jompaul17
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2011
- Messages
- 1,074
- Real Name
- JoAnn M Paul
Ron,swan4022 said:Almost 7 years since Hank started this thread! Thanks to all the contributors who helped tipped me toward purchasing Season 1, and the rest is history...The first season intrigued me with how it set up the tension between Joe's "street smarts" and the computers' "data smarts," and how often Joe was beat up! In later seasons, it was "The Sound of Darkness" and the episode with Darren McGavin as Joe's Korean War buddy turned into a sadistic killer that really led me to appreciate the show's depths (the latter episode has some wonderful meditations on violence); there are of course many other great episodes in there, but those two pop into my head as pivotal to enhancing my current affection for a show that existed only in the margins of my childhood TV viewing; I was more of a "Rookies" and "Six Million Dollar Man" kid.
My Mannix viewing is currently on "hiatus" until I pick up Season 6 set. Maybe I will watch "summer repeats" of Season 5 in the meantime, to replicate what TV-watching used to be like.
Those are a couple of pretty good episodes you mention! We haven' discussed "A Ticket to the Eclipse" much here, but you are right about it being one of the early episodes of series television to explore the inner darkness of its heroic leading character. Admittedly, Star Trek does so as well with "The Enemy Within." But, that involved an explicit split into halves. In Mannix, we get to see Joe having to confront himself as himself.
And the scene does not take very long, really only a few minutes in an episode that is jammed-packed with all sorts of stuff going on, in typical Mannix fashion. But I so distinctly remember seeing it as a kid, and thinking how unusual it was to see Joe as less than perfect like that. It was a beautiful thing, really. The beautiful thing is consistent with Harry's previous post. Joe quickly moves beyond this awareness of something decidedly less than desirable in himself. He is aware of it, and he gets over it. He does not dwell on it -- and he moves on.
He is not an anti-hero. And he is not a perfect hero. He is a middle of the road hero, which is where all true heroism lies, specifically because heroism lies in struggle, itself -- and moving on in the best (most heroic) way we can.
I just can't pick up enough of that kind of spirit. I wish I could inject it directly into my veins. But the only way we seem to be able to infuse ourselves with that is by exposure to certain kinds of story -- and reflecting upon it, projecting ourselves into it.
By the way, "The Sound of Darkness" has a similar theme. Joe has his dark moments. But he moves beyond them. So, it is curious that you would explicitly mention those two episodes.
Also, notice how "A Ticket to the Eclipse" was written by Bruce Geller.
So, I hope it does not take you too long to get to season 6!
But, summer re-runs can be fun to watch (and discuss) too!