Route 66: 93 Percent in Smiling (1963)
Season 4, Episode 12
12/20/63 "93 Percent in Smiling"
15 February 2016
We get serious again- back in Niagara Falls. Tod and Linc are working on a construction crew with the troubled Albert Salmi, who keeps getting into fights because he thinks his lot in life should be better. He and his wife, who live in a trailer near to the one in which our heroes are staying, are always arguing. They have three children, an 11 year old boy, a 9 year old girl and a baby. The boy and girl figure the baby will have no chance with parents who are arguing all the time so they run off with the baby and set up a home in an abandoned house. They become the "husband and wife" and shop- lift what they need. Linc wants to help, the way Tod would have in an earlier season while Tod has become the cynical Buz, warning him to not get involved in other people's problems but eventually being dragged into it by his friend.

It's touching to see the two kids try to become parents and then become like their parents, arguing about money and how to get what they want. When our heroes find them and lead Salmi to the house, he overhears his children bickering and then realizing that they were acting like Mommie and Daddy and he vows to change, giving us a happy ending. But you wonder how much has really hanged. A very strong episode after some light-weight fluff.
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