The story is about an apparently super successful authoress, inexplicably being victimised by assassination attempts on her book tour promoting her latest opus, a self-help work for women's libbers.
From the start, one can guess where this will go, it's going to go the safest route possible; we're going to see the new age political point of view as a decent, righteous one, despite any degree of controversy in the real, non-tv scripted world.
It's a choice bit of unsubtle, unreal propaganda. The Authoress, played by onetime top MGM star Myrna Loy, who. Ex post facto, in an effort to stay relevant, famously became a supporter of all sorts of liberal causes. They make her character a cartoonish concept of what a rich, famous feminist ideal should be like. She's somehow been in the Spanish Civil War, in China, hung out with Ernest Hemingway, and done free spirited stunts like nude horseback riding. But she's not a madcap devil-may-care Auntie Mame, but a hard, frosty know-all that speaks in commands and disparages just about anything a male says. Perhaps this is supposed to match Ironside's gruff persona, some sort of unlikely equality. She's a literary genius, and writes things like a proverb: "A Man's Word is Like A Woman's Honour; Once Given It's Seldom Missed." Are you impressed?
The parallel sub-story is an object lesson in the qualification for Women's lib-a husband who is a laughably over-the-top ogre, the facial contortions of this guy alone is worth watching for. Emil Jannings would be proud. Though he yells a lot, and says down-pat, mean male chauvinist pig clichés, there's only so deep such a character can be. In 1973, you couldn't get too violent, so after getting into a rage about his wife taking up macramé (!), he only THREATENS to tear up a book. He thinks his feeble spouse has been brainwashed by the book, works up into another rage, and shoots THE DRIVEWAY in front of the authoress.(Myrna).
There's another, very thin plot element, about the real assassin, and how he's caught. This episode is an example lazy writers who found an easy way to look avant-garde and virtuous.