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'Police Woman'
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<blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 81068" data-attributes="member: 57984"><p>There are 23 episodes for Season 3 (the 1976-77 TV year).</p><p></p><p><strong>The Trick Book </strong>(Parts 1 and 2). A high-end madam (Dorothy Malone) who does her business in the same white brick hacienda at the top of the hill where most of L.A.'s mobsters seem to reside, is murdered in her bathtub, so Pepper goes undercover as -- <em>shock! </em>-- a high-end prostitute to find the madam's valuable little black book containing the names and "preferences" of her high society clinetele. When not lounging luxuriously by the pool to display her perfect middle-aged physique, Pepper sniffs around odd avenues and engages in some pre-DYNASTic "Emily Dickinson" literary referencing thanks to a script by Edward De Blasio.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/717596f0-9590-47f7-b743-54cf2a65ee65_zps9a2kaiah.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 762px" /></p><p></p><p>And speaking of the pre-DYNASTic, Joan Collins is on hand (her second such POLICE WOMAN episode) as one of Malone's chic ladies-of-the-evening, a dominatrix appropriately named "Lorelei Frank". Well, of course she is. In fact, this was the first time I'd ever heard the term "sexual dysfunction" and delivered as only Joan Collins could.</p><p></p><p>And you haven't really quite lived until you've seen I DREAM OF JEANNIE's Dr. Bellows wimpering description of his particular taste for sexual masochism.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, lots of people who get their hands on the trick book keep getting knocked off, including a private eye (Jack Gilford) who could be Mark Zuckerberg's father.</p><p></p><p>It's a leisurely, not bad installment, competently directed by Barry Shear, with a foreboding and mournful original score by Morty Stevens.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pre_preJeIM/UPSdFU3b4wI/AAAAAAAAWD0/LTBbWigITlw/s1600/!Bnk5LmQCGk~$(KGrHqMOKi0EtlWJ3Tg8BLkBY7n5ew~~_3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>---------</p><p></p><p><strong>Tender Soldier</strong>. Tautly directed by Corey Allen, this is perhaps the best episode of the season, and has the tone and focus POLICE WOMAN should have maintained (before stumbling mid-Season 2 in a political attempt to squelch Angie Dickinson as demanded by the '70s feminists, and by producers who were mad at their star for refusing to drive an 18-wheeler --- "and they never forgave me," Angie confessed decades later). Here, Pepper is presented with just the right balance of vulnerability and experience, naïveté and wisdom, coquettishness and competence, which originally made the show work.</p><p></p><p>A patrol cop (an incredibly nubile Mark Harmon, in his second appearance on the series, displaying that Scorpio Rising which makes him look so much like Tom Cruise) is shot down just before dawn in a Los Angeles neighborhood which turns out to be a hotbed for cult activity. Monica Dunlap (Cathey Paine), the daughter of a powerful California businessman, is arrested in a nearby safe house for the P.C.U., the People's Combat Unit -- remember, this is at the height of the post-'60s anti-establishment/Patti Hearst/SymbioneseLiberationArmy era, so it seemed timely in the autumn of 1976.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/8d237f7c-4e6e-4fda-a616-de67cff33f5b_zps4sbo7q1p.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 752px" /></p><p></p><p>So Pepper poses as a mysterious counterculture activist/terrorist on the lam for years who surfaces in order to infiltrate the group.</p><p></p><p>By the end, one wonders at first if the installment hasn't been mis-titled, until you realize the title in fact refers to Pepper herself.</p><p></p><p>Or maybe Mark Harmon. I really don't know.</p><p><img src="http://image.wikifoundry.com/image/1/QZTBfKwWhjV1GT7AGcwgzA12576/GW339H254" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>---------</p><p></p><p><strong>Trial By Prejudice. </strong>After all the flak POLICE WOMAN received from, in the parlance of the time, the "gay libbers" two years earlier following S1's excellent "Flowers of Evil" in which a trio of homicidal lesbians are murdering off the residents of a nursing home for their monthly cheques (to be fair, Pepper's line "I know what a love like yours can do to a person" didn't help matters, but back then, homosexuality was never portrayed in movies and TV as anything other than a creepy mental derangement -- even when the script was attempting to be panderingly supportive) this new S3 episode attempts to correct the political incorrectness of the former by establishing that Pepper ain't no bigot --- sort of.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/ab57d970-08e6-477d-a226-a6ed00f26fc6_zpswzantn9y.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 738px" /></p><p></p><p>During a midnight burglary Pepper and Crowley get wind of just as it's occurring, the crooks' lovely lookout (Carol Lynley, just beginning in her trek of increasing girthiness) gives Pepper a kiss on the cheek in the squad car and then starts screaming "rape!" (I thought women never lied about these things). Pepper is accused of, and suspended for, lesbian molestation of a female suspect, and with the department cowering over its image, it's up to Pepper and Crowley alone to defend Pepper's reputation and career.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/attachments/3-png.42630/" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 757px" /></p><p></p><p>Well, Pepper and Crowley <strong>and</strong> Crowley -- Patricia Crowley, that is, who was once Pepper's roommate at the police academy who'd had a major crush on her fellow cadet, and then moved out once Pepper suggested it might be "more comfortable" if she did so... Okay, so Pep's not quite as progressive as we'd like to believe. (In "Flowers of Evil," Angie gives a great speech -- "I know what a love like yours can do to a person" notwithstanding -- which suggests that it was her roommate <em>in</em> <em>college </em>who'd had the hots for perky Leann Anderson... I wish they'd have aligned these things, or at least have Pepper confess to Bill that she'd fibbed about where the attraction had happened in order to protect Lady Crowley's anonymity. But they don't. And who knows? -- maybe <strong>all </strong>Pepper's roommates can't keep their hands off of the bacharach table).</p><p></p><p>Anyway, Pepper kills Lynley and gets arrested. Then she selflessly tries to prevent Lady Crowley, whose help has been enlisted by Sergeant Crowley, from testifying that Pepper ain't no lesbo and thus endangering Lady Crowley's new career where's she's in the closet out of necessity.</p><p></p><p>Fairly daring for 1976 TV.</p><p></p><p>Another good original score By Morton Stevens.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xiNvXrUFkzE/VF3qUViggBI/AAAAAAAADrM/e47IFMCeMEg/s1600/1974_television_police_woman_cast04.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p>Poor, exhausted, dead-eyed Angie. Like <strong>one </strong>Crowley isn't enough...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Snarky Oracle!, post: 81068, member: 57984"] There are 23 episodes for Season 3 (the 1976-77 TV year). [B]The Trick Book [/B](Parts 1 and 2). A high-end madam (Dorothy Malone) who does her business in the same white brick hacienda at the top of the hill where most of L.A.'s mobsters seem to reside, is murdered in her bathtub, so Pepper goes undercover as -- [I]shock! [/I]-- a high-end prostitute to find the madam's valuable little black book containing the names and "preferences" of her high society clinetele. When not lounging luxuriously by the pool to display her perfect middle-aged physique, Pepper sniffs around odd avenues and engages in some pre-DYNASTic "Emily Dickinson" literary referencing thanks to a script by Edward De Blasio. [IMG width="762px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/717596f0-9590-47f7-b743-54cf2a65ee65_zps9a2kaiah.png[/IMG] And speaking of the pre-DYNASTic, Joan Collins is on hand (her second such POLICE WOMAN episode) as one of Malone's chic ladies-of-the-evening, a dominatrix appropriately named "Lorelei Frank". Well, of course she is. In fact, this was the first time I'd ever heard the term "sexual dysfunction" and delivered as only Joan Collins could. And you haven't really quite lived until you've seen I DREAM OF JEANNIE's Dr. Bellows wimpering description of his particular taste for sexual masochism. Meanwhile, lots of people who get their hands on the trick book keep getting knocked off, including a private eye (Jack Gilford) who could be Mark Zuckerberg's father. It's a leisurely, not bad installment, competently directed by Barry Shear, with a foreboding and mournful original score by Morty Stevens. [IMG]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pre_preJeIM/UPSdFU3b4wI/AAAAAAAAWD0/LTBbWigITlw/s1600/!Bnk5LmQCGk~$(KGrHqMOKi0EtlWJ3Tg8BLkBY7n5ew~~_3.jpg[/IMG] --------- [B]Tender Soldier[/B]. Tautly directed by Corey Allen, this is perhaps the best episode of the season, and has the tone and focus POLICE WOMAN should have maintained (before stumbling mid-Season 2 in a political attempt to squelch Angie Dickinson as demanded by the '70s feminists, and by producers who were mad at their star for refusing to drive an 18-wheeler --- "and they never forgave me," Angie confessed decades later). Here, Pepper is presented with just the right balance of vulnerability and experience, naïveté and wisdom, coquettishness and competence, which originally made the show work. A patrol cop (an incredibly nubile Mark Harmon, in his second appearance on the series, displaying that Scorpio Rising which makes him look so much like Tom Cruise) is shot down just before dawn in a Los Angeles neighborhood which turns out to be a hotbed for cult activity. Monica Dunlap (Cathey Paine), the daughter of a powerful California businessman, is arrested in a nearby safe house for the P.C.U., the People's Combat Unit -- remember, this is at the height of the post-'60s anti-establishment/Patti Hearst/SymbioneseLiberationArmy era, so it seemed timely in the autumn of 1976. [IMG width="752px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/8d237f7c-4e6e-4fda-a616-de67cff33f5b_zps4sbo7q1p.png[/IMG] So Pepper poses as a mysterious counterculture activist/terrorist on the lam for years who surfaces in order to infiltrate the group. By the end, one wonders at first if the installment hasn't been mis-titled, until you realize the title in fact refers to Pepper herself. Or maybe Mark Harmon. I really don't know. [IMG]http://image.wikifoundry.com/image/1/QZTBfKwWhjV1GT7AGcwgzA12576/GW339H254[/IMG] --------- [B]Trial By Prejudice. [/B]After all the flak POLICE WOMAN received from, in the parlance of the time, the "gay libbers" two years earlier following S1's excellent "Flowers of Evil" in which a trio of homicidal lesbians are murdering off the residents of a nursing home for their monthly cheques (to be fair, Pepper's line "I know what a love like yours can do to a person" didn't help matters, but back then, homosexuality was never portrayed in movies and TV as anything other than a creepy mental derangement -- even when the script was attempting to be panderingly supportive) this new S3 episode attempts to correct the political incorrectness of the former by establishing that Pepper ain't no bigot --- sort of. [IMG width="738px"]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/ab57d970-08e6-477d-a226-a6ed00f26fc6_zpswzantn9y.png[/IMG] During a midnight burglary Pepper and Crowley get wind of just as it's occurring, the crooks' lovely lookout (Carol Lynley, just beginning in her trek of increasing girthiness) gives Pepper a kiss on the cheek in the squad car and then starts screaming "rape!" (I thought women never lied about these things). Pepper is accused of, and suspended for, lesbian molestation of a female suspect, and with the department cowering over its image, it's up to Pepper and Crowley alone to defend Pepper's reputation and career. [IMG width="757px"]https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/attachments/3-png.42630/[/IMG] Well, Pepper and Crowley [B]and[/B] Crowley -- Patricia Crowley, that is, who was once Pepper's roommate at the police academy who'd had a major crush on her fellow cadet, and then moved out once Pepper suggested it might be "more comfortable" if she did so... Okay, so Pep's not quite as progressive as we'd like to believe. (In "Flowers of Evil," Angie gives a great speech -- "I know what a love like yours can do to a person" notwithstanding -- which suggests that it was her roommate [I]in[/I] [I]college [/I]who'd had the hots for perky Leann Anderson... I wish they'd have aligned these things, or at least have Pepper confess to Bill that she'd fibbed about where the attraction had happened in order to protect Lady Crowley's anonymity. But they don't. And who knows? -- maybe [B]all [/B]Pepper's roommates can't keep their hands off of the bacharach table). Anyway, Pepper kills Lynley and gets arrested. Then she selflessly tries to prevent Lady Crowley, whose help has been enlisted by Sergeant Crowley, from testifying that Pepper ain't no lesbo and thus endangering Lady Crowley's new career where's she's in the closet out of necessity. Fairly daring for 1976 TV. Another good original score By Morton Stevens. [IMG]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xiNvXrUFkzE/VF3qUViggBI/AAAAAAAADrM/e47IFMCeMEg/s1600/1974_television_police_woman_cast04.jpg[/IMG] Poor, exhausted, dead-eyed Angie. Like [B]one [/B]Crowley isn't enough... [/QUOTE]
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'Police Woman'
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