The Best War in Town

My nephew started as an NYPD officer on New Year's Eve, but I he didn't make as spectacular a debut as Mark Shera did on his first day on the job.

Shera who was looking to make a call to his precinct because he was running late in those days before cellphones and believe me trying to find a working public phone in New York City could be a lifetime quest happens to interrupt a mob hit. He makes a lot of rookie mistakes, but his sergeant from the Academy David Doyle believes in him and after awhile so does Lt. Kojak.

They have to because this is looking like the opening shots in a turf war for territory on the Lower East Side. This is an episode where Telly Savalas shows himself to be a master at psychological warfare with both heads of the two factions. Plays them off beautifully against each other.

You have to see it to believe it.

In an opening scene, you see some hoods trying to escape in a brown Chevy Nova. After running over a woman, the car speeds away...and is now a black car...and one much larger than a Nova! Apparently, these crooks have a magical changing car...and I'm surprised this isn't listed on the Goofs section for this episode. Watch it...see what I mean.

A rookie cop (Mark Shera) is about to start his first day on the force...and he accidentally walked in on three mobsters about to murder someone! They attack him and run...and on the way from him giving chase, they run over a woman. Now the rookie is in trouble, as he discharged his gun several times and it might have violated departmental rules. What's worse, the man he saved won't talk at all and claims nothing happened! Apparently some sort of weird gang war is about to begin.

This is a fair episode. I say fair because I thought Kojak's reaction to the rookie was odd....too nasty, and too tough to be realistic with a guy on his first day on the job. Perhaps I'm wrong...but it just felt odd.

By the way, this sort of role wasn't too unusual for Shera in the 70s. He also starred on the cop show"SWAT" and the private eye show "Barnaby Jones".

This is an especially interesting episode of one of the great police dramas of the 1970's, "Kojak", starring the dynamic and magnetic Telly Savalas as Lt. Theo Kojak. Along with his usual co-stars, Mr. Savalas is given excellent support by several '70's TV regulars: David Doyle (soon to be John Bosley on "Charlies's Angels), Mark Shera (soon to be Jedediah Romano "J. R." Jones on another favorite detective series, "Barnaby Jones"), and Norman Burton, a supporting actor on many programs of the decade. I especially enjoyed Norman Burton's portrayal of "Fisher", the head of one of two gangs that are seeming to struggle over the usual turf issues. He portrays the role with the usual smugness and arrogance you would expect, but with a touch of humor that is especially evident in a rooftop scene with Telly Savalas and David Doyle, as they begin to work on him to rat on the Laggo gang. There's a neat twist to the story that I will not reveal here. This is an excellent episode of a series that has stood the test of time.