User Reviews

Bert Burger plays a crooked city councilman, not the noblest of characters to be sure. But when someone puts two bullets into him the law has to respond. So it falls on Lt. Theo Kojak and the Manhattan South Squad to find the killer.

It's almost too easy when Harrison Page is found with the wounded Burger at the scene. There's even the witness statement of waiter Tom Pedi from a nearby restaurant.

Page is a hot tempered militant of that era of the Black Panthers whose first instinct is to run. Sad he did not know he would be dealing with Kojak who has a burning passion for the truth in every case. But his instincts are usually right. My experience with police is that they like easy solutions in real life and brush inconsistencies under the rug.

Tom Pedi is always a pleasure to watch as he plays all kinds of New York type characters on the big and small screen. He was mostly a stage actor so his credits are limited. But you have to love his happy go lucky persona he brings to all roles.

Note also the performance of Magnum's future sidekick T.C. who plays a bookie here. A man who definitely knows how to work the system.

An innocent (but still hostile) man gets charged with murder. It looks like an open-and-shut case....but, of course, it isn't.

"Hawthorn Yantzee" (Harrison Page) is in the wrong spot at the wrong time after "Stutz" (Roger Mosley) killed a corrupt politician. "Yantzee" makes it worse for himself by running away, and then later doing the same. For an innocent guy, he sure does a lot of stupid things that don't help his cause.

He's lucky he has his girlfriend "Lula" (Margaret Avery) and a tough-skinned detective ("Kojak") who endures racial slants and bad attitudes and only cares about justice.

It's a good episode with a good mix of drama, some humor and some action. I'm always amazed looking at these episodes 40 years after they were made. I remember in the wild hair and clothing of the period, of course, but I don't remember these ridiculously low, long and wide cars that Kojak and others raced down the city streets. I don't know who anyone with bad knees could ever get into our out of those low cars.

Harrison Page, who starred as the taunted Niles in Russ Meyer's Vixen!, here plays Hawthorn Yantzee, an innocent black man framed by a racketeer for the shooting of a politician.

Kojak becomes convinced that something is fishy and does his best to exonerate the suspect, but has to contend with racial anti-police bias to get Yantzee to cooperate. Meanwhile, Capt. McNeil and others think the lollipop man is on the wrong track and pressure him to settle for Yantzee.

This is an above average Kojak episode with some taut moments as it progresses. It's unfortunate that it ends with one of the worst puns ever uttered on television.