Walk Softly Through the Night Part 1 begins with 19 year old Ted Campbell (Randy Stumpf) in medical distress stumbling through the hallways of his dormitory and collapsing outside the door of his friend, Marty Herrera (A. Martinez), a medical student who had been trying to help ween him off drugs. Marty drives Randy to the hospital, but as he pulls up he realizes Randy is already dead and he leaves him on the front lawn fearing he would be expelled from school. The next day, Ted's father, Brock Campbell (Michael Constantine) who is also a friend of Quincy's (Jack Klugman), calls to inform him of his son's death and asks him to conduct the autopsy. Quincy finds that Ted died from a fatal seizure triggered by massive amounts of quaaludes in his system and is determined to find out how this happened. With the help of Marty, this leads him to an irresponsible doctor writing prescriptions in large quantities for profit with no regard for the dangerous repercussions on patients.
This is a Quincy on a social crusade type episode, so if you enjoy that type of story you will likely find this one entertaining. For me, there really wasn't enough of a mystery here to keep me very interested, but I did find the guest star performances of Michael Constantine and A Martinez to be excellent. As Ted's father, Brock (Constantine) is the star of a long-running morning children's show where he plays a clown and continues to work even when his son dies tragically. This results in some heartbreaking scenes where he breaks down on set while filming a scene with a child and another where he tearfully pleads with a group of teenagers waiting outside the doctor's office to stop doing drugs as it could kill them like it did his son.
While these two performances were quite strong, there are several other scenes involving extra players trying to portray drug addicted teens which are pretty campy and poor. Overall, not a great Season 4 episode, but there is a Part 2 installment where things take a turn.
This is a Quincy on a social crusade type episode, so if you enjoy that type of story you will likely find this one entertaining. For me, there really wasn't enough of a mystery here to keep me very interested, but I did find the guest star performances of Michael Constantine and A Martinez to be excellent. As Ted's father, Brock (Constantine) is the star of a long-running morning children's show where he plays a clown and continues to work even when his son dies tragically. This results in some heartbreaking scenes where he breaks down on set while filming a scene with a child and another where he tearfully pleads with a group of teenagers waiting outside the doctor's office to stop doing drugs as it could kill them like it did his son.
While these two performances were quite strong, there are several other scenes involving extra players trying to portray drug addicted teens which are pretty campy and poor. Overall, not a great Season 4 episode, but there is a Part 2 installment where things take a turn.