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'Police Woman'
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<blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 82169" data-attributes="member: 57984"><p>As POLICE WOMAN moves from its cushy Friday night 10pm timeslot where it enjoyed a good complementary energy with lead-in series THE ROCKFORD FILES for 14 months, NBC, fueled by the fact POLICE WOMAN had been hitting #1 for the week off and on that previous summer, rewards the show by dumping it in the network's worst time slot of that era: Tuesday night at 9pm, with no lead-in or lead-out (that anybody's watching) and directly against M*A*S*H over on CBS, and ABC with its 8pm lead-in of HAPPY DAYS and, in a few weeks, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY which will both be headed to #1 with a bullet in the Nielsen ratings.</p><p></p><p>Effective November 1975. Naturally, the ratings will slide, although POLICE WOMAN manages to do adequately well despite the horrendous move. But the biggest problem will be the trouble brewing behind the scenes where the decision seems to have been made to tone down the show, and increasingly constrain Angie. The charisma that first made Pepper so mesmerizing is flipped off like a light switch somewhere during the middle third of Season 2.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Farewell, Mary Jane </strong>... Narco can't catch crazy pilot Bill Klein (W.L. LeGault, in his second of three episodes) who's flyin' in the dope, so they ask the Criminal Conspiracy Unit for help, forcing Pepper to forego yet another hairdresser appointment.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PW_maryjane_1_zpshlybghql.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 775px" /></p><p></p><p>Their first attempt to nab ultra-cautious Klein in the desert is foiled by the impatience of seemingly rookie uniformed officers, resulting in the replacement pilot, there to sniff out any possible dummy run situation, and then deliberately driving his propellers into one of Klein's deputies he assumes is guilty of facilitating the set up with law enforcement.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PW_maryjane_2_zpsbv6tjmvh.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 774px" /></p><p></p><p>Crowley and Pepper then enlist the reluctant assistance of a hunky race car driver, Sam Elliott, threatening his NASCAR career if he doesn't comply. Sam sets up a meeting between Pepper and Klein's #2 man (Geoffrey Lewis) who goes for the deal, but only if Pepper and Sam Elliott can put all the money for the deal up front, forcing Crowley to go to the feds -- which everybody always hates to do in '70s cops shows -- for additional funding.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PW_maryjane_3_zpshbh0cxyx.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 772px" /></p><p></p><p>While snooping in on Pepper's meeting with Elliott and Lewis, a barely recognizable waitress played by Loni Anderson serves a horny Crowley coffee or something.</p><p></p><p>While waiting to make the meet and hanging out at a desert motel in Room One ("...that's right," Pepper informs the villains by phone, "right next to Two") she inevitably flirts with Elliott and then saunters to the soda pop machine where she's promptly kidnapped at gunpoint by Klein as collateral, Sam convincing Crowley that the deal is still set and everything's fine.</p><p></p><p>They all drive further into the badlands to prove to each other they've got the junk and the cash, and Klein is careful to get nowhere near the merchandise. First chance they get out of sight of the pathological pilot, the unit busts Geoffrey Lewis as a tough-but-nervous Pepper pulls a gun on him -- but given where the series is headed nowadays, Crowley still has to save her by shooting some wily loader listening around the corner of an 18 wheeler.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/190/1328926543_1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 767px" /></p><p></p><p>On the return to Klein's isolated camp amongst the yucca, the squad is oblivious to the crooks' unspoken code of driving back with the lights on at high noon if the drop went down correctly. So, headlights off, Klein knows he's in trouble, threatens to whack our Sergeant Anderson, so Crowley shoots Klein between the eyes with a high-powered rifle from a discreet distance.</p><p></p><p>Well, that was easy.</p><p></p><p>Pepper and Sam Elliott have a steak dinner date when the boys show up uninvited with the good news that they've found someone who'll sponsor Sam's racing car; he jokes that their jobs is a lot more dangerous than his, and Pepper gets a goofy freeze frame close up.</p><p></p><p>Decent episode, snappy original score by Morty Stevens.</p><p></p><p>---------</p><p></p><p><strong>Above and Beyond. </strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWabovebeyond1_zpsqtiydlll.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 775px" /></strong></p><p></p><p>During a nighttime liquor store stake-out, a robbery goes down and Crowley thinks he recognizes one of thieves as a hood who's on parole. Crowley calls the parole officer who has the suspect on his caseload, but before the P.O. can make the meet, his brains are blown out from a gunshot coming from the backseat of his car.</p><p></p><p>Naturally, his various parolees are all under suspicion, so Pepper joins the deceased officer's group as an out-of-towner and tries to nonchalantly sniff out the members and see just who might have been involved in the murder. Mostly, she's drawn to a suit-and-tie parolee (Peter Brown, who was also in "The Gamble" pilot on POLICE STORY) the suspect who may be planning a heist of some sort -- a heist the dead officer may have become aware of and which makes Brown the main target of the investigation.</p><p></p><p>Though living in a flea-ridden flop house, Pepper has a quiet lunch with Brown and charmingly tells him "you can't afford me," but he assures her he can and soon will.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWabovebeyond2_zpsibngdxjd.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 787px" /></p><p></p><p>After agreeing to soon join Peter Brown in Mexico, she's spotted chatting with Crowley on a gorgeous day, so Pepper is kidnapped by Brown's partners anticipating their own well-planned jewel theft; she's driven to a remote warehouse with a bag over her head where she is interrogated by Brown and his pals about why she was talking to a police sergeant like Crowley. Pepper fields the inquiry well, and claims someone had reported seeing she and Brown together because parolees aren't supposed to socialize with each other away from their weekly meetings with their P.O.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWabovebeyond3_zpsknbadxcg.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 776px" /></p><p></p><p>But Brown and his buddies aren't going to Mexico at all -- they're going to hell in a jewelry basket: their bloody bodies are found in a van, shot from behind, outside the place they'd just robbed the night before. There's no loot left among them, but Pepper finds a unique, non-local cigarette they are quickly able to tie to the parole officer's son (Andrew Parks) home from 'Nam and just not quite right in the head. Crowley and the boys bust the kid as his mother and Pepper look on like ladies in distress, and the embittered son later confesses he'd been following around the thieves, well aware of their crooked plans, killed them and took the stash after they'd completed the job, and -- oh, yeah -- he killed his dad because he'd been neglected all those childhood years his father had worked his endless hours with his parolees.</p><p></p><p>I always wanted the homicidal offspring to be a brittle W.A.C. sergeant who reveals daddy and his parolees molested her on a regular basis, during camping trips, etc... But I guess nobody really thought of that.</p><p></p><p>Pepper then gets a cute parolee, Maxine (Jonelle Allen, the first person Pepper ever killed the last time she appeared on the show) a new job as a cop, and the unit escort her out the door and off to Vinnie's, all set to cutesy music.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and the show can't seem to decide whether Captain Parks' first name is "Frank." "Paul" or "Bob" --- such that one wonders if it's a running inside joke.</p><p></p><p>Since Alexander Singer, one of their most atmospheric directors, is running the show here, I shouldn't be surprised that there are details I didn't catch previously -- subtle, artful elements in an entry Singer clearly intended to be low-key, moody, subdued. But given that the series is now slipping into its own parallel era of paint-by-numbers, repressed blandness, those subtle, artful elements are almost lost on the viewer.</p><p></p><p>---------</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Snarky Oracle!, post: 82169, member: 57984"] As POLICE WOMAN moves from its cushy Friday night 10pm timeslot where it enjoyed a good complementary energy with lead-in series THE ROCKFORD FILES for 14 months, NBC, fueled by the fact POLICE WOMAN had been hitting #1 for the week off and on that previous summer, rewards the show by dumping it in the network's worst time slot of that era: Tuesday night at 9pm, with no lead-in or lead-out (that anybody's watching) and directly against M*A*S*H over on CBS, and ABC with its 8pm lead-in of HAPPY DAYS and, in a few weeks, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY which will both be headed to #1 with a bullet in the Nielsen ratings. Effective November 1975. Naturally, the ratings will slide, although POLICE WOMAN manages to do adequately well despite the horrendous move. But the biggest problem will be the trouble brewing behind the scenes where the decision seems to have been made to tone down the show, and increasingly constrain Angie. The charisma that first made Pepper so mesmerizing is flipped off like a light switch somewhere during the middle third of Season 2. [B]Farewell, Mary Jane [/B]... Narco can't catch crazy pilot Bill Klein (W.L. LeGault, in his second of three episodes) who's flyin' in the dope, so they ask the Criminal Conspiracy Unit for help, forcing Pepper to forego yet another hairdresser appointment. [IMG width="775px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PW_maryjane_1_zpshlybghql.jpg[/IMG] Their first attempt to nab ultra-cautious Klein in the desert is foiled by the impatience of seemingly rookie uniformed officers, resulting in the replacement pilot, there to sniff out any possible dummy run situation, and then deliberately driving his propellers into one of Klein's deputies he assumes is guilty of facilitating the set up with law enforcement. [IMG width="774px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PW_maryjane_2_zpsbv6tjmvh.jpg[/IMG] Crowley and Pepper then enlist the reluctant assistance of a hunky race car driver, Sam Elliott, threatening his NASCAR career if he doesn't comply. Sam sets up a meeting between Pepper and Klein's #2 man (Geoffrey Lewis) who goes for the deal, but only if Pepper and Sam Elliott can put all the money for the deal up front, forcing Crowley to go to the feds -- which everybody always hates to do in '70s cops shows -- for additional funding. [IMG width="772px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PW_maryjane_3_zpshbh0cxyx.jpg[/IMG] While snooping in on Pepper's meeting with Elliott and Lewis, a barely recognizable waitress played by Loni Anderson serves a horny Crowley coffee or something. While waiting to make the meet and hanging out at a desert motel in Room One ("...that's right," Pepper informs the villains by phone, "right next to Two") she inevitably flirts with Elliott and then saunters to the soda pop machine where she's promptly kidnapped at gunpoint by Klein as collateral, Sam convincing Crowley that the deal is still set and everything's fine. They all drive further into the badlands to prove to each other they've got the junk and the cash, and Klein is careful to get nowhere near the merchandise. First chance they get out of sight of the pathological pilot, the unit busts Geoffrey Lewis as a tough-but-nervous Pepper pulls a gun on him -- but given where the series is headed nowadays, Crowley still has to save her by shooting some wily loader listening around the corner of an 18 wheeler. [IMG width="767px"]http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/190/1328926543_1.jpg[/IMG] On the return to Klein's isolated camp amongst the yucca, the squad is oblivious to the crooks' unspoken code of driving back with the lights on at high noon if the drop went down correctly. So, headlights off, Klein knows he's in trouble, threatens to whack our Sergeant Anderson, so Crowley shoots Klein between the eyes with a high-powered rifle from a discreet distance. Well, that was easy. Pepper and Sam Elliott have a steak dinner date when the boys show up uninvited with the good news that they've found someone who'll sponsor Sam's racing car; he jokes that their jobs is a lot more dangerous than his, and Pepper gets a goofy freeze frame close up. Decent episode, snappy original score by Morty Stevens. --------- [B]Above and Beyond. [IMG width="775px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWabovebeyond1_zpsqtiydlll.jpg[/IMG][/B] During a nighttime liquor store stake-out, a robbery goes down and Crowley thinks he recognizes one of thieves as a hood who's on parole. Crowley calls the parole officer who has the suspect on his caseload, but before the P.O. can make the meet, his brains are blown out from a gunshot coming from the backseat of his car. Naturally, his various parolees are all under suspicion, so Pepper joins the deceased officer's group as an out-of-towner and tries to nonchalantly sniff out the members and see just who might have been involved in the murder. Mostly, she's drawn to a suit-and-tie parolee (Peter Brown, who was also in "The Gamble" pilot on POLICE STORY) the suspect who may be planning a heist of some sort -- a heist the dead officer may have become aware of and which makes Brown the main target of the investigation. Though living in a flea-ridden flop house, Pepper has a quiet lunch with Brown and charmingly tells him "you can't afford me," but he assures her he can and soon will. [IMG width="787px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWabovebeyond2_zpsibngdxjd.jpg[/IMG] After agreeing to soon join Peter Brown in Mexico, she's spotted chatting with Crowley on a gorgeous day, so Pepper is kidnapped by Brown's partners anticipating their own well-planned jewel theft; she's driven to a remote warehouse with a bag over her head where she is interrogated by Brown and his pals about why she was talking to a police sergeant like Crowley. Pepper fields the inquiry well, and claims someone had reported seeing she and Brown together because parolees aren't supposed to socialize with each other away from their weekly meetings with their P.O. [IMG width="776px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWabovebeyond3_zpsknbadxcg.jpg[/IMG] But Brown and his buddies aren't going to Mexico at all -- they're going to hell in a jewelry basket: their bloody bodies are found in a van, shot from behind, outside the place they'd just robbed the night before. There's no loot left among them, but Pepper finds a unique, non-local cigarette they are quickly able to tie to the parole officer's son (Andrew Parks) home from 'Nam and just not quite right in the head. Crowley and the boys bust the kid as his mother and Pepper look on like ladies in distress, and the embittered son later confesses he'd been following around the thieves, well aware of their crooked plans, killed them and took the stash after they'd completed the job, and -- oh, yeah -- he killed his dad because he'd been neglected all those childhood years his father had worked his endless hours with his parolees. I always wanted the homicidal offspring to be a brittle W.A.C. sergeant who reveals daddy and his parolees molested her on a regular basis, during camping trips, etc... But I guess nobody really thought of that. Pepper then gets a cute parolee, Maxine (Jonelle Allen, the first person Pepper ever killed the last time she appeared on the show) a new job as a cop, and the unit escort her out the door and off to Vinnie's, all set to cutesy music. Oh, and the show can't seem to decide whether Captain Parks' first name is "Frank." "Paul" or "Bob" --- such that one wonders if it's a running inside joke. Since Alexander Singer, one of their most atmospheric directors, is running the show here, I shouldn't be surprised that there are details I didn't catch previously -- subtle, artful elements in an entry Singer clearly intended to be low-key, moody, subdued. But given that the series is now slipping into its own parallel era of paint-by-numbers, repressed blandness, those subtle, artful elements are almost lost on the viewer. --------- [/QUOTE]
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'Police Woman'
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