User Reviews

This is a very intense story dealing with a social worker (Kanen), who is also a former childhood mentor to Buz, who falls to his death after playing a dare game with a local youth gang leader (Sheen). Buz then takes it on himself to find answers as well as justice.

This episode marks the acting debut of Martin Sheen who looks so young and different from what you are used to you almost have to look twice to make sure that it is him. He has a bowl haircut here and looks very, very boyish almost like he was fifteen even though he was actually twenty-one at the time. He has a laugh like the Riddler's and plays his menacing role pretty well. James Caan (billed here as 'Jimmy Caan') also makes his debut. The two play an 'ultimate' dare game at the end that is fairly well handled.

Yet the real star of this episode is the fantastic direction by the then up and coming Elliot Silverstein. The nice panoramic views of 1960's Philadelphia is breathtaking. The shooting of the scenes on top of an abandoned building rooftop are thrilling and well choreographed. The editing is crisp and there are some real nice dramatic camera angles. There are also a few scenes shot inside the abandoned building and the rundown interior really helps give the gritty subject matter an authentic feel.

The only problem with this episode is that a middle aged and educated social worker should not be allowing himself to be duped into a stupid and dangerous dare game by some sixteen year old punk. There is also a scene where Tod gets literally pummeled by everyone of the gang members and somehow comes out of it with only a bruise on his cheek when normally it would put anyone else into a coma or worse. It also would have been a little more compelling and satisfying had Buz been the one to take on the Sheen character during the show's climactic dare sequence instead of the Caan character.

GRADE: A-

This is another memorable episode. I remembered it as taking place in New York but it's another Philadelphia episode. What confused me is that the boys are staying with Chuck Briner,(Milt Kamen in a good performance by a guy better known as a comedian) a guy who was a mentor to Buz and many other troubled youths when Buz was growing up in New York. This brings up this subject: Herb Leonard and Stirling Silliphant also produced "Naked City", which was on for the first three years of Route 66 and used many of the same actors, writers and directors. Why did they never have a cross-over episode? They are supposed to have gotten the idea for Route 66 from a Naked City episode called "Four Sweet Corners that starred George Maharis. Why not have the boys show up in New York and interact with the Naked City characters? This episode would have been an ideal cross- over. Maybe they didn't do it because that's where they came from and the boys are looking to see what everywhere else looks like.

It starts with the three of them laughing uproariously over a story Brennan is telling them. That's the last laughter. A young woman, Marva, (Susan Silo), bursts into the apartment to tell Chuck that a local gang, the "Missiles", is planning some kind of criminal activity. Chuck goes out to talk to them and, unwisely, accepts a challenge to compete in a game with the gang's leader, Packy, (Martin Sheen in his first television appearance), involving performing dangerous tricks along the edge of a rooftop, (which is where this gang hangs out). The result is that Chuck falls to his death. The police are called in, but to Buz's frustration, can do nothing as the incident is considered an "accident". There's a long line-up scene with a police captain and lieutenant who could have been Mike Parker and Adam Flint of "Naked City".

Buz finds out what the gang was planning: to "make an example" of their former leader, Johnny, who has left the gang to work in the building trade but who has maintained a relationship with Marva, a violation of gang rules. He goes to find Johnny, (symbolically atop a building much higher than the gang has ever been), leaving Marva with Tod back at Chuck's apartment. The gang invades the apartment, beats up Tod and chases after Marva. They corner her on a rooftop but Buz and Johnny, (James Caan in his third TV credit), show up in time to stop them.

Johnny and Packy then play the rooftop game, which Johnny invented and is better at. Packy loses his nerve as the degree of difficulty mounts and then finally chickens out and it beaten up by his own gang, who values the 'guts' to play such games more than the guts Johnny showed when he left the gang to join the adult world and work at a productive job every day.

This one is directed by Elliot Silverstein, who went on to direct "Cat Ballou" and "A Man Called Horse" but whose career then petered out for reasons that are unclear. He does a great job staging the rooftop challenges. (What these guys are doing is an extreme sport now. Check out "rooftop daredevils" on YouTube. Even Johnny would chicken out before doing what those guys do.)

Note: James Rosin's book on the series erroneously identifies Chuck Briner as "Chuck Brennan".

Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but this one is laughably bad. As someone who grew up in the tough NYC neighborhood that Buzz supposedly did, I can tell you that the game of chicken along a high-rise rooftop to establish gang leadership is a screenwriter's invention that has zero connection with reality. And the idea that a middle aged social worker, in a suit and oxford shoes, would try to match the dangerous roof top moves of a kid half his age dressed in jeans and sneakers is nuts. There are only two possible interpretations for this scene. Either the social work is insane or he has a death wish.

This episode came out the same year as the movie "West Side Story," but the Broadway show had been a hit for a couple of years, and apparently taught the director everything he knows about gangs. Because only in West Side Story and nowhere in reality did a gang ever cross the street in a choreographed dance formation. I kept waiting for them to snap their fingers. (Nelson Riddle contributes an appropriately jazzy score. Kudos to the drummer for his amazing cymbal work).

Other things that bug me about his episode: In the opening scene Buz and Todd's laughter about the old neighborhood stories is way over the top. Similarly, the young female lead totally overacts in her big dramatic scene talking about how she chose one gang leader over another. In 1961 everyone seemed to be doing Method Acting. Speaking of which, a young Martin Sheen is Brandoing al over the place, while wearing a stupid haircut that no New York City tough guy would've been caught dead wearing. He looks more like an early British rocker. Or Roddy McDowell. James Caan emerges better, because he's the one cast member who doesn't overact. Interestingly, both future stars Sheen and Caan were billed below veteran character actor/comedian Milt Kamen.

There's an old saying that you should write what you know. Here we have a writer and director who know nothing about the milieu they're presenting, and it leads to one of the three or four worst episodes of this great series ever.

Memorable episode. The rooftop acrobatics on the edge of a 500-foot drop are near breath-taking. Reviewer rwint1611 is spot on— those who's-going-to-chicken-out-first sequences are minor masterpieces of staging and editing. There's just no substitute for real urban skyline as gritty backdrop. Then there's Martin Sheen, barely recognizable, doing a bravura turn as the giggly wacko gang leader. This is still early in his and James Caan's careers, but Sheen makes a lasting impression. Too bad he doesn't get higher billing, since he's is really the star. The story's mainly an excuse to get the rooftop acrobatics going. It's something about a girl (Silo) dumping Sheen for reformed Caan, and how social worker (Kamen) tries to smooth it all out. Basically, Todd and Buzz remain onlookers to the unfolding drama. Anyhow, it's the riveting visuals plus a wacko Sheen that lift this entry into the memorable. So catch it if you haven't already.

Martin Sheen in his screen debut plays the leader of a Philly gang called The Missiles in a memorably out-there, over the top performance, as M & M enter the juvenile delinquent genre in this wacky Silliphant episode.

Comedian Milt Kamen is top-billed in a serious role, playing an ex-truant officer who has taken The Missiles under his wing, to try and keep the youngsters out of trouble. But in a move invented a year earlier by Hitchcock for "Psycho", Silliphant kills off his lead character (Kamen) early in the episode in a frightening rooftop scene, as he plays a game of chicken with goofball Sheen.

The show nearly turns into a crossover episode with its sister series "Naked City", when the cops investigate Kmen's death, but soon Maharis, who Kamen helped when he was a boy, takes over and saves the day, leading to another frightening rooftop scene with superstar James Caan as the former leader of The Missiles squaring off against Sheen in a death-defying game of "Polaris" (named after the 1960 missile America used to outfit its fleet of nuclear-armed submarines).

Since Caan plays the good guy, it is Sheen's performance that wins out in the battle of terrific acting, so much so that I would love to interview Sheen today on how it was filming this particular show. Also getting a juicy role is Susan Silo as the gang groupie torn between the two (Caan and Sheen). Her acting career was a bust, but she's been a busy voice actor for five decades.

For the second week in a row, the Corvette is almost missing in action on screen, an alarming development, almost as frightening to Route 66 fans as when Maharis quit.