New posts

A little forum update...We're planning an upgrade.

Find out more about what's planned and how you can help support the forum
Click here for the details

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 119487" data-attributes="member: 57984">After sidelining and weakening Pepper from mid-Season 2 thru Season 3, there seems to be an effort for Season 4 to re-acknowledge that she's the title character (in lieu of Earl Holliman donning a skirt, but then his private life should be nobody's business) but Angie is now so accustomed to playing a secondary role in her own show that the attempt to place the camera back on her doesn't entirely work. For one thing, that focusing, charismatic purr from Season 1, evident in nearly every scene during the series' freshman year, deepened her delivery and gave her dialogue a gravitas long-since replaced by a higher-pitched warble which Pepper only used to use to be funny or when undercover and pretending to be confused. So now that the lower, diva voice has been removed (and Angie never got it back, even after the show was over, damaging her career) you listen less to what she has to say, no matter how smart or plentiful her dialogue may be. And that makes it hard for POLICE WOMAN to get its mojo back, let alone navigate around the silly, tacky vibe most shows have taken on by the latter part of the '70s where even sitcoms like ALL IN THE FAMILY and MARY TYLER MOORE have given way to dizzier entries like THREE'S COMPANY and ALICE, and when goofy programs like LOVE BOAT and FANTASY ISLAND can constitute a hit line-up.Somebody neglected to tell Angie "you can start acting again."'The Young and the Fair'In yet another installment cannibalizing an earlier episode (in this case, S1's "The Beautiful Die Young), we see little Charlene Tilton, five seconds before being cast as Lucy Ewing, pop up in the very first scene playing a girl named .... Clemmons ... and promptly gets murdered as we hear an obviously looped scream and a suitcase lid obscures her face from view. Director Corey Allen does what he can with the white slave trade script, so the end result is not all that awful, but we get Pepper posing as a teacher playing student to dashing middle eastern professor (Rossano Brazzi) who is suspected to be involved in shipping young teen girls to parts unknown -- or killing them when they don't cooperate -- yet he turns out to be heroically trying to crack the ring who are. And then there's a scene where Pepper steals a vehicle in order to chase down the bad guys, her arms flailing and mouth wide in startled terror as she eventually smashes into an assailant's car on an airport tarmac, all in performance of duty, although her demeanor suggests she doesn't remember she's been a trained cop for several years.____________"The Human Rights of Tiki Kim'A rather odd episode, not quite as awful as I had remembered it, in which Pepper -- her blonde hair suddenly silver without explanation -- takes an interest in the welfare of a tiny Korean girl after the Korean mob (led by Philip Ahn in his last role) tries to put muscle on the neighborhood by extortion and murder. An immigrant organizes a neighborhood association to fight them, so the gang targets the honest man's 8-year-old niece for kidnapping, with the price for her safe return being that he remain silent. They then arrange for her to be "adopted" and sent back to Korea by a native family they've hired, using their Washington connections to threaten her uncle with arrest for violating immigration laws if he, Pepper, or a friendly journalist interfere.The episode is admirably played straight until the ridiculous wrap up. And Angie's scenes with the little girl never quite work.At least the DVD copy is fairly clean._______________"Sixth Sense"In an episode I've long made fun of as a prime example of how stupid POLICE WOMAN had gotten in its slow and painful descent, an apparently impotent psycho-pervert (Edward Winter, always scene-stealing fun as a maniac) named "Charlie Hollis" (there's also someone name "de Lorca" so I'm assuming writer David Moessinger, master of the moronic macabre, had been watching a lot of Bette Davis murder movies from the '60s that week) is pulled over by Crowley for sweating and looking suspicious, Crowley engaging in an illegal search of the trunk of the man's car where he finds a mutilated woman who soon dies after she's rushed to the hospital.The show pushes too far an improbable point that the unwarranted search would completely exonerate the killer and result in his immediate release (obviously, in real life, such a morbid "find" would wind up trumping any issues about the technical legality of the search ---- it just would).  With department pressure on Bill Crowley to ease up on the killer, his wife (Juliet Mills) suddenly decides to call Pepper and invite her over to the home she keeps with her nutty husband to confess her fears that he's dangerous and might indeed be a serial killer. During the exchange he overhears from the other room, the hubby screams like the whackjob he is and rushes the two women with a butcher knife. Pepper dings him with her purse, conveniently dropping the pocketbook containing her firearm as she does, and she and Mills dash outside to enclose themselves in the poolhouse -- which leads to arguably the dumbest fight scene in the history of television this side of Captain Kirk vs. Gorn: Hollis recites some lovely poetry, nursery rhymes he's altered to sound more threatening, as he smashes the window of the poolhouse, Pepper then smashes a potted plant over his head, sticks her own head out through the broken window to see where he might have fallen, and he then reaches up and grabs her by the neck in order to pull her outside, Angie in her trademarked wide-mouthed expression of shock all the way. Then Edward Winter rolls around on top of her by the pool for what seems like hours in an effort to not injure Angie Dickinson and her stunt double.Crowley and the gang get there just in time to see Winter stumble into the pool and tread water, cackling all cray-cray just before Angie gets her freeze frame even though a master shot seems a more appropriate way to close this episode -- only I'm guessing most of the actors walked off the set before they'd finished the day's shooting so the crew had to work with what they had.What a mess.</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =