User Reviews

This has turned out to be one of my favorite episodes. Tod is out to track down his long-lost aunt, who has gotten him a message that she urgently needs to see him. She is on a sick-bed in a run down hovel for a living place, tended to by a doctor, the always reliable Royal Dano. Tod's mission is to find his aunt's daughter and bring her back to her mother. Tod and Buz start out on a long journey, one that opens his eyes to the sort of life his aunt and cousin have lived, apart from the rest of the family for all these years.

Martin Milner has never been better--his emotions here are strong, real and powerful. Buz is always at his side, but he is secondary to the turmoil swirling about Tod. This is a great script, and is enhanced by the performance of the great Beatrice Straight as the aunt. Outstanding drama.

Tod turns out to have an Aunt who was the black sheep of the family. She's wound up living in poverty in Los Angeles and is now dying. She asks Tod to find her daughter before she dies. They go around to various seedy venues in LA, tracing down the daughter's life and getting flashes of what she must have been like, Citizen Kane style. They wind up with the most outlandish of all the many fight scenes in this punch-happy series, where T & B take on a whole street gang and vanquish them as if they were in a martial arts film.

The best thing about this episode is the performance of Beatrice Straight as the dying woman. Fifteen years later she won an Oscar for playing William Holden's estranged wife in "Network". It's been timed as the shortest Oscar winning performance ever, (5 minutes and 40 seconds of screen time). That's about what she has here and she also makes a big impression. I don't think I've ever seen a better performance as deathly ill person. Her make-up Is excellent, with blackened eyes and sunken cheeks. Here voice is weak and cracked. The knowledge that her life is now measured in hours and minutes dominates every word. She seems almost like a drowning person, trying to cling onto something, in this case the memory of her daughter.

Royal Dano, as the doctor in this, is very much like the coroner character he plays in "The Right Stuff"

Good mix of action, titillation, and pathos. It's not a road entry. Instead, the guys are in LA, mainly in a seedy part, where Tod's given a last request by his dying aunt (Straight)-- he's supposed to find his lost cousin Carol for her mom. This takes Tod and Buz to a number of tacky spots, certainly a long way from the usual Hollywood glamor spots.

Wheelchair-bound Briggs (DeKova) gets a semi-poetic soliloquy that works pretty well, while a grizzled Royal Dano gets a turn as a doctor, of all things. Also, the fine actress Beatrice Straight shows her acting chops in a moving death-bed scene. But, as reviewer cliometrician points out, it's really Milner's 60-minutes. He calibrates that final scene beautifully given temptations to over-do. I guess the gang brawls were intended to insert action, but they're pretty contrived. Anyway, juvenile delinquency was a popular theme at the time, while the monkey climb up the fence smacks of West Side Story, also 1961. Overall, it's a strong, atmospheric episode, especially for fans of the under-rated Martin Milner.

The series takes a detour in a one-off episode set in Los Angeles, not an American journey for M & M. Instead, it's an opportunity for Milner's back story to be filled in slightly, as Stirling Silliphant makes the drama more personal -Milner finding out about his long-lost aunt (fabulously played as a dying woman by Beatrice Straight) who meant something to him during his childhood, but who left the family 20 years ago and has been completely forgotten.

Thanks to Straight and Milner's performances it's an emotional journey, essentially leading to make SS's point of how people live on in the memories of those close to them. There are several contradictions here, but they help make the point -the boys' wanderlust is not rewarded, as it's more of an inward journey for Milner, while Maharis is in charge of being on the outside, supportive and not interfering in any cultural clash. The physical clash is largely fighting against a gang of youths led by Pat De Simone (an actor who never made it in the business), plus a nightclub wise guy who takes being uncooperative (with Milner's quest for information about Straight's daughter -his assignment from his aunt to find out about her) to new heights.