User Reviews

One of my favorite McCLOUDs begins with Sam assigned to a "pilot program" where for the first time in NYC, women patrolmen are teamed with men for patrol car duty. "Who are you? WHAT are you?" asks his new partner, Margaret Sareno, played by spunky Brenda Vaccaro. Within 15 minutes, he saves her from being run over by a car-thief, and has a high-speed pursuit interrupted by an 18-wheeler, sending their car thru the front window of a clothing store.

Next, Sam winds up on late-night stake-out with a longtime veteran of the stolen car unit, Lt. Ed Feldman (Norman Fell). But when Feldman turns up murdered the next day, McCloud proposes what turns into one of the most outrageous undercover scams he ever pulled in his career. Stealing cars from the stolen car-ring, he quickly gets their attention, then, gets hired by them, in an attempt to find out as much about the ring as possible, and discover the identity of the top man. Along the way, he's watched like a hawk, forcing Officer Sareno to pose as his girlfriend so they can pass information along.

I remember watching this when it was first-run, and being delighted from the start, especially with Vaccaro. It seems a shame that, like so many characters on shows like these, they never brought her back for further appearances. The 70's was also a time when the endless flood of cop shows saw many actors known for playing good characters turned up as crooks, killers or worse. So it was that Eddie Albert (the former star of GREEN ACRES) played Roy Erickson ("middle-management", as Sam put it), while Roddy McDowell (PLANET OF THE APES) played Phil Sandler ("psychotic hit-man"-- actually a misnomer, the proper word here would be psychopathic).

Also in the cast were Lloyd Bochner (the top man, Glen Larson would bring him back for "NIGHT OF THE SHARK" and 2 episodes of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA); George Murdock (who would later become a recurring character on BG), and Diana Muldaur (Sam's on-again/off-again girlfriend Chris Caughlin, who shows up at JUST the wrong time and place, to blow Sam's cover!! --OOPS).

Writer Sy Salkowitz, in his only McCLOUD episode, manages the proper tone and balance to things, getting the relationship between Sam & Chief Clifford "just right". The following season, Glen Larson would push Clifford further and further into apoplectic fits of rage, for comedy's sake. This was fun to watch, but it could undermine the believability of things, as the longer the two worked together, the more confidence Clifford should have had in Sam and his way of doing things. As seen here!

Midway thru the story, when it looks like Sam may have been found out (his "references" didn't check out), he suddenly switches gears and ups the odds by "revealing" to his crooked employers that he actually runs a huge car-rental operation in the southwest. The fact that he managed to con the crooks so successfully was somewhat astonishing, and would have made Simon Templar ("The Saint") proud.

The most memorable set-piece is no doubt when the jig is up, and as Sam pursues the baddies, he winds up hanging underneath a helicopter flying over Manhattan. This became one of the scenes used when the opening credits became a montage of flashbacks starting in the 4th season. I also note that during the flight, one of the places they flew over was the remains of the New York World's Fair-- which would be the site of the climax of the following episode!

Finally, the "new" theme song only turns up briefly near the end of the story, while the end credits, strangely, use ANOTHER theme song I've never heard before or since. I wonder how many shows take until their 4th year to finally settle on a theme song they like?

Addendum / 7-21-2023

IS it a coincidence? The character dynamics in this are IDENTICAL to that in a 2nd-season AVENGERS episode, "The Removal Men", with Steed robbing the main bad guy just to impress him; said bad guy hiring Steed; his psychopathic henchman never trusting Steed and wanting to kill him; and Steed's part-time girlfriend Venus being in the wrong place and blowing his cover by accident. This story aired in England on 11-3-1962, just over 10 YEARS earlier. The parallel is uncanny! It really makes me wonder.