Reviews

While I can empathize with Canadain viewers who like seeing Canadian actors in roles, and enjoy seeing Toronto and other major Canadian cities on American television, etc., I also can't get past being bothered when a show made anywhere in Canada pretends to be from a gritty American city like New York, especially the New York underworld which would generate the most activity for criminals and work for detectives. Sorry, but Canada is just too sanitized. I had the same problem with "Police Surgeon" in the 1970s. In any event, however, the theme music and opening of "Night Heat" was terrific. I still have a sound recording and play it, even though it runs less than a minute, just because I like it!

"Superman" was so full of goofs, it was ridiculous, apart from the obvious failure for the others to reason that Clark Kent was Superman, even when Kent removed his glasses for whatever reasons. Big-city newspapers do not give reporters individual offices nor have just an "editor," as opposed to managing editor, city editor, etc. Why was nothing ever stored in the "store room?" Why did Superman, no matter what his destination, fly out of the Daily Planet past the same construction site every time? Why did it take Superman 45 seconds sometimes, to fly across town, but 30 seconds to traverse oceans? In "Crime Wave," Mr. X's identity was inadvertently revealed to the audience just a few minutes into the episode. When the professor showed Superman how to wish his body into two, had he also shown how to wish up two Superman uniforms? In "Panic in the Sky," although almost knocked silly, how did Superman have the wherewithal to change back into Clark Kent within seconds of when the gal's car appeared in the distance? When Superman rescued the condemned man from the electric chair in "Five Minutes to Doom," why would he even risk taking the time needed to first get the governor's signature on a pardon document, since he (Superman) had truth and justice on his side in the first place? Why, since Metropolis was on the East Coast in the early 1950s, did the Daily Planet staff encounter so many nearby Indians and Mexican natives, but never a black person except one train porter and some people that they encountered in Haiti? And in "The Town That Wasn't," which was one of my favorite episodes even though it was panned by reviewers, why did Inspector Henderson arrest the phony cops and judge, when the real police (probably sheriff's department) from the area should have taken over? I could probably think of many more. However, despite Tom Snyder's attempt to be funny when he discussed the show on "Tomorrow" in 1976, there actually was one "Superman" episode when, after Superman ignores gun shots directly at his heart, the criminal then throws the gun, and Superman does, in fact, duck.

For some reason, Broderick Crawford spent a considerable amount of time on most if not all episodes of "Highway Patrol" walking around half of the patrol car and then getting into it. If the camera showed him standing by the passenger door, he'd walk around the front or back to enter the driver's seat. If he was standing just outside the driver's door, he'd first make sure that a uniformed officer was in or approaching the driver's seat, and then walk around the front or back and get into the passenger seat. Other observers have pointed this and similar issues out, independently of myself, over the years.

"Highway Patrol" is now newly available on a local station I can pick up. It's so obvious that all the filming was in California -- and in at least one episode the scenes were clearly in a residential, hilly section of the city of Los Angeles, with LA street signage, and City Hall not far away at all in a background scene. Yet when I saw the show as a kid I knew nothing of such issues. Hence, just as Beaver Cleaver's "Mayfield" was never definitely linked to one state, it was fun to pretend that Crawford and crew provided law enforcement in an unnamed and unnameable state, in a rural area where people knew to call the "highway patrol" for first response. There were and still are areas like that in the U. S.

And, yes, Broderick Crawford still has to walk around the car before he gets in and drives away, usually to the familiar music.