Mon, Oct 22, 1962
Vern decides to get a tattoo in nearby Exeter which is a rough little town where the kids from Cardella go to booze and pickup women. He takes Howie along so Wes, Irene, Tom-Tom and Nora have to give up their date night to rescue them, or so they think. The frank discussions about sexuality and why young men go to a town like Exeter is explored with amazing realism. Humor and drama go hand in hand throughout the show. A flawless piece of writing. The last five minutes are a showcase for Randy Boone as he shows off his skills as both an actor and musician.
Mon, Oct 29, 1962
Indian Summer has come to Cordella. While everyone else is basking in the sun and fun, Wes and Irene are stuck working and going to classes until they decide to skip out as well. The pair's relationship is explored expertly, including an opportunity for a little premarital sex. Irene (Jan Norris) displays her enormous talents as an actress. She gives a multi-layered performance as she does throughout the show, with the silences displaying an amazing level of subtly. Wes and Irene are about as real a couple as ever populated a TV show. Tom-Tom (Ted Bessell) slips in a nice bit about foreplay concerning a lecture he, Irene and Nora are attending. I start to get the impression that it may have been the barely disguised allusions to sex that doomed this show with the network as much as anything. Far ahead of its time. Makes you realize what we've lost in 50 years in terms of adult writing and performances in television drama. Listen for Lyle Waggoner as the announcer at the end of every show.
Mon, Oct 1, 1962
Free spirited college student/artist Nora (Anne Schuyler) is added to the cast. Much of the story focuses around her and Wes when she's stranded on a side road resulting in Wes losing a load of tires he's hauling back to the gas station he works at. The tire part of the episode goes on a bit long, but the rest of the show is great. It's portrait of college students is relevant to any era. The story also highlights the conflicts between Wes and his fiancé Irene, a non-student, who's acting as the surrogate wife/mother for the group. Irene and Nora's confrontation and reconciliation at the end of the show are as well written as anything you'll find on TV in any era. The show had definitely found its footing by the end of episode three.
Mon, Dec 10, 1962
The excellent opening captures the quintessence of the four guys as they set out on a Saturday morning, Howie to play basketball and the three older guys to take an aptitude test setup by Irene. Wes gets frustrated and gets drunk in a show which is unfortunately played for laughs. Nothing like a happy drunk in the good old 60s. Fortunately, the hangover is played for real. In uncharacteristic fashion, Tom-Tom comes to Wes's rescue. The final scene between Wes (Glenn Corbett) and Irene (Jan Norris) is excellent, as always.
Mon, Nov 5, 1962
Tom-Tom, Vern and Howie go camping. Howie ends up lost and partly amnesiac. How he got that way is truly was an innovative twist. Tom-Tom nearly kills himself trying to find him. Again, the emotions and reactions are so real it's amazing. It sounds pretty standard, kid lost in the woods, etc, but they weave in the loss of Wes and Howie's parents and some spiritual stuff without being preachy or saccharine. Another piece of amazing writing.
Mon, Nov 19, 1962
This one features Howie, (Michael Burns), as he gets caught up in a tug of war between Mr. Stott (Harry Hervey Sr.) who runs the gas station and Mr. Lowell (Charles P. Thompson, who is memorable as the elderly bank guard on The Andy Griffith Show), a insurance agent, both of whom want him to work for them. The climax is a moving evocation of the difficulty of men facing retirement and marginalization. There's also some nice horseplay between Wes, Tom-Tom and Vern at the end. It's a fine episode, but it probably highlights another reason the series didn't succeed. When the series shifts away from the three older leads to Howie, it changes tone dramatically. Certainly Howie is a part of the dramatic mix, but if the series had simply been about the three, older leads, it might have had a better chance at success.
Mon, Oct 8, 1962
Tom-Tom sets out to buy a car. In the process we're treated to series of labyrinthine wheeling and dealing as he trades up from a typewriter, a tape recorder and on and on. No doubt, Tom-Tom graduated to be a Wall Street entrepreneur. Meanwhile, Howie has his heart set on a mini-motor bike for his paper route that Wes can't afford. Again, the best part of the show and series is when Wes and Tom-Tom verbally duke it out. The dialog and relationship between these two guys is one of the most realistic exchanges you'll ever see in series television in any era.
Mon, Sep 17, 1962
We're introduced to the four main characters, Wes (Glenn Corbett), Tom-Tom (Ted Bessel), Howie (Michael Burns) and Vern (Randy Boone), but the relationships are far from defined. Wes and Tom-Tom are college students and Howie is in junior high. The three of them share a houseboat on the Ohio River in the small college town of Cordella. Howie and Wes and both smart, ambitious and driven to excel at school, while Tom-Tom, also obviously a bright guy, has his head in the clouds. Vern is a newcomer in town, a drifting Folk singer. The pilot revolves around an economic and moral crisis with Howie and Vern. The writing is excellent and the characters well drawn, but the pacing is manic at times, surprisingly so for that era. In contrast, the drawn out nature of the missing money storyline gets a bit tedious, but the story pays off in the end.