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Reviews
Ben Casey: If You Play Your Cards Right, You Too Can Be a Loser (1965)
If You Play Your Cards...
Except for the members of the Davy Jones (who unfortunately DIED back in 2012!!) Fan Club, this is NOT a good BC episode! The scene where Jones and another junkie, try to KILL Dr. Casey in the County General parking lot with a knife, is a SCREAM-and belongs in one of Miss Wills' (Jeanne Bates') later horror films! Jones plays a middle-class kid who sniffs glue (!)-and Dr. Casey wants to show him what REAL suffering is like! Dr. Freeland (Franchot Tone-a notorious real-life Hollywood alcoholic cast when Sam Jaffe quit the series in 1965) is muddled and miscast in this episode (and series). No wonder Jones soon switched to music with "The Monkees" on NBC the next year!
Ben Casey: What to Her Is Plato? (1965)
What To Her Is Plato?
Hotel maid Ruth Ann Carmody (Julie Sommers) is a low-wage hotel maid accidentally (wouldn't you know?) KO'D falling down a flight of hotel stairs while making beds and mopping the floors-GOOD THING Donald Trump didn't own or manage the Hotel!! When she wakes up, Dr. Casey et al., discover Carmody (Sommers) is functionally illiterate and hiding it (hence the episode title!) and try to re-educate her. A nice piece of fluff, on behalf of several then-current "Great Society" programs (Head Start, Job Corps, etc.) but little else! Sommers was a rising actress at the time (Fall 1965), who went on to co-star in "The Governor & JJ" a few years later. "Ben Casey," like most other B+W dramatic series ("Perry Mason," etc.) was clearly running out of plots, by Fall '65, and itself getting clobbered in the ratings by "Run For Your Life."
The Fugitive: The Walls of Night (1967)
"The Walls Of Night"-Was There a "Border Wall" With Canada back in 1967?
Kimble finds another true "love" while on the run--this time a WA DOC FEMALE "Work Release" Inmate (played by Janice Rule-then a "hot" & "rising" Hollywood starlet (!!)). The question then arises: Why not act on her plan to flee to Canada? Naturally, Kimble *resists*-and *Rule is ultimately returned to what appears to be Purdy Women's Reformatory (still in business in 2016!), for "aiding" a fugitive*. WA Residents will enjoy this one, despite some inaccuracies other reviewers have noted (I-5 apparently had not yet been completed, back in 1967, so the Trucking Company sends Kimble, as a driver, "North" on "RT 99" (old US 99 north of Seattle-now a two-lane highway). Funny when the Trucking Co. boss has to tell investigating law-enforcement officers: "I don't check my employees, before entrusting them with a $75,000 truck!!"--obviously, this was long before computers, background checks, etc. Apparently, the final two "regular" Fugitive episodes (before the August series finale), were both set in the Pacific Northwest.
Ben Casey: Fire in a Sacred Fruit Tree (1963)
A Fire In The Sacred Fruit Tree
Medical Resident (played by Dean Jones, of ALL actors!) performs a then- illegal (1963) abortion on his Swedish girlfriend (Ulla Jacobsen), who is also dying of brain cancer, just by coincidence!!! It's a wonder that Bing Crosby, a conservative Catholic who also financed & "produced" the "Ben Casey" series, allowed this episode to ever go forth!! However, he DID, and this entry is a very strong pro-abortion piece! Too bad Dr. Casey didn't also "save" JFK later the next week!! The Jones character, naturally, is charged with a "crime" and then expelled from County General, and the medical profession. ("Fire" aired 11/20/63--just TWO days before JFK was shot.) Maybe ABC could have had Dr. Casey, "save" the late President in surgery and then get "shot" by Lt. Gerard, in a "crossover" episode with ABC's then-current hit series, "The Fugitive"!! (Perhaps Kimble could have taken an odd job at the Texas School Book Depository, just by coincidence!) Why aren't there more actual reviews of this classic old medical show? (We almost had a REAL neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson (LOL!) for U.S. President last year!)
Naked City: Bridge Party (1961)
Naked City-Season 3, Episode 12-"Bridge Party"
Probably this series' best episode!!! The opening scene, where Dets. Flint and Arcaro drive past a then-vanishing 1956(?)Nash Ambassador Sedan, on their way to the police station,, is classic, and COULD have served as the opening for EVERY NC episode. Fred Clark ("The Double Life Of Henry Phyfe"), who died a few years later, was also great. Could the events depicted in this episode, with the railroad company, REALLY HAPPEN? Why hasn't this episode been posted for viewing on You Tube, etc.--yet? This show was way ahead of its, time, in showcasing apparent "class conflicts"--between workers, bosses, landlords, big businesses, etc.