Trouble lands on socialite sleuth Houston's doorstep literally as two women run into him outside his 100 Century Plaza South office building just as their car explodes after a long chase mysterious assailants through West Hollywood.
The clueless women can only tell Houston that a friend of his named Eric Brant (Michael Halsey) told them to tell Houston to "fear for tomorrow" after giving them a small codebook to deliver to the burly private investigator. The assailants were after Brant and the codebook. The car exploded with Brant in it.
Brant, an international con-man Houston has inexplicably remained friends with since they were both teens was working an angle with a renowned philanthropic doctor (Tim O'Connor) on a scheme to sell outdated donor blood overseas.
Spoiler Alert! Brant, it turns out has actually faked his death and staged the whole car chase/explosion at the beginning so that he could use Houston to collar his partners and keep the spoils of the criminal enterprise for himself. Implausible? You're watching a show with a billionaire who moonlights as a private investigator. If you'll go with that why not go with it all the way? Actually, even with a pretty absurd plot this episode is one of very few from the first season to feature a more serious tone compared with the satiric whodunit spoof episodes so prevalent at the show's beginning. The odd scene in lesser episodes like this can be interesting but they are few and far between here.
We see Houston's cop buddy Lieutenant Novelli (John Aprea) get shot. We are told he has received last rites in the hospital and we watch as he flat-lines while doctors furiously work to save him. This would have been the perfect exit from the series for the character. Instead Novelli, for reasons left unexplained, didn't make it back for the next season until guest starring in Season 2, Episode 16 "Criss-Cross".
We are introduced to Ed Grover playing police Captain Kerrigan, a role he would reprise in Season 1, Episode 21 "A Deadly Parlay", the one immediately after this one. Presumably he is being offered up as a surrogate for Novelli who, likely as far as the actor that portrayed him knew, had died in hospital.
That is indeed a 9 year old Tori Spelling, Aaron Spelling's daughter in only her second ever screen appearance portraying Brant's little girl Nelli. Her first line is "It's not fair! It's just not fair!" which is pretty much what every actress she has beaten out for a role has said.
You also might recognize Paul Petersen from the Donna Reed Show playing one of the uniformed cops.
Pam Hensley was in the TV series Buck Rogers in which guest star Tim O'Connor also starred.
The clueless women can only tell Houston that a friend of his named Eric Brant (Michael Halsey) told them to tell Houston to "fear for tomorrow" after giving them a small codebook to deliver to the burly private investigator. The assailants were after Brant and the codebook. The car exploded with Brant in it.
Brant, an international con-man Houston has inexplicably remained friends with since they were both teens was working an angle with a renowned philanthropic doctor (Tim O'Connor) on a scheme to sell outdated donor blood overseas.
Spoiler Alert! Brant, it turns out has actually faked his death and staged the whole car chase/explosion at the beginning so that he could use Houston to collar his partners and keep the spoils of the criminal enterprise for himself. Implausible? You're watching a show with a billionaire who moonlights as a private investigator. If you'll go with that why not go with it all the way? Actually, even with a pretty absurd plot this episode is one of very few from the first season to feature a more serious tone compared with the satiric whodunit spoof episodes so prevalent at the show's beginning. The odd scene in lesser episodes like this can be interesting but they are few and far between here.
We see Houston's cop buddy Lieutenant Novelli (John Aprea) get shot. We are told he has received last rites in the hospital and we watch as he flat-lines while doctors furiously work to save him. This would have been the perfect exit from the series for the character. Instead Novelli, for reasons left unexplained, didn't make it back for the next season until guest starring in Season 2, Episode 16 "Criss-Cross".
We are introduced to Ed Grover playing police Captain Kerrigan, a role he would reprise in Season 1, Episode 21 "A Deadly Parlay", the one immediately after this one. Presumably he is being offered up as a surrogate for Novelli who, likely as far as the actor that portrayed him knew, had died in hospital.
That is indeed a 9 year old Tori Spelling, Aaron Spelling's daughter in only her second ever screen appearance portraying Brant's little girl Nelli. Her first line is "It's not fair! It's just not fair!" which is pretty much what every actress she has beaten out for a role has said.
You also might recognize Paul Petersen from the Donna Reed Show playing one of the uniformed cops.
Pam Hensley was in the TV series Buck Rogers in which guest star Tim O'Connor also starred.
