User Reviews

This is an odd episode. Benno Fisk (Hershell Bernardi) is carrying money for his gangster brother-in-law, Arnie Kurtz (Carroll O'Connor)...against Arnie's better judgment. Well, it turns out Benno isn't up to the task...though I wouldn't exactly blame him. While aboard a train bound for New York, he contracts Parrot Fever (there is such a thing*?!) and becomes goofy with high fever. Dr. Garr (Dane Clark) is a government official who is trying to locate Benno and anyone else with the infection and stop them from spreading it to others. And, with Benno THIS sick...what about the bag of money he's carrying?! I'm sure Arnie would like to know!

Much of the episode actually is told in parallel--with Ness and his men looking for Arnie and a Health Department worker trying to find him as well since the Parrot Fever might have come from his wife's birds. It's a very unusual sort of premise but interesting. It's also a bit sad towards the end, as the viewer doesn't dislike Benno... Well worth your time.

*I can only assume that this is similar or the same as the Bird Flu we've been hearing about on the news. Reports from Asia have been a bit alarming over the last few years...and maybe it's not so new after all.

Eliot Ness's elite squad of Prohibtion agents and the US Public Health Service join forces in this episode of The Untouchables. An unusual combination of government agencies, but necessary in this case.

Carroll O'Connor plays a rising man in the rackets and he's looking to make some big connections with some New York wise guys. His wife happens to love birds and she brings home from a trip abroad some nice singing parakeets.

Trouble is these parakeets are diseased and carry with them parrot fever which is nasty and occasionally fatal. Nan Martin as the wife gets it herself and passes it on to her brother Herschel Bernardi who's a low level errand boy for O'Connor who only keeps him around as a favor to the missus.

Dane Clark also guest stars as a doctor who traces the path of disease and also traces the path of a big payoff at the same time. Harvey Korman has a small bit in this episode long before he became a comedy legend.

Even The Untouchables can't do it alone at times.

As many TV series in the sixties and even seventies, you find an episode inspired by Elia Kazan's PANIC IN THE STREETS, about a man infected without knowing it and loose in the city. It is weird to see this in a gangster scheme series.

This episode is clearly a promotional episode for a new series that never aired. The major problem with this, is the complete unlikeability of the two major stars. Dane Clark and John Gabriel are the two doctors starring in the episode, and neither one of them is remotely likeable. Unlikable characters is the fastest way to make sure your show is cancelled and this episode accomplish this in spades.

I could barely sit through the episode even though the untouchables make an appearance. This episode, without The untouchables, would be the most unwatchable thing I have ever seen in my entire life, and I've seen the Gilligan's island movie