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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 83495" data-attributes="member: 57984">"Anatomy of Two Rapes" opens up with Sergeant Anderson, ostensibly bruised and bloodied, giving a play-acting presentation in a darkened squad room of a rape victim being given the third degree by an angry, incredulous male cop issuing insensitive accusations at her. The lights go up and Crowley steps center stage and explains that women who've been raped are afraid to come forward because of how they fear they'll be treated by the police.Well, the way this episode unfolds, they're likely to be even more afraid to come forward.A slutty girl named Wanda May (Angel Tompkins) drops her Asian photographer's camera into a Japanese pond (so you know she's bad, and you know she's gotta die) in one of those sequences you'd see so often in the early-'70s, and then, drunk as a skank, she picks up with a couple of married men (Don "Red Rider" Barry and Jack "Mr Carlin" Riley) in a honky tonk bar. Later, in the backseat of an old jalopy, she begins questioning the literal manhood of a faceless suitor who then proceeds to beat the crap out of her as the camera pulls back to a jazzy Pete Rugolo score.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PW_siggy_2009.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 831px" />The next day, some teen aged boys flying model planes around in an open field crash-land their toy and Wanda May's corpse is found in the high grass.At the morgue, Pepper questions Crowley's assertions that this beaten and raped prostitute had to have her arm twisted in order to be injected with the DNA information from enough men to fit inside a VW bus... Remember, this is 1974, the first year that rape became an acceptable crime TV cop shows were willing to address, so even the word "rape" still had a certain power.Cruising numerous porn shops, Crowley and Pepper eventually locate her photographer (Pat Morita) who sobs that his beautiful messy flower, Wanda May, has met the tragic death he'd always feared for her.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWanatomy1_zpsomqdro4m.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 780px" />Meanwhile, Pepper is called to the good side of town to interrogate a society matron (Rhonda Fleming, in an Old Style performance) who claims she was raped by a big black man with huge hands who ravished her and gave her a new hairdo while he was at it -- all just before her daughter was supposed to be married.Pepper also questions a soda jerk suspect at the local bowling alley (cuddly Doug Chapin, who'd later act as Matthew Perry's manager) who'd also dated Wanda May, and who promptly recognizes that while flirty Pepper might be able to guess he's "a Scorpio" at first sight, it's far more unlikely that she also knows his name is "Craig." Cue the chase scene and he's wrestled by Crowley into the nearest set of bowling pins screaming, "I didn't kill her!" added later as a wild line.Frustrated that all their leads seem to be dry holes, as it were, the soda jerk directs them to a friend of his who drives an old car with red candles on the dashboard and who only gives you "a funny look" if you ask what they're for.Pepper and Crowley show up at the boy's home -- a boy who just happens to be one of the kids flying those model planes earlier in the story. His country-fried mama says he's not home and that she's callin' her husband, and Crowley and Royster go peruse the suspicious old car out back complete with red candles on the dash, leaving Pepper alone to wander the back of the house, bathed in that noir sidelighting they gave her in the early episodes and should never have dropped, and she winds up in what is obviously the teen culprit's room, candles blazing, when she opens a closet door and he jumps out at her wrestling her to the floor, where he proceeds to confess all of his "it was my first time and it was important to me, but she laughed" guiltiness, Pepper trying to seem as sympathetic as she can with his hands around her throat. Mama runs in, screams at what's just transpired, and the kid tearfully assures her that he's still "pure." (Angie Dickinson pretends in the DVD commentary that she thinks this boy is "our Gary" Busey, just so we'll think she's charmingly stupid).Back to Big Mansion Alley and Pepper interviews Rhonda Fleming once more, only this time Sergeant Anderson is hip to Rhonda's wily ways and feminine guile. Turns out she's a spoiled cow who just wanted to keep her daughter from getting married, so she made up the whole rape scenario."It means you lied!," Pepper courageously informs the rich lady who turns out is not a lady at all.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWanatomy2_zpsd5gjro0h.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 780px" />Back at the station, Pepper and Crowley lament their "two rape cases and neither one turns out that way" and then he offers to feed her a big steak he'll provide.In 1974, this was both daring and regressive simultaneously. But it's all so slickly done, and the direction and camerawork so good, Angie so luscious and engaging, you just forgive the what-we-used-to-call chauvinism.[ATTACH=full]39941[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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