Rerun Junkie Guest Stars–Richard Jaeckel

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Do you need a good looking man of a questionable character? Allow me to introduce you to Richard Jaeckel.

Okay, he more than likely wasn’t of questionable character outside of the roles he played and not all of the roles he did play were of questionable character, but he did play the mime rapist on that one episode of Little House on the Prairie, so yeah, I’m going to side-eye him forever for that.

He was Tony Gentry on Frontier Circus, Lt. Pete McNeil on Banyon, Hank Meyers on Firehouse, Jack Klinger on Salvage 1, Maj. Hawkins on At Ease, Lt. Martin Quirk on Spenser: For Hire, and Ben Edwards on Baywatch, and with 187 credits on IMDB going back to 1943, many of them for TV shows, you’ve probably seen him in something, most likely a Western.

He did multiple stints on Gunsmoke, but the episode I remember best is a final season entry called “Larkin”, in which he plays an outlaw pursued by bounty hunters who happens to run into Newly and is taken into custody. Newly is hurt during the course of the action and he struggles to make it back to Dodge City with Larkin in tow and bounty hunters right behind them. Larkin is a killer and he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the bounty hunters and the law, but better the devil that would rather take you in alive. It’s a tightrope of nuance and tension that Richard Jaeckel walks brilliantly.

He also put in appearances on other Westerns such as Bonanza, The Virginian, The Wild Wild West, Wagon Train, Have Gun-Will Travel, The Rebel, and The Oregon Trail.

Mr. Jaeckel made a brief, but memorable appearance in an episode of Emergency! called “Kids”, in which he successful defends a man of abusing his stepson. His unapologetic demeanor endears him to no one, particularly Dr. Brackett, and definitely not the audience, especially at the end of the episode when the actually guilty stepfather sends the stepson to Rampart General once again.

Frequently cast in roles as a member of the military, he turned up in episodes of Black Sheep Squadron, Combat!, and China Beach. His penchant for playing police officers and criminals alike landed him on shows like Ironside, Perry Mason, McCloud, Baretta, and The Naked City. He also dealt with his share of private detectives in episodes of Charlie’s Angels, Cannon, and 77 Sunset Strip.

He tangled with the feds on The FBI, The Untouchables, and O’Hara, US Treasury; showed up on both The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Alfred Hitchcock Presents; went to paradise on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Big Hawaii; got sci-fi on The Time Tunnel and The Outer Limits; found himself in the presence of criminally brilliant minds on Murder, She Wrote and Ellery Queen; made news on Lou Grant, spied on Mission: Impossible, and went big on Dallas.

No matter what show he turned up on and no matter what state his character’s character might have been, Richard Jaeckle is always an impressive presence.

Nothing questionable about that.

Book ’em, Danno–Episode 37

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A man seeking revenge meets his match in an old lady when he takes hostages in the Five-O offices in “The Bomber and Mrs. Maroney”. And the games continue in the Season 3 2010 Hawaii Five-0 episode “Pa’ani”.

I admit that it took a while this season to get to a reboot episode. That’s just the way the schedule played out. But it is a fun episode, so I think it’s worth the wait. Larry Manetti is an absolute gem.

“The Bomber and Mrs. Maroney” was in the running for favorite episode of the season. The blend of humor and tension is fantastic.

Be warned. I do drop a couple of f-bombs in this episode, if your sensibilities be that sort of delicate.

Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Behold the physical manifestation of no fucks left to give. She’s not in the mood for your shit and she never will be, son.

Here, Watch This

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Yes, there’s a new podcast.

This one has been in the works for literally years because I think Shann first proposed this idea back in 2020, and it’s taken a while to get it going. The biggest hang-up has been my schedule. I know it sounds glamorous to say that I was busy, but in reality I tend to be a shitty juggler.

But! I finally figured that out. Meanwhile, the original idea evolved. It started out as the two of us discussing episodes of TV shows based on a theme and we kept the core of that idea. But scheduling chat times and the inherent hang-ups that came along with that became a real obstacle. It seemed like this idea was never going to get off the ground.

Then Shann made a brilliant suggestion.

We exchange episodes of shows to watch (preferably shows we haven’t seen or aren’t that familiar with) based on a theme, and record our thoughts separately.

Bingo! That solved the issue of scheduling and took the idea in what I think is a fun direction.

The final show: Shann and I force each other to watch episodes of TV shows based on a theme.

We explain why we picked the choices we picked, but whatever the other person thinks is out of our hands. No rebuttals.

So far we’ve only got two episodes out and one more in the wings, but we’ve got plenty of themes to keep us busy and a monthly release schedule to fill. Mark the second Tuesday of the month on your calendars.

Check the Hey, Watch This tab for a list of the episodes and more information (like where to listen!).

It could be fun. Or it could be torture.

Stay tuned.

Rerun Junkie Confession–I Love a Series Finale

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Warning! I will be spoiling the hell out of how several reruns ended. Proceed with caution.

The only episode of The Big Bang Theory I’ve ever seen in its entirety was the series finale. Never really cared for the series, but I had to see how it ended.

I’ve got a thing for a series finale.

Many series don’t get a formal ending. They get cancelled. Which is a shame, especially when they end on a cliffhanger because they fully expected to get another season, but had the rug pulled out from under them. An official series finale wasn’t a common place thing with older series. Most of them just ended without any grand exit even if they weren’t cancelled.

But whether the episode was intended to be the end of a series or not, whether it’s a big send-off or a quiet goodbye, I’m fascinated by how shows end.

The Fugitive was the first series that had a real finale: the one-armed man was caught and Richard Kimble was finally proven to be innocent. It set the template for other shows to follow. Wrap up all of the plot lines and say goodbye.

Obviously, the biggest series finale was M*A*S*H. Though alive when it went off the air in 1983, I can’t say for certain that toddler me actually experienced the end of the show’s 11 year run. I didn’t get to watch it until about twelve or thirteen years later when I was in high school. I’d been watching the reruns since junior high (not counting falling asleep to the episodes they showed after the local news when I was a kid spending the night at my grandparents’ house), but the finale was never shown. And now I can’t remember if some station did a one-time replay or if someone loaned me a copy of it. Either way, I finally managed to see it.

Talk about a grand finale. I can see why so many people tuned in. It was more than just bringing a popular series to a close. It was an event.

Safe to say most shows don’t get that kind of treatment.

Barney Miller got a three-part finale that saw the 12th Precinct building sold, everyone getting split up, Barney and Levitt getting their long-sought after promotions, and Barney turning off the lights and closing the door as he left the squad room. A fitting, bittersweet end.

One of the most brutal series finales is courtesy of Quantum Leap. Dr. Sam Beckett is leaping from person to person in his timeline, trying to right the wrongs of the past while searching for a way home. Spoiler alert! The last episode features a title card announcing that Sam Beckett never made it home. How do you like your feelings? Crushed over ice? Because that’s the only way you were getting them with the way this show ended. It still makes my chest ache to think of it. And I didn’t even watch the show religiously.

Sometimes a show gets cancelled with enough warning that it’s able to tie up enough loose ends that the final episode feels like a satisfying enough conclusion. Stargate: Atlantis comes to mind. Atlantis ends up on Earth and our cast is hanging out on the balcony, taking in the Golden Gate Bridge sunset. It promises more adventure is possible, but it’s not a cliffhanger. Stargate: Universe wasn’t so lucky. The show ended with everyone but Eli in stasis pods, and Eli had only a couple of weeks to fix the broken one or he’d die when the life support ran out. Yeesh.

The A-Team ended up with a shortened final season when their retooling didn’t boost ratings like they’d hoped. What should have been the final episode perhaps wasn’t the strongest, but the final scene was a perfect sum up of the show. They’d get their freedom and keep working to get justice for the underdogs. However, months after that “final” episode aired, the network aired a partially finished episode (they used scenes from another episode to “finish” it) and that became the series finale. “Without Reservations” is good, but the ending doesn’t hit that finale feel like “The Grey Team”.

Steve McGarrett finally caught Wo Fat in the last episode of Hawaii Five-O, but the Marshall family never made it back from The Land of the Lost. Dorothy finally found the love of her life and got married in the last episode of The Golden Girls, but as far as we know Mork and Mindy are still stuck in the stone age.

Planned or not, happy or sad, I love to see how a show ends.

Rerun Junkie Character–Dr. Miguelito Loveless

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A great hero needs a great nemesis. In the case of The Wild Wild West and its two heroes Jim West and Artemus Gordon, only a true diabolical genius could do.

Enter Dr. Miguelito Loveless.

Played by the fantastic Mr. Michael Dunn, Dr. Loveless is quite the foe. His evil schemes are so clever that West and Gordon only narrowly avoid utter doom time and time again. Choosing a little person to play the main characters’ biggest arch rival might seem like an odd choice. When one thinks of an evil villain, they think of someone imposing, particularly in the physical sense. However, Mr. Michael Dunn has enough presence that his personality looms threateningly even though he physically can’t.

The result is a truly unique adversary.

Like any good villain, Dr. Loveless typically had a right hand woman and sometimes a left hand man. For six for the ten episodes he appeared in, his lethal lady was Antoinette, played by Phoebe Dorin, who worked with Mr. Dunn as a singing act. In three episodes, he had a towering assistant named Voltaire, played by Richard Kiel. One additional task that Voltaire had that other henchman might not, would be to help elevate Dr. Loveless when necessary.

Dr. Loveless’s height wasn’t ignored. It sometimes even factored into his plans, and his treatment by the rest of the world due to his height did factor into his hatred of humanity. But everything Dr. Loveless did, a six foot tall man with a hatred of humanity would be just as likely to do. He was a diabolical genius who wanted to take over the world. It’s good to have goals.

Likewise, Jim West and Artemus Gordon took Dr. Loveless seriously. They treated Dr. Loveless like the brilliant and dangerous man that he was.

His first appearance in “The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth”, the third episode of the series, established Dr. Loveless as a cultured, brilliant man who treats his underlings with an odd sort of courtesy and respect even when he loses his temper, and who loves his saintly mother for many reasons, but mostly for instilling in him a love of music. A nice juxtaposition, given that he’s lying in wait to kill a man. Which he does, of course, right under Jim West’s nose. When Jim finally meets Dr. Loveless in person, he finds the genius inventor in his game room besting three big men in physical combat with the help of his walking stick. A marvelous first impression. He doesn’t greet West as an adversary, but as a guest, serving him tea and chatting about the man he murdered and the explosives he invented before rescuing a fly from his tea. He even sings a song, accompanied by Antoinette. It’s all very gentlemanly. Jim poses as a turncoat and Dr. Loveless tests him by having him deliver a message to the governor of California. You see, the state has taken his family’s land and he wants it back. It’s not much. Just half the state. And he’ll periodically blow up 5,000 people with his powerful explosives until he gets it. A very reasonable request, especially since he does make a few good points about politicians. Anyway, even though Jim West bests him in the end, Dr. Loveless proves himself to be a formidable adversary, a role he takes quite seriously throughout the run of the series.

In his quest to gain control of California and the world, Dr. Loveless employs murderous toys, hallucinogens, Jim West dopplegangers, shrinking powder, starvation powder, practice robberies, and even fakes his own death.

In his last appearance, the Season 4 episode “The Night of Miguelito’s Revenge”, Jim West is lured to a barber shop under the pretense of meeting Artemus Gordon, but his shave turns out to be a close one. The other customer is none other than Dr. Loveless, his face concealed by a towel and using fake legs to give the impression he’s much taller. With West under a towel of his own, Dr. Loveless proceeds to drug him and then deposit him in a funhouse that’s not so fun. At least for Jim. When he comes to after being beaten by the thugs hiding there, he finds himself back in the barber shop and chasing Dr. Loveless as he executes his latest plan: a kidnapping scheme according to an old nursery rhyme. While Dr. Loveless seems to be living his best life in his circus with his captives, Jeremy Pike (this was one of the episodes Charles Aidman stepped in as sidekick while Ross Martin recovered from his heart attack) manages to figure out who the next victim is and takes his place. Dr. Loveless taunting West on stage as the “dummy” in a ventriloquist act leads to Jim being buried at sea, which fails of course, but we all had fun trying. As it turns out, Dr. Loveless is seeking vengeance on those who’d wronged him and his friends and holds a mock trial at his circus with a clowns for his jury and Jim West being the final defendant. West and Pike spoil his plans, but Dr. Loveless naturally escapes.

Such was the legacy of Dr. Loveless that his son Dr. Miguelito Loveless Jr, played by Paul Williams, plagued Jim and Artie in the 1979 TV movie The Wild Wild West Revisited. Sadly, this legacy was in part because Mr. Michael Dunn had passed away in 1973.

As villains go, Dr. Miguelito Loveless was perhaps one of the most eloquent and clever, his malice carried out by brilliance and even though you never want to see him win, you’re always glad to see his charming face.

Book ’em, Danno–Episode 36

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Book 'em Danno Podcast

Season 3 still has a few swerves to it as it heads towards the finale.

In “The Gunrunner” we get a suspicious kidnapping and the 1971 version of a burner phone. In “Dear Enemy” Vera Miles insists that Steve re-open the case that sent her husband to jail for murdering his mistress.

The ultimate swerve is that George Murdock isn’t the asshole. Even when he’s a good guy, he still manages to be a dick. Not so in “The Gunrunner”. Yes, I say many words about that, the burner phone, and Vera Mile’s decided to wear a pink nightie (?) to talk to Steve about re-opening her husband’s case while Gary Collins looks on. Also, I probably spend more minutes talking about the greatness that is Dub Taylor than he is actually in the episode.

Listen to all of the words and minutes on Souncloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Behold the photographic evidence of the ultimate payphone set-up and the nightie in question. Two bits of greatness I will never get over.

1971 burner phone

vera miles and gary collins

Battle of the Sexes

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When I watched the first season of Baa Baa Black Sheep, I dreaded getting to the episode titled “W*A*S*P*s”. Right there in the episode description it said that “a battle of the sexes lands on the frontline”.

I loathe a battle of the sexes.

I make no secret of the fact that much of the rerun content I watch (and some of the current content) is “male-oriented”. It’s action stuff. It’s police stuff. Classic cis het guy fare. So there isn’t a lot of quality women content or input. And yes, some of it can be eye rollingly bad. But nothing quite irritates me like the battle of the sexes.

The context is typically of women doing man’s work, whatever the hell that is. I wasn’t raised with gendered work. I was raised with work and somebody better do it and don’t make me tell you twice.

Think of “St. Gilligan and the Dragon”, which I talked about in this post. The women go off on their own because the men are being pricks The women are able to hack it and the men are useless. The implication, of course, is that the men don’t know how to do things like cook and do laundry because it’s something women do and is therefore beneath them. Starving and stinking for their mancards.

Naturally, it’s played for laughs because the battle of the sexes is a frequently used theme in sitcoms.

One such episode that has always stuck with me is The Brady Bunch episode “The Liberation of Marcia Brady”. Basically, Marcia goes on the record that she thinks women can do anything men do and then Greg ends up goading her until she decides to prove herself by joining The Frontier Scouts. For the final initiation, Marcia has to use her Frontier Scout skills to navigate through the woods following a trail that Greg has left.

The twist? Greg has purposely made the trail as hard as possible to follow without breaking the rules. And to everyone’s surprise, Marcia succeeds.

Marcia’s initiation is a perfect example of how the patriarchy works. In order to prove that women can do anything men can do, Marcia actually had to do better than what the guys had to do because the boys were so threatened by the idea of a girl joining their little scouting group they had to actively sabotage her.

Something similar happens in many episodes of Barney Miller whenever there’s a female detective. I can remember it happening with Wentworth, Batista, and with the two officers in “Hot Dogs”. All of the women were seen as overly enthusiastic and aggressive in doing their jobs because it went right over the heads of their male counterparts that they had to be. They had to do everything the men did, but they had to do it more and they had to do it better -and in heels!- lest they be considered failures and ruin it for every other woman on the force.

There’s a similar vibe in the Emergency! episode “The Indirect Method”. Roy and Johnny are charged with training a female paramedic who is described as hard-nosed. Is it any wonder? The pressure is intense. She’s doing man’s work, after all.

As for the Baa Baa Black Sheep episode, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I didn’t hate it. The women were not only good at their job, but also serious about it in a way that was less about being as good as the men, and more about showing their passion for flying. Yeah, the guys tried to treat the ladies like they would any pretty face in the vicinity, but it turns out the women were more like them than they realized. Translation: our fellas got hoodwinked by them.

This battle of the sexes was a little more evenly matched. And while it did have it’s hang-ups and of course, the guys had to save the ladies (though, they didn’t really do anything that fighter escorts wouldn’t do for transport planes other than be a little mushy), at least the respect cultivated between the two groups was genuine and not based on arbitrary standards of excellence.

As a result, the episode got my respect, too.

Rerun Junkie Guest Star–Nehemiah Persoff

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Nehemiah Persoff sadly passed away last month at the age of 102, but with 207 credits listed on IMDB, there’s a reason why it felt like he was always on TV for about a thirty year span. Pretty impressive when you consider that he never had a regular or recurring role on any series. Maybe best known for his role in Yentl, Mr. Persoff left his mark on many TV shows during his career.

He did multiple episodes of Hawaii Five-O, but his turn as the unpleasant Harry Cardonus, the weak-link in a criminal organization that McGarrett manipulates in order to get him to testify, really stands out. While under police protection, his attitude towards Steve McGarrett, Five-O, and HPD makes you wonder if Steve won’t kill him before his buddy does. He’s unlikable from the beginning, but there’s enough character and humanity to him that makes him feel like a real, fully formed human and not just a plot device.

Mr. Persoff frequently played rabbis and other Jewish characters. His turn as Yakov Berger, a Hassidic Jew and diamond merchant on two episodes of Barney Miller (the closest he came to a recurring character) are fantastic. In the first episode, “Middle Age”, he’s the intended target of a theft. In the second episode, “Riot”, he along with other members of the Hassidic community take umbrage with the precinct’s lagging response times to calls to an extreme. Both episodes are quite funny, thanks in large part to Mr. Persoff’s performance.

Most likely because of his olive complexion and his gift with accents, he was often cast as Middle Easterners or Latinos. His performance as Pancho Hernando Gonzalez Enriques Rodriguez in the Gilligan’s Island episode “The Little Dictator” is probably the best example of the latter.

A gifted, versatile actor, Mr. Persoff turned up on a wide variety of shows. Westerns like Wagon Train, Rawhide, The Big Valley, The Wild Wild West, The High Chaparral, and several episodes of Gunsmoke; Sci-Fi shows like The Twilight Zone (in a rather haunting episode called “Judgment Night”), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, The Time Tunnel, Logan’s Run, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek: The Next Generation; and family friendly fare like The Flying Nun, Little House on the Prairie, and Doogie Howser MD.

He ran the gamut of crime shows, from Honey West, Mannix, Richie Brockelman Private Eye, Vega$, and Magnum PI to The Untouchables, The Mod Squad, Adam-12, The Streets of San Francisco, Columbo, McCloud, and Police Woman to Burke’s Law, McMillan and Wife, Ellery Queen, Baretta, Quincey ME, Murder, She Wrote, LA Law, and Law and Order.

He checked in with Ben Casey, Marcus Welby MD, and Chicago Hope. He got spooky with Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Thriller. He courted intrigue with The Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible, and Search. He hung out with both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman; sided with Wonder Woman; helped out MacGyver; rode the Supertrain; and spent some time on Fantasy Island. He even has the distinction of guesting on two shows that shared the same name (but not the same premise) twice! I Spy (a series in 1955 and again in 1965) and Hunter (a series in 1976 and again in 1984).

Nehemiah Persoff was a talented man with an incredible range from the dramatic to the comedic and everything in between. And those talents can be regularly found on just about any rerun. It’s nice to know we can still find him any time we want to tune it.

Rerun Junkie Confession–I Love Crossovers

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When Dan and I first started making our plans to chat about The Green Hornet for Eventually Supertrain, I knew that we would be discussing the whole series, but I was absolutely delighted when he said that we’d be including the Batman crossover episodes.

In those episodes, our heroes Green Hornet and Kato take a trip to Gotham City where their status as villains precedes them and puts the Caped Crusader and his sidekick on alert. As it turns out, Britt Reid is old frenemies with Bruce Wayne and they spend the two-parter jousting over some woman who’s obsessed with the color pink while their alter egos attempt to apprehend Colonel Gumm.

It’s magnificent.

But I’d probably think that anyway because well, I am a sucker for a crossover.

There’s just something about seeing characters you know so well meeting other characters you know so well in each other’s environments. It’s oddly exciting to me. It’s fun. It’s different. I think The New Scooby Doo Movies did this to me. I saw Davy Jones running from ghosts with Shaggy and Velma and I was hooked.

Speaking of childhood, I was addicted to ABC’s TGIF. It should be no surprise to you how absolutely stoked I was as a young person to watch Steve Urkel from Family Matters show up on Full House and crash into Step by Step. For my 11 year old self, that was must-see TV.

It probably would be for my 42 year old self, too.

Back in the day when all of the CSIs were up and running, they managed to a crossover with all three of them, and though I’d kind of fallen out of love with them at that point, you better believe my ass watched all of those episodes anyway.

The 1980 Magnum PI was implied to exist in the same universe as the 1968 Hawaii Five-O, but a proper crossover never happened. However, Magnum PI did crossover with both Murder, She Wrote and Simon & Simon, creating its own little universe that should have seen Rick and AJ visit Jessica Fletcher at some point, but it never happened. That probably would have been too much for my heart seeing as how much I enjoyed them visiting Hawai’i. But I still love watching the crossover episodes we did get.

With the reboots, the 2010 Hawaii Five-0 crossovers included Magnum PI, MacGyver, and NCIS: LA, which means that it shares a universe with JAG, NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans (RIP), and NCIS: Hawai’i, which recently did its own crossover with NCIS.

Talk about crossover inception.

In the vein of all of this, there’s something special about characters from the original show visiting the show’s spin-off. Like Arnold from Diff’rent Strokes showing up at Eastland to visit Mrs. Garrett on Facts of Life (Arnold also showed up on Silver Spoons, and Diff’rent Strokes had three different crossover episodes with the show Hello, Larry). Or like the Fonz and Richie Cunningham showing up on Laverne and Shirley. And Laverne and Shirley turning up on Happy Days after they got spun-off. The two shows even had a crossover two-parter. Laverne and the Fonz also turned up on Mork and Mindy and Laverne made an appearance on Blansky’s Beauties because Garry Marshall had a whole universe going there.

Likewise, characters crossed over in the Henningverse, would go from The Beverly Hillbillies to Petticoat Junction to Green Acres and back again.

And of course, Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Stargate: Universe all crossed over with each other. I mean, they were all based with the same government program. It’d be weird if they didn’t.

I know that these are just stunt episodes, many times using the popularity of one show to help boost the ratings of the lagging one. But sometimes it’s just two popular shows colliding and exploding in a joyous cacophony of fun.

I’m going to be honest. I never get tired of it. I don’t even care if the shows crossing over have nothing in common and the premise is completely ridiculous, I’ll still watch it. Give me all of the crossovers.

Make the TV Universe infinite.

Book ’em, Danno–Episode 35

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Book 'em Danno Podcast

Season 3 begins to wind down with this two-parter. In “FOB Honolulu”, Five-O is looking to recover counterfeit currency plates that people everywhere are dying to acquire. Like there’s a literal trail of dead bodies they use to track the plates across Asia. It’s part of the slide show.

Wo Fat is back and we’re introduced to a KGB colonel charmingly called Misha the Bear, whom I wished made more than one appearance because he was a good time.

Also there’s Monte Landis, excessive amounts of knitting, and one of the best tail dodges I’ve ever seen onscreen.

Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Now this is a fabulous disguise. The gum chewing really completed the look.

in disguise