Mannix is Coming! (All things Mannix w/spoilers) (5 Viewers)

[davidHartzog]

I watched Mannix at the time, my favorite show, and liked him better as a loner, S2 on. Watched the shows all over again in syndication for years, now own the DVDs.

 

[jompaul17]

I watched Mannix at the time, my favorite show, and liked him better as a loner, S2 on. Watched the shows all over again in syndication for years, now own the DVDs.

David,

Welcome to the thread! (Please accept my apologies if you've posted here before and I've forgotten.)

I think Joe Mannix took on much larger heroic properties when he broke away from Intertect, thanks to Lucille Ball -- but also thanks to Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts who, along with Mike Connors, just "got it" when it came to classic heroism.

Not that season 1 wasn't good. For one thing, it is really fun to watch because you get to see the background that Mike Connors leveraged when he took Joe Mannix out on his own. He seemed to bring that "I used to be a super-agent but I couldn't work for that place anymore" background to the character (and why not?) -- something that likely would never have happened if that first season didn't happen. But, notice how that background was largely unspoken -- it was just a part of the fabric of the character.

If you take a very close look at this series, you see that a combination of luck and the people behind the scenes just getting a golden opportunity to do what they found important made seasons 2-8 something truly special -- because no network would have taken on a classic private eye series without a gimmick in those days, prior to Joe Mannix. And then, they decided that the loner -- the maverick individualist -- would embody sacrifice and risk, as heroes do.

Notice how when Joe Mannix is in all kinds of tough or threatening situations the look on MC's face is just great. He seems to take it in -- does not deflect the situation into some absurd, over the top super-hero type, but he does not panic, nor turn in into farce either. He seems to say, just with the look on his face, "This sort of stuff happens, it is a part of life, and I can not only take it, but I'm going to figure out how to respond to it."

And yes, that is a lot to read into looks on faces.

But, that is what the visual media for storytelling is supposed to be all about -- the reason why we find some characters appealing, and not others is because we are able to read those things in, so often without even realizing it.

That kind of a response is a pretty good thing to have inside your head, if you think about it.

 

[jompaul17]

This is a general HTF question -- and maybe it does not belong here but...

I noticed that I can't edit my "older" posts anymore, where "older" seems to be defined as 24 hours. The HTF didn't used to be that way, or so I think...

This is somewhat problematic. I tend to post quickly sometimes (while thoughts are fresh and/or I have chunks of time). Then, if I go back and read what I wrote days later, I find things that I can no longer fix!

Does anyone know anything about this -- most especially if there is any way around it ???

 

[Harry-N]

The HTF changed the rules for editing because people were abusing it. There are special cases of individuals that have editing privileges for their threads because they maintain some kind of list at the start the thread and need to go back and add things to it. But for the rest of us, we're limited to the 24 hour thing.

Hey, it's better than some places with 15-minute editing windows - or even no editing windows.

Harry

 

[jompaul17]

The HTF changed the rules for editing because people were abusing it. There are special cases of individuals that have editing privileges for their threads because they maintain some kind of list at the start the thread and need to go back and add things to it. But for the rest of us, we're limited to the 24 hour thing.

Hey, it's better than some places with 15-minute editing windows - or even no editing windows.

Harry

Harry,

Well, that's truly a pain.

Some of my sloppiness is due to the limited time I have to post, on most days. I tend to post almost like a conversational email message -- for me, that can result in errors and things that I would like to make clearer, but I don't tend to see those right away.

Ah well, back to "cat theater" ...

 

[jompaul17]

I happened to be tooling around The Web, and checked the Amazon pages for the Mannix DVDs. I used to frequent those pages regularly, while paying attention to sales. But, I haven't been there for quite awhile -- so, with a few minutes to just float today, I went back there.

Curiously, the complete series of Mannix, which is currently selling for $224.18, has a sales rank (in Movies and TV) of #3,334.

Now, to a lot of people, that might not seem like a very good number. But, for a classic TV series that is not on sale, is not cheap, and has been out for a year, it's actually very good! Normally, box sets of such series have rankings of 10,000, even 20,000, or even 30,000 or above.

It was nice to see.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[jompaul17]

On a related note to the previous post, it seems that Amazon has placed Mannix, The Complete Series, on sale!

It is currently selling for $134.49.

I looked into old posts, and it was once on sale for $129.99 -- this current price is pretty darn close to that low water mark.

Not sure why, or how long this will last, but, get 'em while they last!

 

[jompaul17]

Harry,

Awhile ago, when you watched "The Sound of Darkness" you commented on the missing track(s) in the audio of the opening theme. I mentioned having noticed that myself -- the resultant tinny sound hearkens back to the kind of speakers on the TV sets when the episode first ran!

But, one thing I failed to ask -- is the entire episode affected in this way, or just the opening?

I happened to watch the episode last night -- very close to the anniversary of its first-run (12/6/69), I decided to pop it in. Normally, I save that episode (among others), because I don't want to wear out the freshness. So, I hadn't watched it, for example, on the newer TV I purchased last June. I have to say, the video quality of that episode is truly excellent. And, so far as I could tell, the audio also seems a bit clearer than on other episodes as well. These are two things to be thankful for.

Still, if any audio tracks were missing, they would not affect the clarity of the dialogue, I suppose.

I wish they had filmed all seasons of Mannix with the film (and lighting) they used in the early seasons. That film seems to have held up spectacularly well.

 

[Harry-N]

I recall the discussion and did a search for it. I had commented that the opening theme and some of the surrounding scenes sounded harsh, or thin.It was as if a section of the original, master sound track was damaged and they replaced it on the DVD with the soundtrack froma lesser print. If so, it's rather seamless.This may be a case of careless handling. Since this episode was highly regarded, the print may have been handled more than others, for whatever reason. Just a theory...Harry

 

[jompaul17]

So, here is where people get to call me a Scrooge. But, one of the things I'm grateful for is that Mannix never did a Christmas-themed episode.

Still, one of the things I was extremely surprised to (re-)discover was that CBS aired a first-run episode of Mannix on Christmas Eve one year. "A Game of Shadows" ran on December 24, 1972, probably at 9:30pm since they moved the start time up to 8:30pm only after the first of the year. It was a Sunday night.

I seem to recall this sort of thing being very unusual. Now, series tended to produce more episodes per season back then, but they still tended to air re-runs for a couple of weeks at the end of the year.

It isn't one of the series' best episodes, but it isn't awful either. And it is not the least bit Christmas-themed.

So I wonder why they ran it on a night when it would have been pretty challenged for viewers.

It cannot be stressed enough for those who are young enough to think that there is nothing wrong with jeans that are not 100% cotton that there was no possibility to record that episode back then, nor watch it anywhere else until its summer re-run.

So, this struck me as being real strange.

And yes, I'm sure I managed to find a way to watch it that night.

I just wonder if anyone else has a specific memory of such things happening in other series.

 

[FanCollector]

Reruns and specials were pretty common, but sometimes series had airdates mandated by the network around holidays. (Actual holiday nights were rare, but eves were more common.) Typically, the producers would schedule episodes they didn't like for those nights. Get Smart had a New Year's Eve airdate one year and they tried to bury their least favorite episode of the year on it. (The joke was on them, as everyone executive producer Leonard Stern knew told him they watched it before they went out to their parties.) Presumably Goff and Roberts weren't overly proud of A Game of Shadows.On the actual night of the Mannix airing, its NBC competition was an episode of McCloud. But it was originally supposed to be a McMillan and Wife. McMillan and Wife didn't have much choice about which episode to run because their schedule didn't allow much lead time. They got the Christmas Eve slot and the episode ready was Terror Times Two. Rock Hudson played two parts in it and he LOVED it. He was furious that it was going to be buried on Christmas Eve and complained to the studio, to the network and then to the press. He got his wish and that McMillan was rescheduled to air on a Wednesday, and McCloud got stuck with the Christmas Eve slot.With fewer episodes per season and a much greater emphasis on sweeps months, requiring episodes to be held over as late as May, there are almost never new episodes of series in the last two weeks of December anymore, but from the '50s through the '70s, it happened sometimes.

 

[Harry-N]

With fewer episodes per season and a much greater emphasis on sweeps months, requiring episodes to be held over as late as May, there are almost never new episodes of series in the last two weeks of December anymore, but from the '50s through the '70s, it happened sometimes.

I think it happened a lot in the '50s and '60s that shows aired new episodes right through the season. It was sometime in the '70s when series started doing fewer episodes per season that the producers and networks began to realize that ratings services weren't really counting viewers in those holiday weeks, so why burn off new episodes?

Harry

 

[jompaul17]

Reruns and specials were pretty common, but sometimes series had airdates mandated by the network around holidays. (Actual holiday nights were rare, but eves were more common.) Typically, the producers would schedule episodes they didn't like for those nights. Get Smart had a New Year's Eve airdate one year and they tried to bury their least favorite episode of the year on it. (The joke was on them, as everyone executive producer Leonard Stern knew told him they watched it before they went out to their parties.) Presumably Goff and Roberts weren't overly proud of A Game of Shadows.On the actual night of the Mannix airing, its NBC competition was an episode of McCloud. But it was originally supposed to be a McMillan and Wife. McMillan and Wife didn't have much choice about which episode to run because their schedule didn't allow much lead time. They got the Christmas Eve slot and the episode ready was Terror Times Two. Rock Hudson played two parts in it and he LOVED it. He was furious that it was going to be buried on Christmas Eve and complained to the studio, to the network and then to the press. He got his wish and that McMillan was rescheduled to air on a Wednesday, and McCloud got stuck with the Christmas Eve slot.With fewer episodes per season and a much greater emphasis on sweeps months, requiring episodes to be held over as late as May, there are almost never new episodes of series in the last two weeks of December anymore, but from the '50s through the '70s, it happened sometimes.

Lee,

Welcome back to the thread!

This stuff is fun -- how in the world do you know all of this??

It sounds like the McMillian and Wife episode is the obligatory "exact double" storyline, which virtually every long-running series seemed to do at some point. Even Mannix did one ("Scapegoat"), and it is one of my least favorite episodes of the series. Given how contrived those storylines tended to be (how else could it be?), I'm surprised Rock Husdon loved it. But, I'm not surprised he got his way (she said without a twinge of bitterness, nay vitriol in her voice about the way the NBC Mystery Movie and Hudson were so heavily touted during those days).

I can see why Goff and Roberts might have considered "A Game of Shadows" to be nothing terribly special. But, it still didn't seem worth CBS' sacrificing a new episode of Mannix on a night like that! Mannix was hurting in the ratings that season, coming off of its #7 seasonal ranking when it ran on Wednesday nights at 10pm. For that episode, it still running at 9:30 behind The Sandy Duncan Show and The New Dick Van Dyke Show -- two juggernaut lead-ins for a crime drama running against made for TV movies and first TV runs of theatrical movies if there ever were any.

But, not to worry, because "midnight" the jewel-thief cat was soon to come to the rescue, after the first of the new year!

I'm really, really surprised about the Get Smart episode running on New Year's Eve. I can't remember a new episode of any series running during that week in-between Christmas and New Years.

Yet, further research shows that they also ran a new episode on Christmas Eve that same year -- and on Christmas Day the year before!

I don't know when I first noticed that series held episodes back to run during those May sweeps -- but, Mannix typically ended its first-run in March (for 6 of the 8 seasons) During its highest-rated season it ran its last new episode on March 8 (1972)!

The first-run never went past April. But, production on the new season actually sometimes began in April (this happened for the sixth season, for example), so that by airtime some episodes were sitting in the can for five months -- or even longer, since some of those early episodes were considered of lesser quality, and sometimes ran later in the year.

I don't know why, but I liked discovering that they played those characters nearly year-round, with breaks in-between, as opposed to 6-8 months of getting it over with. And, since it took 7 working days to film an episode, that meant they were working 33.6 weeks out of a given year actually filming, still having be familiar with those characters well enough to get the scenes right in 1-2 takes.

They lived those characters right out on the screen -- and it shows.

 

[FanCollector]

Thanks! You're exactly right about Terror Times Two being a typical "evil double" episode. I think Hudson liked it so much because playing the hero all the time bored him a little and he was just very happy to be able to show another side of himself. In fairness to him, he does a good job by avoiding the mustache-twirling supervillain portrayal, but it is as contrived as you suggest.I think it would have been around 1979 or 1980 that the idea of artificially extending the season through May took hold. (In the old 34-to-39-episodes-a-year days of the 1950s, the season went through June or even into July without preemptions.) Before that, there really weren't any reruns used during the regular season. There would be two or three specials and all the other weeks just had new episodes. In the late '70s, I think networks realized that you have a point and that they were "wasting" valuable first-run episodes at times when it wasn't benefiting them.The long lead time at the beginning of the season was helpful in that the shows filmed at a loss of time (five days a week to film a show that takes six or seven days to film--with no reruns, they needed some lead time!) and also in that it gave them some choices as far as scheduling episodes. In some cases, the lead time was not helpful enough. Maverick, for example, was originally designed as a one-lead show, but the series had fallen so far behind after filming seven episodes that Bart Maverick was introduced as an alternating lead. Star Trek was always well ahead on principal photography, but post-production would take months and they actually did commit the cardinal sin of missing an airdate and forcing a mid-season rerun.Also typically, the producers would come back to work a month early to prepare some scripts, so as much as the actors were living with the characters nearly year-round, the producers were in that Mannix mindset on an even more constant basis.Not really having been TV-aware before the May sweeps programming changes, I never got to experience a straight-through TV season (apart from shorter-run cable shows now). Which way do you prefer it? Did you like having a longer summer hiatus but a steady run of new episodes? Or do you like the modern way of having a shorter break with more gaps in the season?

 

[jompaul17]

Thanks! You're exactly right about Terror Times Two being a typical "evil double" episode. I think Hudson liked it so much because playing the hero all the time bored him a little and he was just very happy to be able to show another side of himself. In fairness to him, he does a good job by avoiding the mustache-twirling supervillain portrayal, but it is as contrived as you suggest.I think it would have been around 1979 or 1980 that the idea of artificially extending the season through May took hold. (In the old 34-to-39-episodes-a-year days of the 1950s, the season went through June or even into July without preemptions.) Before that, there really weren't any reruns used during the regular season. There would be two or three specials and all the other weeks just had new episodes. In the late '70s, I think networks realized that you have a point and that they were "wasting" valuable first-run episodes at times when it wasn't benefiting them.The long lead time at the beginning of the season was helpful in that the shows filmed at a loss of time (five days a week to film a show that takes six or seven days to film--with no reruns, they needed some lead time!) and also in that it gave them some choices as far as scheduling episodes. In some cases, the lead time was not helpful enough. Maverick, for example, was originally designed as a one-lead show, but the series had fallen so far behind after filming seven episodes that Bart Maverick was introduced as an alternating lead. Star Trek was always well ahead on principal photography, but post-production would take months and they actually did commit the cardinal sin of missing an airdate and forcing a mid-season rerun.Also typically, the producers would come back to work a month early to prepare some scripts, so as much as the actors were living with the characters nearly year-round, the producers were in that Mannix mindset on an even more constant basis.Not really having been TV-aware before the May sweeps programming changes, I never got to experience a straight-through TV season (apart from shorter-run cable shows now). Which way do you prefer it? Did you like having a longer summer hiatus but a steady run of new episodes? Or do you like the modern way of having a shorter break with more gaps in the season?

Lee,

I find it so curious that so many actors say they prefer not playing the good guy or hero. When I watched That Guy... Who Was In That Thing even some of those character actors, typecast as good guys, said they couldn't stand playing good guys anymore. (Then at least one of them quickly added they said they would if offered such a part!)

OK, so this is a Mannix thread, so perhaps I could be forgiven to going back to Mannix. But one reason I love the show is because MC seemed to not only want to play a hero, and even explore it a bit. Perhaps because he actually wanted to, it never came across as a boring thing for him -- never. One the contrary, he took every scene where he could get heroism across, and seemed to make it better, sweeter, as if he couldn't wait to play this guy, Joe Mannix. And, oh how sweet that was (and is) to watch.

in fact, when he was cast as bad guys, mostly in various westerns and B-movies, it looked like he didn't want to play that kind of guy.

Also perhaps because he wanted to play a hero, he was comfortable exploring that a bit. He let himself look bad, at times, in episodes like "The Sound of Darkness" when he came across as anything but a hero in a few key scenes. He was so comfortable playing a hero, he could let himself look bad, so that when he overcame that, it meant that much more.

As a result, playing the hero never seemed to become boring for him! He was willing to play with it, around the margins, while always enjoying playing a hero.

So very sweet.

In this age of over-intellectualization, where it seems almost backward to want to identify with classic heroism, we've lost sight of the immense practical value, if nothing else, of inspirational good guys in not only improving our self-image, but what we actually do.

So, while I'm not the least bit surprised that Rock Hudson enjoyed playing something other than the good guy, perhaps it was because he never quite understood the value of heroism the way MC did, never quite connected with that deep need that resulted in the Bill Moyers - Joseph Campbell special on The Power of Myth in 1988 being one of the most popular series in PBS history. Campbell is the "Hero with 1000 Faces" guy.

It seems to me that there is a deep need there, one that is being missed

So, 50 years after the Kennedy assassination, people STILL rank Kennedy as the #1 president they would like to see added to Mt. Rushmore -- over FDR and Regan (I heard this several times on the 50th anniversary of the assassination). Why? One reason might be because, when he was young and bedridden quite a bit, he read, and studied heroes. He understood the value of hope, sacrifice, courage personal investment and just plain seeing ourselves as bigger people -- and that made it to his image and rhetoric. And, people STILL miss feeling that way about themselves.

People forget that a crucial mechanism in helping us overcome and feel better about ourselves is connection with heroes.

Or, perhaps even worse, a pretty strong element these days seems to eschew that mechanism, as if it is somehow less intelligent or boring.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I watched series TV quite a bit in the '80s, but can't quite remember the finales going into May. Then again, series TV seemed to start to matter to me less then, so it's hard to say. By the time the '90s came, I was down to just a very few series, like Frasier. And, I don't remember when those episodes ran out for the season (I could look it up, but it is telling that I don't remember).

I DO remember a tendency towards stupid season-ending cliff-hanger episodes, which seemed designed to keep a person edgy for what might happen, but always resolved stupidly the next Fall, when you found you didn't care about the whole cliffhanger storyline anymore anyway. This sort of thing happened in Frasier as well, BTW. And, I think those stupid cliff-hangers went with the May sweeps thing.

Notice how older series never did that sort of thing.

Notice how each episode of Mannix is its own adventure, without even any recurring villains!

Of course, that style keep you positive, hopeful, as if your life is one adventure, one right after the other, giving you the sense that you could overcome, rather than being bogged down in a soap opera.

But, again, that is another style of those days.

I do think the producers had a lot to do with the very high production and writing quality of Mannix -- Goff and Roberts deserve a tremendous amount of credit for that series. The more I find out about it, the more I discover how so many things came together to make the series what it was - a kind of "under the radar" series that was not so highly touted as some others, just that much better. I also found an article where Connors was amused that a plethora of movie actors failed when they tried series TV! He said it was harder than they thought -- and, in fact, it required far more of a spirit of invention (especially back then) than a lot of actors wanted or, perhaps, were capable of.

The article also makes it clear that he thought a lot about what might work in series TV as he went long -- again, something he does not get a whole lot of credit for (which is too bad).

The question in your last paragraph is intriguing. I had to think about it quite a bit!

So, in recent years I've watched a few series, a sampling of which includes Six Feet Under, Mad Men, Carnivale, Homeland, 24 and Desperate Housewives -- although the later two were not completed. The latter three were binge-viewed a season at a time, on DVDs or on-demand. The others were watched as they aired. I also attempted to watch the short-lived Vegas last year, and one season of the new Hawaii-Five-O, an episode at a time.

And, I enjoyed some of these series.

But, none of them matched the relationship you had with the characters simply being there for you each week during a solid block of the year, the way they used to run.

This relationship cannot be underestimated. Because, you didn't feel you were overly-stimulated by some of these stories so much as you wondered what these characters might be up to, and you wanted to them to be there for you each week, doing their thing. So, if 1/2 the time you followed them, and the other 1/2 of the time you saw that cycle repeated, it sort of made sense.

Now, you move around so much that if characters develop over the course of the season, you can't tell where you are in that development when the many re-runs hit mid-season, only for new episodes to run somewhere along the line -- you hope your DVR finds them.

Then again, so many series these days are not about character, not so much about relationships, so much as they are about sock and awe.

These days, the idea is "look at how we grabbed your attention -- look at how clever we are" as opposed to "watch us because we want to have a relationship with you."

Or perhaps put another way. These days, producers and actors seem to make series with themselves in mind, first and foremost. Back then, producers and actors seemed to make series with the viewer in mind, first and foremost.

So, the bottom line (and a long time to get there), is that the solid block of new episodes without the interruptions, cliffhangers and shock and awe is more conducive to viewers having relationships with TV characters.

And, there seems, to me at least, to be utmost value in having relationships with strong, heroic, characters in story.

 

[FanCollector]

Thanks for the insights into your viewing experience. (And yes, Frasier and its parent series Cheers both ran their seasons into May sweeps.) It makes me think that some of the fascination or "water cooler" nature of some of the cable dramas comes from the fact that they almost all air their episodes without interruption or, at most, with a single week off. The seasons only run 10-13 episodes, but they don't have lengthy gaps during the course of the season the way the networks do.

 

[jompaul17]

Thanks for the insights into your viewing experience. (And yes, Frasier and its parent series Cheers both ran their seasons into May sweeps.) It makes me think that some of the fascination or "water cooler" nature of some of the cable dramas comes from the fact that they almost all air their episodes without interruption or, at most, with a single week off. The seasons only run 10-13 episodes, but they don't have lengthy gaps during the course of the season the way the networks do.

Lee,

Yep, I agree with that. The broadcast network strategy comes across as being less heavy-handed. Broadcast networks seem comfortable jerking viewers around with the schedule, assuming viewers are going to be there when the episodes are ready, or the networks decide to air them.

This brings up another point. Did networks used to move the timeslots of certain programs around so much? That is one of my pet peeves about Mannix, of course. Certain shows moved a lot, while others were never touched.

Notice how those cable shows both run straight through AND stay in a consistent timeslot (in addition to re-running throughout the week). So, if you are going to talk about a new episode of Mad Men around that water cooler, you were probably going to do it on Monday mornings, since new episodes ran on Sunday nights.

I thought more about new episodes running into May. Some of this might be peculiar to living in the Northeast, but, the weather and length of days changes dramatically by May.

Part of the fun following series way back when was because they fit into having to be inside and in the dark quite a bit. Psychologically, it was comforting to follow the exploits of characters and rely upon them being there for you, and fresh, from week to week. Somehow, you didn't need them as much when the weather got better, the days got longer, and you were more likely to be outside.

People don't pay attention to this sort of thing -- the way a lot of our instincts are pretty basic, when it comes right down to it. But, the combination of those days getting shorter, and the arrival of the fall season, complete with a fresh slate of episodes that were going to run for the next six months, was the psychological equivalent of finding warmth and light in defiance of the cold and dark. It was much better than reading a book!

And, it made a difference that they were somehow consistently there. You could count on them. It was pretty incredible, really, that you got a fresh episode of your favorite series for practically a whole six months -- just when you needed them.

By the time you got to the end of the season, the days got longer and you started to go outside. Your favorite series were re-running, but you didn't need them as much. You tended to be outside more.

And a fresh season would come again next Fall, when you needed them most.

There was something beautiful about the way TV mirrored the seasons you were experiencing, like a friend who was there just when you needed them.

 

[Harry-N]

Have we discussed this ad? "The Girl Who Knew Too Much?" A search on IMDb doesn't show an episode with that title. Or is this perhaps a made up title for advertising purposes?

Harry

 

[jompaul17]

Have we discussed this ad? "The Girl Who Knew Too Much?" A search on IMDb doesn't show an episode with that title. Or is this perhaps a made up title for advertising purposes?

Harry

Harry,

Ah, what a great ad!

I'm not sure if we discussed it before or not, but, what the heck? The world is just a bit better place by yet another image of Joe floating around in the cloud.

Actually, if I had to bet, I'd say we discussed a similar ad with Barnaby Jones, so not one from season 8. I think we were discussing the Mystery Double Feature (and thanks a lot for making me think of that dumb cat again -- that thief that stole at least 24 minutes of Mannix from season 7!).

This is from season 8, since Mannix runs at 9:30 again (where it also spent the first half of season 6 -- except running behind The Sandy Duncan Show and The New Dick Van Dyke Show then). They removed that peculiar cat thing for season 8, when it ran behind Kojak.

The description is for "A Fine Day for Dying" which first ran on October 6, 1974. So, I was first inclined to agree with you -- CBS is just making up its own ad titles here, to try to grab your attention. But, a search of the IMDb reveals that Kojak did, indeed, run an episode with the title "Wall Street Gunslinger" on that date!

And, further search of Apple's Way reveals that it ran something called "The Returning" on that date -- so, for some reason they picked off some episode titles and changed others?

Apple's Way was yet another Earl Hamner Jr. series, sort of like a modern-day Waltons. Only, it appears to have run for only a total of 28 episodes, over two half-seasons.

Despite its terrible ratings, it was actually kind of a good lead though. Because, after it ran, your TV dials were so sticky from the syrup that you couldn't change the channel.

 

[Harry-N]

Season's Greetings to all of the MANNIX fans and Home Theater Forum members. Since there are no holiday-themed episodes of MANNIX, a fabrication will have to do:

All the best! Stay warm up there in the north!

Harry