Ironside - the show I love to hate!
S03E02: Goodbye to Yesterday
Original Broadcast Date: September 25, 1969
Director: Barry Shear; Producer: Douglas Benton; Writer: Sy Salkowitz; Music: Oliver Nelson. Time: 48:02 x 2 (including "previously on" at beginning of part two)
While I was doing Season One reviews, I got seriously fed up with the convoluted and poorly-written episodes and decided to randomly choose an episode from a later season to do, since I was told the show "gets better as it goes along." Unfortunately, I ended up with this mess, a two-part (originally two-hour) continuation of the soap opera "Barbara Who" from season one, where Ironside and permanent amnesia victim Barbara Jones (Vera Miles) got seriously romantically attracted to each other. Barbara was a nurse's aide who helped care for Ironside in the hospital where he spent time after someone tried to assassinate him.
In the season one show, Ironside and his team figure out where Barbara hails from and bring her back to her home town in Wyoming where there is a huge complication: her real name is Lois and she is married with two daughters. Her husband is Vic Richards (Philip Carey). She remembers nothing about any of them.
This new episode opens on a dirt road where there is a telephone booth in the middle of nowhere. Ben Ames (Dane Clark) pulls up to the booth and calls Barbara (who will be referred to as such in this review). He has kidnapped her young daughter Leslie (Melody Thomas Scott), and says the kid will be released after he receives a $200,000 ransom. Leslie talks to her mother briefly, but Ames cuts the call off before sequestering her in an abandoned mine.
Vic wants to get the police involved, but Ames said the girl will be killed if this happens. Barbara calls Ironside instead.
Ironside and his team fly to Wyoming in what looks like a private plane, not a commercial airliner. Questions immediately arise: Is Ironside paying for this out of his own pocket, or is this subsidized by SFPD? A plane like this would be expensive to charter, and the city would be paying the salaries of Eve and Ed while they are away, whereas Ironside is probably paying Mark's salary out of his own pocket.
During the flight, members of the team are not talking much and pussyfooting around like they are walking on eggshells as The Chief glowers. Eve tries to cheer him up with talk of blueberry muffins and offering to put "something stronger" in his cup of coffee, but none of this works.
When they arrive at the airport in Wyoming, Vic is there to meet them. He tells Ironside, "If Barbara had let me call the sheriff, I wouldn't have let her call you." Vic is troubled by the attention being paid to Ironside, not only by his wife, but that from his younger daughter Tracy who later refers to The Chief as "Uncle Robert." Ironside eventually finds out that Vic and Barbara are separated – Vic hasn't lived in the house for the last month and only came back to support Barbara because of the kidnapping; otherwise, he wants to get a divorce. He says, "I've got to be a husband, not a custodian."
Ironside and his team get busy interviewing people hanging around the Richards' ranch, which is a very nice spread, suggesting they are quite well off.
Freda (Stephanie Shayne), described by Barbara as "sort of a live-in babysitter" for the two daughters, tells Ironside she was "daydreaming" when Leslie was kidnapped, but she later tells her boyfriend Josh she was "lying" about this. I think during the kidnapping she was really "doing it" with Josh, for whom she has serious hot pants. The two of them hang out in the barn and smooch, which is also a likely place where they had sex.
Josh Williams (Murray MacLeod), the boyfriend, seems to be a handyman and/or a doctor for the animals on the ranch: "If things get sick on the ranch, I fix them." By sick, he means "stop working." Josh has a criminal history, the possession of marijuana, for which he was busted a few years ago. Ironside finds out about this, but doesn't connect this to the kidnapping.
Another hanger-on at the Richards place is Molly Strong (Cloris Leachman), who tells Eve she heard about the kidnapping from Freda, who was "screeching her head off." Molly, whose relationship to the Richards' family is never established or where her house is relative to the Richards' property, speculates that the kidnapping is a result of "bad money" which was "tainted." This started with the family’s uncle (refer back to the previous show) who squeezed people in the area for money and was "killed for it." Eve wonders if Molly heard any cars pass by on the highway, which seems odd, because I don’t think there is any highway that close to the property. As Molly says "if anything evil happened here, I know it because of my vibrations … it’s like rheumatism." These brief shards of dialogue are supposed to establish Molly as a kook, even some kind of religious fanatic, according to a review at IMDb.
This is basically all the information that we hear about these characters, what they were doing and where they were when the kidnapping took place!
Ames, the kidnapper, is seriously psychopathic. He has help with the kidnapping from Carl Sutter (Eddie Firestone), who owns the local Wyco gas station which is also "in the middle of nowhere." Ames has a history with Sutter, dating back over ten years, when the two were involved in a brawl in a bar where Ames took the rap after some guy got killed. Ames went to prison for ten years for manslaughter, basically covering for Sutter. Released about a month ago, Ames tells Sutter he is fed up after living like an animal in jail, and wants to spend the rest of his life "in style" with the proceeds from the kidnapping. Sutter is the brother of Molly, who has likely been the one passing along information about the "screws" who are on the case at the Richards' ranch.
Despite Barbara's objections, Ironside contacts the local sheriff, Bud Metcalf, and we are soon introduced to him. Metcalf, played by character actor Slim Pickens, is a hick, as is his nephew Dave (Michael Larrain), who the sheriff addresses as "Baby." The smirking Dave, who got his job entirely through nepotism, keeps saying if his uncle solves this crime, he will likely get a big promotion to be head of the state highway patrol. The fact that the two have heavy accents like they come from the deep US South, is odd. A friend of mine who lives in Colorado, close to Wyoming, told me people in Wyoming typically do not talk like hillbillies.
We have already encountered the sheriff in one of Ironside's flashbacks earlier, which had a major continuity error. In a scene from the first season episode where the sheriff reunited Barbara in his office with her husband Vic whom she had totally forgotten about, the sheriff's name was Harley and he was played by Alan Baxter. This continuity error continues in this show, with Pickens as Metcalf saying, "Good to see you again, Chief Ironside" when the two men meet.
The FBI has also arrived quickly on the scene, in the person of Agent Torrence (George Murdock) who has sensed a "vibe" between Ironside and Barbara. When the FBI man says he wants to get some work processed by his office, "Baby" Dave grabs the work out of his hands roughly and says, "We've got our own photo lab here."
Barbara tells Ironside she regrets taking him away from his "personal life." Shortly after this, the phone rings and Ames is on the line again. Various electronic equipment has been set up to deal with calls from him now and in the future. Ames gives Barbara exact details about where to drop the money and not to bring any cops along with her.
Back at the mine, Sutter has been looking after Leslie. Ames shows up after making his phone call, referring to "the time of night" even though now there is brilliant daylight. When Ames says the edgy Sutter needs a drink, Sutter says he hasn't had a drink in ten years.
Ironside has gotten hold of some fancy equipment which will track the box the money is to be placed in with a transmitter. When Ironside says a helicopter will be involved in tracking the box, the sheriff asks, "What do you need a heal-ee-copter for?" Ironside says there will be a better chance of going unnoticed, which doesn't makes sense – surely a helicopter near the place where the money is to be dropped off would be suspicious.
Ironside and team with the sheriff and nephew go on top of a mountainside near the money pickup location to monitor traffic below to see if anyone will pick up the cash. They spend almost the entire night there. From this vantage point and using binoculars, they can get information like license plate numbers of cars who pass below which is hard to believe.
When some guy on the road below is driving erratically, the sheriff overrides Ironside and calls for him to be pulled over, but this guy is supposedly out shopping for things that his pregnant wife is craving, though where he would expect to find things like this is hard to fathom because there isn't a 7-11 on this "middle of nowhere" country road. The sheriff realizes he made a huge blunder in trying to arrest this character, but he uses this as an excuse to take charge of the case.
Later, Ames comes to visit Molly. She tells him that her "vibrations" told her that he was coming. Ames says there is someone watching the house. He was almost nabbed the night before when the guy with a pregnant wife was stopped by the cops. He says that people would freak out if they knew he is Molly's "common law husband." He convinces her to have the phones in the Richards house fixed so that only Barbara can hear what he is going to tell her during his next call.
This is where Part One of the show ends, followed by a 3:31 "previously on" at the beginning of Part Two.
Barbara has a note that was left in the kitchen door the next morning; we don't see what it says. This is dumb, because virtually everything the follows shortly after this is related to this note … I think. How can you tell, if its contents are a big secret? This is just mediocre writing for the show. Or has something been cut out? Ironside says he will do what the note says but he won't let Barbara get involved in what it says without protection.
There is a brief pause for some soap opera. Vic apologizes to Ironside: "I tried to hate you for a long time. I can't seem to do a good job of it." Barbara chose to try to stay with him despite her amnesia, but it hasn't made him feel like much of a man knowing she's doing it out of a sense of obligation. Vic says he would be lying if he said he wasn't jealous of Barbara's relationship with Ironside. He wants to break the deadlock, but he can't hold her to a legal contract she doesn't even remember signing, i.e., their marriage paperwork. Ironside says, "This is hardly the time for major decisions." Vic wants to know if Ironside still loves Barbara, and the answer is "yes."
Ames phones Barbara again with specific instructions for delivery of the ransom. She refuses to tell everyone what was said, especially after Ironside shakes his head, meaning "keep quiet." Her conversation with Ames was recorded on a reel-to-reel machine, but when they play the tape back, the sound is garbled and they cannot hear what was said. "Baby" Dave was supposed to be in charge of the recorder, but close examination reveals that the recording heads now have tape on them. Eve is sitting by the machine, and plays dumb, since she was the one who likely did this after getting Dave to leave the room after she spilled coffee on him. I guess…
Meanwhile, Molly goes to see Sutter at the gas station. She tells him that he should go "up there" (i.e., to the mine) to where Leslie is being held, but he says he won't babysit her while Ames picks up the money. He will just let Ames get picked up by the cops, and doesn't even care if Leslie dies. Sutter doesn't want to be involved in any of Ames' dealings, that a lawyer told him that he is covered by a statute of limitations. When Molly asks what will happen to her, Sutter basically tells her "that's your problem."
Back at the ranch, Metcalf has a talk with Ironside, saying, "You don't think much of me, do you?" Ironside says, "I don't think much of your methods." The sheriff says, "A man's got to do the best he can with what he's got and try to survive." Metcalf sounds defeated, but Ironside says, "Get out if you like, but do you really want to do it on the back of a kidnapped child?"
To the sounds of ominous music, Barbara sneaks out her window with the ransom money, but Eve outside makes a distraction, leaving in Barbara's station wagon, and the sheriff pursues her. Eve is going in another direction away from the money drop location … I guess … presumably this was the "plan" which was in the mysterious letter. Meanwhile, somewhere nearby, Barbara meets Molly, who presumably was involved with the letter, and heads in Molly's car to some obscure location where Ames is waiting to meet her and collect the cash.
Ironside knows what is going on, and despite the fact that we have no concept of how close Molly's place is to Barbara's, he and Mark are soon following Barbara at a distance where they can see her tail lights. Barbara heads for some the place which Ames described to her over the phone in less than eleven seconds during their conversation.
This meeting place seems to be on the side of a mountain, and despite the fact that it is pitch black (and almost impossible to see anything on the DVDs), Barbara makes her way up a path, aided a piece of cloth which is on a stick like a flag. When she reaches the place where she has to leave the money (again, this is impossible to see), she starts babbling to Ames, who is hiding nearby behind a rock that she has delivered the money. Aware that Ironside has followed her and is parked down by Molly's car below, she also starts yelling at him to get lost. Screaming more at Ames, "I didn't tell him, I'll make him go away," Barbara slips over the edge of a cliff and holds on with her finger tips. Anticipating this would happen, Ironside has told Mark to go and rescue her. Mark has a lot of trouble manipulating his way along the cliff face, especially since it is TOTALLY DARK, and eventually Barbara falls off the cliff, screaming and plunging a great distance. This whole sequence is idiotic.
The next scene is in the local hospital, where Barbara is still alive … barely. Both Ironside and Vic are outside her room. Vic tells Ironside, "You don't know how much I wish you weren't in that chair." Ironside says, "You don't know how much I wish it." The doctor (John Zaremba) suddenly comes out of her room, saying there is "not much hope" for Barbara; he tells a nurse with him to "get the priest in here fast."
Ironside heads to the area where Barbara fell off the mountain where there are numerous cops under Metcalf's command as well as FBI men working with Torrance, who seems unusually annoyed about being there. Ironside is sitting in the sheriff's jeep at the top of the hill lording over the search, which includes the cloth on a stick which Ironside says resembles a "wipe cloth" from a garage, a thread on a bush and cigarette butts from where Ames was smoking. The men have covered "every square inch of this whole damn mountain," but Ironside commands them to search again.
Eve finds some mica flakes, which brings to mind the far-fetched scene where she found acorns in the pilot episode. These flakes are not something from that area, and neither is some broom sage that Ed found. Ironside asks the sheriff, "Do you have a different species of broom sage around here? … That's pollen and that stuff down there is long past the pollenization stage." He seriously says this! The sheriff suggests that these things are likely from Milton Pass, which is where the "old silver mine" that Leslie has been hidden in is located. Ironside, all the cops and FBI men are soon at the mine where Leslie comes out with her hands up and is whisked away. Ames is not there.
Meanwhile, "Baby" Dave has been pursuing his uncle all over Hell's half acre – at the mountain and finally at the mine – because he has some news to impart, and wanted to give it to him personally – that he knows where "he" (?) is. Dave was doing surveillance at Molly's place and saw "him" arrive there via the "old road that passes along behind." He wanted to keep this a secret just for his uncle so he could receive all the glory for "his" capture and all the mistakes that were made would be forgotten. Uncle Bud belts him in the face and relieves him of his deputy's position. When Dave says "why?" the sheriff says, "If you don't know why, I can't explain it to you." Metcalf immediately yells for everyone to head to Molly's because "there's somethin' funny goin' on there, she's not alone."
Still no indication as to "who" is with Molly. It is Ames, who has given up on his kidnapping plan, and wants Molly to help him get out of the area. He takes a pitiful amount of money she was saving up ($35), saying, "$200,000 under my nose, and I couldn't get near it." When Molly tells Ames he can't leave Leslie in the mine (not knowing the cops have already been there) because "that's murder," he grabs her and mentions "our kid." (What does this mean, is she pregnant, or what? He has only been out of jail a short time!) After a tense scene, Ames tells her, "All right, Molly … we'll go together … it's all over."
But when Ironside and the cops show up a few minutes later, Molly is found dead. There is still mention of "him" and "he" without any reference to Ames! Ames, meanwhile goes to Sutter's gas station and wants to get away in an ambulance that is being repaired there, but "ain't running." (It takes a lot of effort to see that this vehicle is an ambulance, by the way.) At Molly's, Ironside is brainstorming that the previous night someone had to give Molly a lift home because Barbara had taken her car (seemingly a 1954 Plymouth Savoy) to the ransom drop location. A surveillance report shows that whenever Molly came home from the Richards' place recently, she made stops at the gas station, so everyone heads to this place.
With news from a customer at the gas station that the cops have all the roads sealed off, Ames' plan is now to escape using the ambulance. Ironside realizes that Sutter is in on the kidnapping somehow, so everyone heads to the gas station because Sutter will likely know where Ames is. As the sheriff and Ironside walk to their cars, the sheriff now knows that Molly and Sutter are brother and sister, and Torrance the FBI man already has the results from fingerprints taken at the mine only a few minutes before that they are from former convict Ames. Ironside says Ames is in "the big leagues now – kidnapping and murder one." But how did they connect Ames to Molly's killing?
At the gas station, Ames has some crazy plan in addition to using the ambulance. He connects some wire to what looks like a spark plug and then drops this into the station's fuel tank. When the cops show up and whip out their guns, Ames attempts to connect the other end of the wire to a battery inside the station. Ironside yells after Torrance sees someone inside the station, "Sutter … Ames [What? How does he know Ames is there?], come out with your hands up!" Sutter totally freaks out, and eventually Ames touches the wire to the battery, which results in a massive explosion in the underground tank, which probably used up a huge amount of the special effects budget for the show. Sutter and Ames are both taken away.
The show ends with news from the hospital. Despite Barbara's near-death experience, she has someone managed to recover from her injuries. When Ironside goes to see her, she has totally forgotten who he is, and has reverted to her original personality. One again this is an opportunity for somber looks from Raymond Burr as dopey music plays in the background. The show ends with a flashback to the end of the previous episode, where Ironside and Barbara parted after some smooching in front of her husband.
I refuse to believe that something major was not edited out of this show to produce the version seen on the DVDs, otherwise how could it be so bad! And all the avoidance of characters' names in this episode drove me crazy!
TRIVIA:
- When we first see the sheriff and his nephew driving on their way to the Richards' ranch, there are two shots of them which are the same.
- Sutter's gas station, which is really in the middle of nowhere, is called Poor Boy's Gas. It sells the Wyco (as in Wyoming) brand of gas, which, as far as I can determine, was (and maybe still is) a real product.
