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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 82384" data-attributes="member: 57984">The gamble really begins...<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/PWsunset.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />The very first episode of POLICE WOMAN to air 13 September 1974 is the ironically titled, “The End Game,” so chosen because NBC thought, probably correctly, that it best reflected what the new series would be.It opens without background music, the Criminal Conspiracy Unit –- Bill Crowley (now, Earl Holliman), Pepper, Joe and Pete --- cruising the seedier back streets of Los Angeles, intent on making a prostitution bust. The dialogue between the officers is, for the time, rather edgy and glib, when television was beginning to step away from the DRAGNET-ian “Yes, ma’am; just the facts, ma’am” Old School image of the straight-laced cop and instead portray them as irreverent and human. In this first scene from “The End Game,” the squad makes several snickering jokes among themselves blurring the lines between crooks and criminals, particularly in regards to pimping and procurement.Soon, however, the team is distracted by a radio call for all nearby units to assist in stopping a bank robbery in progress. Shotguns blasting from the thugs inside, a patrolman struggles on the sidewalk with an obviously fatal abdominal wound as Pepper and the team descend on the site, the passing traffic seeming to suggest that the department hasn’t had enough time to seal off the streets or the producers had been unable to get the proper permits to do so…<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 769px" />CCU exchange shots with the gunmen and Crowley drives the squad car up onto the sidewalk to protect the dying officer --- who then asks gorgeous Sergeant Anderson to hold him to her bosom --- from any further gunfire. The uniformed cop expires, but presumably happily.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 776px" />This is a rawer moment than most cop shows had given the audience up until then, and it seems to suggest that POLICE WOMAN isn’t going to distinguish itself only by the novelty that the star was female: this is going to be the kind of hardboiled show that DECOY with Beverly Garland and HONEY WEST with Anne Francis --- and GET CHRISTIE LOVE then bombing on the other network --- never managed to achieve.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 764px" />Back at the station, a tearful Pepper takes a swig of something from out of Crowley’s file cabinet --- had they originally planned to make her a situational alcoholic? --- and she’s quickly discovered and taunted by an unsympathetic Royster and Styles, in one of those early they’d never-do-this-sort-of-thing-later kind of moments in which seasoned co-workers appear to be attempting to toughen up the rookie. Crowley appears and is a tad kinder, but assures her that the bad guys don’t take the kind of time off that Pepper is now requesting in her grief.And indeed they don’t, as this multicultural co-ed battalion of bank-busting bastards are at it again: they hit another savings and loan, and before their job is complete, one of the female felons obliterates with a shotgun an aged teller for simply looking like she might have hit a silent alarm.And they kidnap another teller (Deirdre Lenihan) just for good measure.Back at headquarters, Pepper and Crowley attend a meeting addressing this new string of robberies. The commanding officer (Bill Williams) points out the unnecessary (“… the troops are mean…!”) and adding that the thugs in question carry out their jobs “with almost military precision.” One wonders if that’s a veiled reference to the new show itself, as there seems the deliberate effort to be tough and no-nonsense –- tight plotting, tight scene construction, and no B.S.: a very macho cop show about a very feminine cop.That’s a good mix, an excellent plan. Of all the crime dramas on the tube at this time which would seem to fit the “military precision” description, only HAWAII FIVE-0 qualifies, and the producers of POLICE WOMAN even went so far as to procure the talents of FIVE-O’s Emmy-winning theme composer, Morton Stevens (at least, after Angie’s husband, Burt Bacharach, presumably held his Oscar and a Grammy in the shape of a crucifix to ward off the offer).In any event, POLICE WOMAN feels like a movie. In the shadow of evening, the brutal gang tosses the bound and gagged teller from their moving car, and she lands in a garbage pile. Why they didn’t kill her? We don’t find out, but Pepper and Bill question her in the hospital about her abusers. She claims to remember little of the dialogue, the faces involved, the events. Intuiting something uglier, Pepper asks Bill to let her stay for a bit, and once he’s out of the room, she focuses in on her suspicions that the young teller was raped, still a rare enough TV crime in 1974 that even hinting at it could raise the audience’s collective eyebrows.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 771px" />Correct in her assumption, Pepper assures the girl that the issue of the rape is their secret for now but concedes “it may have to come out in court later.” Yet Pepper says it so angelically, it’s almost soothing. And at least it’s honest.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 761px" />Meanwhile, the vicious thieves move in on the home of a local bank manager, holding his wife and kids captive unless he goes to his place of business and brings home $100,000 in a brief case. This is ‘70s television, of course, so the financial institution’s president permits this with cheerful good will --- which seems unlikely in any year.The man returns home with the money and the creeps leave, but not without him in tow as a hostage. “What do you think we are --- animals?” the gang leader (Paul Burke) taunts him when the man thanks them for allowing him to hug and kiss his wife and kids goodbye.You know all this isn’t going to end well.Pepper and Crowley arrive at the bank manager’s home. Pepper charms the children and finds a casino chip in an ashtray and Crowley learns from the wife (Linda Dano) that the hoods were looking for different channel numbers on the TV while they’d waited for her husband to bring home the cash. Finally the husband arrives home once again, released and unharmed.Back at the station, and over drinks at Vinnie’s later on, Pepper and the team decide Vegas is the place to head. So Pepper and Bill hop a plane to Nevada where the locals have cornered some of the thugs in a motel on the strip. Shots are exchanged and most of the crooks escape --- except one whom Crowley shoots to death, and who only hesitated in making his exit out of concern for his lame german shepherd.Even murderous malefactors love their pets.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame6.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 770px" />The computer implausibly decides the odds on which local L.A. bank is the likeliest next target, so that’s where CCU sets up camp: Joe works the front counter, Pete runs the sandwich truck in the parking lot, Crowley flirts with a tawny Texan teller and Pepper pretends to be jealous, then makes her usual jokes about dating movie stars whom Angie Dickinson actually knows. Pepper then admits that playing sitting duck for the clan of killers is a bit creepy --- and it kind of is; the tension builds and becomes increasingly real.On the second or third day staking out Western Mutual, Pepper introduces herself to an employee previously out on leave; immediately, the girl recognizes the mug shot of one of the two female bank robbers, Laurette Blake (Jonelle Allen), who’d recently come in and put in a bogus application for a loan. This revelation sends everyone’s antennae skyward, but there’s not much time to ponder its potential ramifications: the evil villains have just pulled into the driveway outside.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame7.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 767px" />Once inside, the outlaws hold court while the employees and customers take their instructed positions against the wall, including Pepper, Bill and Joe.As the crime goes down, Laurette Blake saunters arrogantly around the floor of the establishment, casing the joint and even taunting the employee who’d taken her application only days earlier --- that is, until Miss Blake sits down, sawed-off shotgun across her lap, and suddenly becomes unglued when she sees her own paperwork on the girl’s desk.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame_7b.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 773px" /> Wasting no more time, Pepper whips out her own double-barreled firearm hidden discreetly behind a file cabinet. Both women in red, it’s an abrupt dual to the death. And before the curvaceous crook can effectively respond, Pepper blows her back to hell.<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame8.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 764px" /> Joe is winged (shoulder injuries on TV used to be treated as if they were the equivalent of a bloody nose) but the nasty gang has finally been collared. Bill then observes what remains of Laurette, draped motionless over the back of the chair, her bloodied bosom pointing to the stars.Crowley assures his relatively neophyte underling that this sort of thing doesn’t happen every day in the life of a police officer. But Sergeant Pepper Anderson, turning away from the carnage and nearly paralyzed with duty’s remorse, responds gravely: “Maybe someday … some time … I’ll be able to accept that.”<img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b78/Marky888/endgame9.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 768px" />This dynamic, crackerjack series seems destined to fly. Period reviews of this episode were good, even though TVGUIDE doesn't hold out much hope for the show's success.By January, POLICE WOMAN would be hitting #1 for the week.__________________________<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/66/53/79/665379ffe9783718069c452b74a988c2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?