Bill Malloy waits in the doctor's waiting room. The doc says Roger is almost ready to go, and Bill says he'll be back in 30 minutes, after going down to check out the wreck. With a bandage on his forehead and his left arm wrapped for a sprain, Roger is still pretty mobile. The doctor says that anyone living up on the hill should be sure the brakes are working in their car. Roger confirms they were. The doc brings up the death 10 years ago. Roger quickly exclaims he wasn't involved in that, and the doc says he knows, he was at the trial.
The wind blows open the window in David's room, and when Liz returns, he asks her to stay with him. He can't sleep, so they go downstairs to await Roger's return.
Bill returns to get Roger and the doc points out that he's the only one in town that talks. As they're leaving, Bill says there's no question that the wreck wasn't an accident. Bill draws a picture of the part we saw David with earlier.
Liz and David wait in the drawing room for Roger's return. When Bill's car pulls up, David runs upstairs. David asks Bill not to mention the missing car part. Roger is well enough to throw back a drink. Liz asks if he thinks Burke Devlin was responsible, because Vicki saw him near the car. This gets Roger riled up. Before he leaves, Liz asks Bill to look for Carolyn. Roger makes his way upstairs, but to go to sleep, or to interrogate Vicki?
Our thoughts
John: Based on David's outburst, I thought for sure the mystery of Burke Devlin's involvement in the crash would be solved by episodes' end. Silly me.
Christine: It's probably difficult for anyone to fathom that David could be capable of murdering his own father and much easier to believe it was Burke, who is already suspected of plotting revenge. Although David claims he didn't mean to kill him, wasn't it just Friday that he was watching Roger from his window and stating, "He's going to die, mother." It kinda sounds like he meant to kill him.
John: This episode features a classic blooper as Roger says 100 miles when he means 100 feet, and saves it by saying it seemed like 100 miles.
Christine: Louis Edmonds will continue to prove how talented he really is.
John: Was this episode brought to us by Jiffy Lube? Did we really need Bill Malloy's PowerPoint presentation on how cars work?
Christine: It's educational TV for our younger viewers. It felt like an episode of Tennessee Tuxedo, with Malloy playing the part of Mr. Whoopee. Don't you feel like you learned something today?
John: Interesting that Liz didn't mention to Roger that Carolyn was last seen leaving the Blue Whale with Burke Devlin. He might have had a heart attack.
Christine: Carolyn is going to be in so much trouble when she gets home. Nah, who am I kidding. Elizabeth is more into the permissive style of parenting. I'd just like to point out for the benefit of John, and anyone else who'd be interested, the very cool and handy skull Dr. Reeves has on his desk that appears to be holding paperwork in its teeth. What a great way to stay organized in the office!
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| Fred Stewart would go on to play another doctor in the 1967 film, In the Heat of the Night. |
4 comments:
I haven't seen this episode in a very long while, but that blooper always stays with me. As you say, it's hard to imagine an actor working a blooper into the dialogue better than Louis Edmonds did (outside of a comedy sketch, at least).
I really liked the Tennessee Tuxedo reference (it has to be one of the most underrated cartoon shows).
If you want to see an early Joan Bennett check out the 1941 movie Confirm or Deny. She plays a prominent role.
And here's another one, a 1940 movie where Joan Bennett gets top billing: The Man I Married. At a quick glance she looks like Hedy Lamarr, and that's saying something!
Bill Malloy was a talented guy. His explanation of a hydraulic braking system, supplemented by that admirably drawn schematic, was not only crystal clear, but genuinely interesting.
There's a structural justification for it- Liz's lecture to David about Isaac Collins in front of Isaac's portrait is deliberately presented as boring. So including another lecture supported by a single illustration and making it urgently interesting shows that what's boring isn't the format, but the relevance of the content to the story.
That venture into educational programming is a fine example of the freewheeling experimentation the series was doing in these early weeks. Some of those experiments come up again. The final 2 seconds of the episode is the first time a character looks directly into the camera, a trick they will use to advantage many times down the line.
Also, the date 1690 is interesting, not only because the portrait is ludicrously anachronistic- the man is wearing clothes from and is painted in a style that date from 200 years after that date- but also because we will hear about that period again, near the end of the series. Most likely that's a coincidence, but I suppose it's possible someone connected to the show in its final months remembered that the 1690s were supposed to be important in the history of the family.
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