User Reviews

Naked City frequently featured young actors on the rise, but this episode offers appearances by Dick York, James Caan (who seems to be channeling Marlon Brando) and Bruce Dern. In a sad foretaste of future problems, York's character suffers a back injury in the finale.

***SPOILERS**** It's during a bar robbery on the lower east side that Det. Adam Flint, Paul Burke, held his fire in not wanting to jeopardizes the lives of the people there that neighborhood rummy "Rummy" Brent, Paul Hartman, tried to stop the robbery and ended getting shot dead by one of the masked robbers. With now everyone holding Det. Flint guilty , by not firing his gun, for "Rummy's" murder he goes into a deep depression in him knowing that he did the right thing but instead is being held by the public and newspapers at large as being a whimpering coward for doing it. In fact if "Rummy" stayed drunk and in his chair he wouldn't have ended up getting shot by the robbers whom he tried, drunk as a skunk, to stop!

The story gets even more interesting with Det. Flint finally firing his weapon at the fleeing crooks he hits one Ricky, Bruce Dern, in the left shoulder who's now in desperate need of serious medical attention. It's then that Ricky's fellow robbers headed by Paul Colano, Tommy "7" Seven, get in touch with his brother the doctor Charlie, Dick York, to operate on Nicky to save his life. Charlie fully knowing that it's a crime not to report a gunshot victim to the police still at his brother's urging does the best he can for Nicky, who by now is going and going fast, but his best is quite not good enough.

***SPOILERS*** In a last desperate attempt to save Nicky's life Charlie has him secretly brought to the hospital he works in to give him desperately needed plasma as well as a blood transfusion. This brings both Charlie's brother Paul and Det. Flint into the picture in Paul kidnapping the near dead Nicky from the hospital and Det. Flint and the NYPD chasing him as well as his brother Charlie in a hijacked ambulance all through the city streets. This as Nicky during all the action and excitement finally expires together with Paul and the unmanned getaway driver or wheel-man as the ambulance crashed and overturned during the car chase. With Charlie the only survivor of the farce all he can look forward to now is having his Doctor's license taken away from him as well as possibly serving time as an accomplice to the crime or crimes that his now dead, and having nothing to worry about in the world of the living, brother Paul was responsible for!

P.S Check out a very young 20 year old James or Jimmy, as he's in the credits, Caan in his acting debut as one of Paul's bar hopping & robbing crew Marty Feketi.

"Naked City" fans should have been screaming "Bring back Silliphant" after sitting through this awful episode written by others, the second clunker in a row.

It's filled with cliches and harps on making us feel sorry for the star Paul Burke. He's in a bar when masked robbers take over, and is blamed for supposed cowardice when he fails to act in time to save a drunk who's murdered.

We see the dead man's wife railng at Burke, and even the bar owner, both played by very fine actresses (Betty Field and Jean Stapleton) stuck with crappy roles. Johnny Seven is typecast as a totally evil bad guy while Dick York is the doctor who's his brother and gets trapped into helping bro by treating a partner in crime with a gunshot wound caused by Burke.

Another criminal is a showy little role for young James Caan. And the script also trots out corny police department politics in putting McMahon also on the spot for defending his detective Burke when the higher ups want to scapegoat him.