User Reviews

This was one of the best of 77 Sunset Strip episodes. I love it because second banana Roscoe is the focus of the story. Though it's a good thing that Roger Smith is around when things begin to pop.

Louis Quinn's connections to various criminal types and the fact that these folks do know that he works for Bailey&Spencer nearly get him killed as both sides try to use him in a gang war where Alan Baxter wants to hit Norman Alden and Alden wants to prevent that. In fact imported hit man James Best moves into Hope Summers boardinghouse where Quinn rents a room. Best is a particularly nasty customer.

Roscoe even gets a bit of romance showing love ain't just for the young with fellow roomer Christine Nelson who plays a math teacher who likes to handicap the ponies. What better for Roscoe than a woman who follows the Sport of Kings?

This one is a must for fans of the series.

A most unusual episode as it's Louis Quinn as Roscoe who is front and center. Stuart Bailey is nowhere to be seen, the rest have some perfunctory involvement and even Byron Keith (earlier billed as Keith Byron) has a substitute batter in Richard X. Slattery playing a homicide detective. Not only does Roscoe get the scenes and lines, he even gets a girlfriend - and one who loves playing the ponies also.

We get to see a better look than usual at Roscoe's living quarters, a rooming house which seems a bit better than the conditions he lived-in in earlier seasons. Perhaps that was necessary so as to provide a place suitable for the female math teacher in the room next door, she uses a slide rule to pick long shots. We get to meet Roscoe's bookie, a barber named Little Ed who is played (albeit not billed) by screen vet Murray Alper who was usually cast as a cab or truck driver as in "The Maltese Falcon," "Strangers on a Train" and "Saboteur." Alan Baxter, one of the primary villains in "Saboteur" is also present as a mob boss who puts the pieces in motion to set the story here.

Roscoe gets in the middle of a turf war among some organized crime families strictly by being in the wrong place at the right time. Plot developments cause him to be stalked by hired killer James Best as well as by the family of one of Best's victims - they think Roscoe was the finger guy for the killing.

With so little involvement by the regulars other than Louis Quinn, one might almost think that the waters were being tested for a spin off. Whether that's so or not, it's still a highly enjoyable episode especially since it does veer from the norm but then, Strip did that fairly often.