This week's episode features the exploits of Sam Bass (Telly Savalas) who teams up with an engineer he meets in prison to come up with a scheme that installs pipes in the sewer system that run liquor between a fake gas station out of town and speakeasies in Chicago, thus invalidating Ness' raids on liquor warehouses because his plan does not require any.
Now Bass has been in jail for twelve years - that would mean that in this story he would have been in prison since the year prohibition went into effect. So how could he have been part of Capone's gang before going to jail? And how would Frank Nitti even know who he was? It seems that all of his contacts would be rusty after such a long time. Questions never asked and thus never answered.
Bass is a nasty sort. He tells somebody he is their partner and then kills them when they are no longer useful. He even does that with the people he hires to lay pipe in the sewers. He even shorts his long suffering engineer partner - whose expertise he needs - when he can. I'm surprised anybody would want to trust him or work with him.
So you have the profit motive in full force here, thus lots of creative solutions worthy of the free market. And everybody drinks - probably more so - during prohibition. So The Untouchables keeps the emphasis on the sordidness of the gangsters involved and not so much on what is behind all of this enterprise - Prohibition - because in retrospect it all looks so silly. Meanwhile, Ness and the Untouchables are wondering why they can't find any trucks with liquor coming into Chicago, yet the speakeasies are brimming with customers. Both Ness and Bass have a problem with plan versus implementation.
Now Bass has been in jail for twelve years - that would mean that in this story he would have been in prison since the year prohibition went into effect. So how could he have been part of Capone's gang before going to jail? And how would Frank Nitti even know who he was? It seems that all of his contacts would be rusty after such a long time. Questions never asked and thus never answered.
Bass is a nasty sort. He tells somebody he is their partner and then kills them when they are no longer useful. He even does that with the people he hires to lay pipe in the sewers. He even shorts his long suffering engineer partner - whose expertise he needs - when he can. I'm surprised anybody would want to trust him or work with him.
So you have the profit motive in full force here, thus lots of creative solutions worthy of the free market. And everybody drinks - probably more so - during prohibition. So The Untouchables keeps the emphasis on the sordidness of the gangsters involved and not so much on what is behind all of this enterprise - Prohibition - because in retrospect it all looks so silly. Meanwhile, Ness and the Untouchables are wondering why they can't find any trucks with liquor coming into Chicago, yet the speakeasies are brimming with customers. Both Ness and Bass have a problem with plan versus implementation.