head, he needs a minute to recover from what has just transpired. This scene shows the human side of both the suspect and the officer. The man with the gun is not evil, he is human and Pete's words affect him. Pete can't just move onto the next call without taking a moment to reflect on what just happened, he has saved a child's life, he has driven a grown man to cry, he has survived the scene himself. Pete has feelings and this moment they are overwhelming.
The story of Getz vs. Claver is great, too. The story begins with a suspicion, Claver vandalized Getz' home, and ends with an arrest. Adam-12 stories are not always wrapped up by the end of the episode as this one was. We also learned something in this episode, an officer can't arrest a suspect for a misdemeanor if he has not witnessed the crime.
Once again, Adam-12 has delivered comedy, drama, mystery, adventure, and education in 24 minutes. In this episode, it was all delivered in a thoroughly entertaining packaging.
Just watched this one on Cozi-TV. They seem to be making more cuts for commercials than MeTV, so I'm a bit more disappointed that they outbid MeTV for the contract.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to take a moment to give some props to Zalman King, as the gunman with the infant hostage. He does a good job here with a hard part, which could easily have gone very wrong into cloud cuckoo-land.
Zalman King was the star of a pretty good 1970 series called "The Young Lawyers," but it probably best known now as a producer and director of made-for-cable-TV soft-porn flicks.
I've read on Facebook today that Cozi is really doing a hatchet job on the episodes to add more commercials. Thank God for Netflix. I'm also collecting the DVD's in case Netflix ever drops the show.
DeleteZalman is wonderful as the gunman. He's so sad, which is unexpected. Too bad that he didn't stick with acting. I wonder if he made more money acting or producing/ directing soft-core porn.
I'm sure he made a lot more from his cable smut.
DeleteTall, wiry, curly-haired, craggy-featured Jewish character actors aren't often in high demand... But there's always an audience for naked hotties doing sexy stuff!
And to give King his due, his stuff was usually both compellingly sexy and a lot more emotionally involving than you'll usually find in softcore cable porn.
Back almost two years later with a couple more observations. I managed to find the first five seasons online, so I've been watching an episode a day from the beginning. A couple of other notes about this episode:
ReplyDeleteHow cute is Jim Reed telling Pete about his mistake? He's got that whole "good little boy reporting his wrongdoing to the teacher" thing going on, and it even makes me go "D'aaaawwwww!!!!!"
Mr. Johnson, the neighbor, is played by Gene Dynarski. I knew Dynarski best as outer-space settler and miner Ben Childress in the very early (and incredibly sexist) Star Trek episode "Mudd's Women." He usually played the same sort of tough, steely-eyed blue-collar types where-ever he showed up (very much a sort of "Mitch Pileggi" vibe,) so seeing him play someone as mild-mannered and deferential as Mr. Johnson here gives an insight into the range he was capable of. (Or, for all I know, still is. I haven't noticed him in anything recently, but that doesn't mean he isn't still in the land of the living, and still acting. (And I'm too lazy to Google to find out.) [Okay, I Googled; he's still with us at the age of 83, having last appeared in 2003's "Apple Jack" as Helmut Jitters. Good for him!]
I love the way Milner portrays the arc from enjoying Reed's fretting and even tormenting him just a little bit, to just being completely over it, and wishing his young partner would just STFU about it already.
The whole scene with Malloy getting Mrs. Freeman to make a Private Person's Arrest is just delightful. I like her triumphant, confidant attitude ("I've never arrested anybody before. I like the idea!") and the way she plays her satisfaction with following Mrs. Getz's example and taking a stand to help safeguard her neighborhood. Martin Milner is note-perfect here as Pete Malloy, showing his respect and admiration for her, laced with amusement. It's a great scene.