Best of Route 66 (1 Viewer)

[DeWilson]

Me-TV started airing this show 2 weeks ago, and I was disappointed to see they are showing the old Colex syndicated episodes. Running time is approx. 45 mins. and the picture is dark and fuzzy.
I guess its better than nothing, but it hurts knowing that there are better quality prints out there from the old Nick at Nite airings.

It also runs weekdays on RTV - and Thursday 10/13 they start running season 4!

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

This is great news. We'll finally get that last season, and maybe better and re-mastered versions of the first season. The people at Shout! sound like they genuinely appreciate just how timeless and great this show is.
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Route-66-Shout-Factory-Acquires-Rights/16184]

 

[dhammer]

I hope you can buy just the last season since many people already have the first 3 seasons.

 

[Noir Voyeur]

This is great news. We'll finally get that last season, and maybe better and re-mastered versions of the first season. The people at Shout! sound like they genuinely appreciate just how timeless and great this show is.
]http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Route-66-Shout-Factory-Acquires-Rights/16184]

Well, it would have been great if Shout! had backed up that appreciation of the show's greatness with an effort to release better versions (which are known to exist) of the episodes from the first half of the first season. Unfortunately, they didn't. And they haven't announced any intention to release Season 4 separately.
What they have offered up is the full 4 seasons in a box set. The initial episodes look as bad as they did in the Roxbury release, but apparently the Season 4 episodes look great.
Here's a comprehensive review by HTF reviewer Richard Gallagher:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/320863/route-66-the-complete-series-dvd-review

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Now, where was I? Oh, right...
Season 4 two cents, beginning
1. "two strangers and an old enemy" We're now firmly in the age of Lincoln. Or Linc, as the Case may be (Glenn "Stone Face" Corbett). Fortunately, even though Buz (George Maharis) has left the passenger seat, the scripts are still by Stirling Silliphant, (though this is the first time I think I've ever seen him use such a literal title about what's going on in the episode instead of some metaphorical one - Tod and Linc are the two 'strangers.')
This episode finds Tod and Linc helping track down a missing former World War II hero ace (Jack Warden) who crashed a private plane in the Florida Everglades. Sessue Hayakawa (the Japanese commandant in "Bridge on the River Kwai") has a prominent role as the 'old enemy' with a stake in finding his fomer nemesis of the skies alive.
There are the usual tasty Silliphant lines. Warden's character refers to his kamikaze dive into the swamp (and possible suicide) as 'putting the eight ball in the pocket." There's the requisite alcoholic wife bemoaning her estanged hero husband's fate and her possible descent back into obscurity. But the most fascinating thing about this episode (well, at least to me) is how blatant the product placement is here. The 'product' is the Gulf Land Development's real estate gamble known as Cape Coral, Florida. You see the name on the little airport (long since gone), the Cessna airplanes, the doors, and even spilling out of a mouth or two. Gulf bought this swampland, drained it into canals, bulldozed all the trees down (using chains strung between), and resold it in little plots to Northerners in cold climates dreaming of their little Florida paradise. I know this because my parents bought one and spent their last 23 retirement years there. But I didn't remember that this 1963 series spent at least two episodes shilling this real estate for Gulf Development. I understand Chevrolet - even the cops are driving them here, but I wonder what the deal with Gulf was? I hope they didn't just pick up the tab at the Del Prado Tiki Bar where Silliphant was probably hanging out zeroing in on his latest alcoholic woman muse.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents, con'd
2. "same picture, different frame" What's this? Linc Case has gone all mooney over an older man who looks like Tim Curry. Oh, wait a minute... that's not Tim Curry, it's big time classic actress Joan Crawford. It was just so hard to tell because every time the camera got closer than four feet, the diffusion filter kicked in and I suddenly wondered if I was under the influence of as much alcohol as the characters in Silliphant's stories usually imbibe.
What's the plot? Honestly, I don't have much of a clue. A world traveler woman (Crawford) returns to her thespian roots in Poland Spring, Maine (hmm, another product placement?), only to be stalked by her disfigured and blinded mad artist husband, Patrick O'Neal (Richard Dawson's doppelganger). He carries a shotgun and wears extremely dark sunglasses, which may explain how he might have confused what looks like a drag queen in a fright wig for his wife. And then there's the "B" story where Tod, working as a camp counselor or something, is stalked by a 15 year-old girl named "Binky," whose father is Tom Bosley. Who knew Mr. Cunningham had another family on the side? It's pretty silly, but it gives Martin Milner a chance to show off his patented embarrassed mug. But the girl's quite cute. Swing back this way in a few years, Tod.
Not a strong episode, but it gives a grand dame of the cinema a prominent spotlight (even with the diffused filter) to emote and tear up and express regrets and speechify while our wooden soldier Glen Corbett looks on with dreamy eyes and makes her feel like a woman again. The whole episode would've been a lot more entertaining if it really was Tim Curry in his Frank N. Furter gear.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents, con'd
3. "come out, come out, wherever you are" The parade of classic age motion picture stars continues with Lon Chaney, Jr. (Universal's original "Wolf Man"). Here he gives a very endearing performance as the disabled father of another one of writer Silliphant's patented cookoo women (Diane Baker). This episode is worth it alone to see Chaney show you just how good an actor he really was, and to perhaps find yourself getting a little misty, as well, as his tears well up in a pivotal scene.
Linc wastes no time getting all moony again for another woman (the daughter), but at least this time she's closer to his age, and doesn't look anything like Tim Curry. Diane Baker was a staple for guest appearances throughout the sixties, and she's at her most fetching and c--kteasing here. Alex Cord shows up to play a sailor on leave and a rival suitor to the crazy daughter, and also to provide that free spirit beat vibe so desperately missing in this show without Buz. I also detect a bit of Brando and John Cassavetes in his performance here. He must have been a product of that same method actor class they all graduated from.
We're also still in Poland Spring, Maine, which leads me to suspect the first episode of this season in Cape Coral, Florida, was actually a leftover from the end of season three, where another episode took place there. But you get a definite Maine flavor with the New England architecture here and the local saw mills.
Not too much of a story here. The broad is cookoo again and toying with her men. But Chaney, Cord, a hot Diane Baker and the ending are strong enough to make you glad you stuck around.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents, con'd
4 "where are the sounds of celli brahms?" There are a bounty, or should I say cacophony of pleasures in this episode.
Tammy Grimes, an actress with a most distinctive sound (think a child's voice filtered through sandpaper velveteen), plays an acoustic engineer testing decibel levels at a Minneapolis Hotel (The Sheraton-Ritz for all you product placement counters out there), with career-minded focus. Can Tod Stiles, the hotel's assistant PR man keep up with her for 72 hours straight? Watch Martin Milner milk comedy fatigue for all it's worth.
For all you Naked City fans out there, I give you... Horace McMahon and Harry Bellaver playing small but delicious roles. This reunion was no doubt brought about by producer Herbert Leonard, who previously produced that series. McMahon is particularly enjoyable here as a man so sound sensitive he orders his whiskey without ice cubes because they 'make too much noise."
Linc Case goes all moony again; this time for the least aggressive contestant in a beauty contest he has been tapped to judge by being the millionith driver to enter Minneapolis during it's sesquehential (or something like that) celebration. Tod slept through the moment in the passenger seat and has to endure watching Linc be accosted by beautiful women contestants vying to win to comic effect (because Linc is too principaled to take advantage).
There are many great Silliphant lines throughout the episode that my short term memory fails to retain intact, but I loved the one about women being 'as effective to prepare the bandage as they were the wound.' And Celli has another insightful one about strangers who first meet being more honest than when they've known each other for a while.
Don't adjust your TV format settings during the beauty contest; models were valued for being a bit 'sturdier' in the sixties.
Where are the sounds of Celli Brahms? All over the place as we finally and gleefully discover.
Three revved Corvettes for this one.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents con'd
5. "build your houses with their backs to the sea" Okay, that was depressing. William Shatner plays the son of a hard-headed lobster fisherman in Portland, Maine, where stubborn pride, honor, and tradition are more inflexible than a crustacean shell. Pat Hingle plays the father and delivers a powerful, contained performance, while Shatner crunches the scenery louder than cracking lobster claws in a power window. It's a two-man show (written by Frank Pierson), and the two men who dominate the story are not named Tod or Linc, who only make token appearances. Shatner's character is named Menemsha, which is either a character name from the Bible or an exotic sushi dish.
We're back in Portland, Maine, with accomodations from the Poland Spring Hotel again, so they definitely aired episodes a bit randomly since last week we jumped to Minnesota after two episodes in Maine. I like the scenery and the local flavor and, what appeared to me, some real local lobstermen cast around the leads. But otherwise, it's not only the lobster traps that came up empty.
One and half Corvettes.

 

[Stephen Bowie]

I like that episode, and I find it very moving that Frank Pierson, who wrote an episode of Mad Men this season, is still working at the top of episodic television fifty years later. There's nobody else about whom that claim can be made.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

That's good to hear, and gives hope to the rest of us 'over 40' scriptwriters. Pierson was also heavily involved in the Writers Guild, so he's a hero on all fronts. There were hardly any 'bad' episodes of Route 66. My highly unscientific and personal grading process is based soley on measuring an episode against the standards of the ones I liked the best. The father son issues in this episode (happy father's day!, btw) were so specific and severe, I couldn't relate. And....

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

And that ending. Sheesh. What do you call a father/son suicide drowning? A dualicide? Quite an extreme sacrifice to maintain the peace. How about a lobster cage match?

 

[Stephen Bowie]

Pierson was also the "showrunner" (to use a term that didn't exist then) during the early 60s on two seasons of Have Gun Will Travel and Empire, both of which are quite good. He also wrote the pilot for Nichols, which was superior to the subsequent series, and wrote and directed the very underrated John Le Carre adaptation The Looking Glass War. Talented man.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents con'd
6. "and make thunder his tribute" Again with the father-son issues. But now we're back in Minnesota, and instead of trapping lobsters, we're picking rasberries. Dad has to do everything his way (scare the birds away with a shotgun - hence the 'thunder'), and sonny thinks there's a better way (keep the birds off the plants with cheesecloth). They yell at each other, they have a fistfight, they go off to their corners, and Tod and Linc remember their own father issues and pick sides. But basically you have a real showcase for actor J. Carrol Naish playing the old school Italian father, still tilting at windmills (or firing at crows). Lou Antonio plays the son. The script's by John Carlino. Alfred Ryder, who turned up as a Nazi in every other episode of Combat plays a - wait for it - Indian here. And Michael J. Pollard even shows up in a Beethoven sweatshirt as a character that can only be described as Michael J. Pollard.
I'm starting to grow a soft spot for these hard ass father/son tales that make me appreciate how much more my own dad was like Ward Cleaver. Or Atticus Finch, who only used a gun to put down a rabid dog, and when spat upon, just wiped it off and walked away. Some fights are pointless. This is two dads in a row who go to pretty extreme measures to learn that lesson.
Two and a half Corvettes.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents con'd
7. "the stone guest" Only Route 66 and Silliphant would audaciously feature a performance of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni while a metaphorical version of the same story plays out 900 feet below in a Colorado mine. Only Route 66 would have an obstetrician quoting Aristotle questioning the value of women while delivering a female baby. Only Silliphant would have alternating monologues between our contemporary Don Juan's wife (Marion Ross - Mrs. Cunningham!) explaining how she trapped her husband and now, delivering his fourth child, is willing to set him free.. and the spinster woman (Jo Van Fleet) who picked him up on a whim of adventure and who finds peace and meaning in her potential imminent demise with him in a caved mine. And only Silliphant can defy all expectations of a typical TV drama and go where you never thought he'd go with the ending.
Martin Milner has some really good moments here (maybe in penance for that fatigued clown he played a couple episodes back) trying to explain Don Juan goes to Hell to our contemporary Don Juan's sensitive and bruised son. And Glenn Corbett's Linc doesn't have much to do, which is always wise.
We're somewhere outside Denver in the Colorado desert where the landscape and the story are nakedly barren and unforgiving. There's a reason why the best operas are always tragedies.
Three and half Corvettes.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents con'd
8. "i wouldn't start from here" We're in Springfield and there are no Simpsons in sight. Springfield, Vermont, that is. Since the featured star and story is a 69 year-old farmer (Parker Fenelly) being put out to pasture before his beloved team of horses, there's not much opportunity for product placement here, but the end credit thanks the Mt. Snow Development Corporation, so this must be the cold weather Vermont version of the Gulf Land Development plug for Cape Coral, Florida. One of the charms of a show like this shot on location, besides the regional scenery, are the local faces that show up in all the crowd scenes. The finale of this episode is built around horse teams pulling concrete at a festival (try to contain your excitment), and you can tell that all the spectators there and at an auction earlier were 'civilians' as we say in show business. They lend the proceedings a more genuine feel of authenticity. Tod and Linc are trying to help the old goat fight the reality of his situation, while he struggles to face it. Not exactly the kind of story featured much on television today, when a younger demographic must be fed younger blood.
Speaking of which, I counted 17 minutes before the hot babe finally showed up, but she was worth the wait. Did Rosemary Forsyth ever look this stunning? I had no idea just how model beautiful she was until I saw her in this pristine black and white print. I know the first 15 episodes in this series set are for shit image-wise, but you can count the strands of her golden hair here, and probably the hay in Parker's wagon. Nothing exceptional story-wise going on, but a moment of silence for the passing of a simpler yet noble way of life.
Two Corvettes with the horsepower outside the hood.

 

[Stephen Bowie]

"I Wouldn't Start From Here" is by Ernest Kinoy, better known for his edgy, issues-oriented writing on shows like The Defenders (he wrote the Emmy-winning "Blacklist"). Kinoy was an adoptive New Englander himself (he lives in Vermont) and I think this atypically gentle, low-key script really captures the outsider's perception of the taciturn insularity of the locals. (Well, I guess -- I've never been north of New York City.) Lovely performance by Parker Fennelly as the "old goat."

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Ayuh, thanks for the info on the writer who I forgot to credit. I bump my estimation up for this episode knowing he was a local, because there was definitely a meditative quality about this episode on life and pace in rural Vermont. Our boys were anxious to get back to NYC at the start of the episode, and by the end Linc was ready to stick it out through the winter to help the old man out. And Tod was less anxious to get back to 57th street once he laid eyes on Rosemary Forsythe. I can't stop thinking about those magnificent, non-collagen-enhanced lips.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents con'd
9. "i'm here to kill a king" I must have put in the wrong DVD. Obviously, this is an episode of Mission Impossible and not Route 66. Robert Loggia plays an Arab colonel security chief who has hired an American assassin to kill the king he is sworn to protect while the shiek is visiting Niagra Falls. Mr. Phelps has to be listening to a self-destructing tape about this at any moment from the Secretary, right? But wait a minute. There's Martin Milner playing the assassin. And there's Martin Milner also playing Tod Stiles. And here's Ginger from Gilligan's Island (Tina Louise) speaking with a different accent and throwing a pitcher of Martinis in his face. I'm so confused. I feel like I'm in the The Twilight Zone. And didn't Martin Milner play an evil double of himself in an episode of that very same series, at a bus stop, if I'm not mistaken?
Sigh. Okay, I get it. Stirling Silliphant is recycling a script he prepared for some other spy thriller TV series. That's the only explanation. He's entitled. Every writer likes to stretch a few other muscles (remember the Buster Keaton and Boris Karloff comedy episodes?). And Milner gets to play a cold-blooded killer version of himself. And Glen Corbett? He gets to stay out of the story as much as possible again (Is he starting to get the hint?). Weirdly enough, it kind of works. I particularly like the moment where Milner tries to kill himself, or rather his innocent double, and struggles with the act. Psychologists tell us that, in reality, murderers are more likely to kill a version of themselves, ethnic or social class-wise, as if the act were an extension of self-loathing. But we're just never going to buy that from a vain Hollywood actor, right? No matter how committed Milner is to the performance. Of course, it would have been a great twist if the assassin actually did kill series lead Tod and sub his body for the king killer to throw the feds off, and then he takes off around the country with Linc. And Linc STILL doesn't have a clue!
That's no spoiler. As long as we're in an alternate universe, that's my alternate universe ending. Dark, I admit, but it would make for an interesting ride further along Route 66 for a potentially reinvigorated and reinvented Season Five.
Three Corvettes just for making me go "What The Fuck?!"

 

[Jack P]

This episode got pulled from the schedule since it was supposed to air the week after the JFK assassination and no one wanted to see a story about an assassination plot. There's still some doubt as to whether it ever aired on CBS or not.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Season 4 two cents con'd
10. "a cage in search of a bird" We're in Denver, Colorado, and the Girl From U.N.C.L.E. (Stefanie Powers looking cute as button) grifted a high stakes poker game and got out of a tight jam with a vengeful mark by the intervention from an aging criminal on the lam with a very unsual request. I know I rant about this, but go on and tell me what other writer besides Silliphant pulls such original story concepts out of his Underwood? Dan Duryea plays the aging criminal with a sweet sympathetic touch for a crook who participated in a robbery where two armored car guards were shot in cold blood in front of the Denver mint a few decades earlier. There's also another crime featured in this episode. Watch closely at the high shot from above as our Corvette enters Denver and witness it pull a left turn from the center lane of a three lane road and blatantly cut off another car. I don't know where you come from, but they shoot drivers for that in my state.
Listen closely around the 29-minute mark and you'll hear one of Silliphant's patented existential monologues - the kind usually supplied by Buz, but this one spills from the (also) lovely lips of Ms. Powers. It has something to do with this cage of a universe. Again, who in 1963 was writing roles this bold, interesting or independent for women? She also explains Duryea's motives for his unusual request by explaining 'you can't find yourself until you lose yourself in someone else.' You won't get information like that from Bonanza.
If I'm not mistaken, that's Papa Walton (Ralph Waite) in an uncredited role as a car garage mechanic with an under five' (lines that is, for the SAG savvy). Linc goes moony for the girl again, but Tod gets the square dance and the kiss this time around. I love all the close ups of the civilian dance caller intercut. And there's a great tracking shot earlier of Duryea and Powers walking along a crowded Denver sidewalk and all the locals moving with them trying not to look at the camera. Smile, you just got imortalized on the only TV series that would come to your city and pull such a stunt.
Three Corvettes with $600 in the hubcap.