MovieChat Forums > The Untouchables (1959) Discussion > 4th Season episodes are kind of odd.

4th Season episodes are kind of odd.

posted 18 years ago by donofthedial
12 replies | jump to latest

Channel 56 here in the LA area has been runing episodes from the final season and some of them have a strange flavor.

Tonight they ran "Bird in the Hand" from 1962. Curious episode - almost seemed like it was supposed to be a spin-off for some 30s doctor series b/c the focuse was on health officials looking for deseased birds and the people they have infected.

Lots of talk and very little action. No shooting, no tough mugs, Ness and the boys are almost an afterthought.

Guess they had run out of ideas?

[–] joehrobertsjr 18 years ago

The show's content got watered down considerably in its final season mostly due to protests from a variety of groups. Conservatives hated the show because they felt it was too violent while liberals hated it because they felt it demeaned and defamed certain ethnic groups (primarily Italians). As a result, the show's violence quotient was reduced quite a bit for season four and only real life gangsters had Italian surnames. This led to some strange names such as Rudy Portuguese, Parrot Krebs, and Vince "the Moor" Tunis.

Five episode were basically pilots for possible spin-off series. Bird in the Hand (the episode you mentioned) and Jake Dance were pilots for a series which was to have been entitled "White Knights" featuring Dane Clark and John Gabriel as the Drs. Garr and Gifford characters seen in these episodes. "Elegy" and "Search for a Dead Man" which both featured Special Guest Star Barbara Stanwyck were pilots for a possible spin-off featuring Ms. Stanwyck which was to have been entitled "The Seekers." Lastly, "The Floyd Gibbons Story" was a pilot for a possible spin-off featuring Scott Brady as reporter Floyd Gibbons. A sixth episode, "Junk Man", which featured Pat Hingle as an undercover agent from the Bureau of Narcotics might have also been a pilot for a spin-off.

Despite the watered down content in season four there are a few episodes which are good and have the flavor of The Untouchables' first three seasons. Check out A Fist of Five, Globe of Death, Snowball, The Jazz Man, The Night They Shot Santa Claus, and the aforementioned Junk Man. All are good episodes.

[–] donofthedial 18 years ago

I had forgotten about the 'controversy' over the show near the end.

Hey - did I call it or what? That Dane Clark episode was so much a spin off type of thing.

i have not seen the other episodes you mentioned except "Jake Dance" and that one didn't strike me one way or another except as a history lesson.

I'll be looking for whatever other shows channel 56 trots out.

[–] donofthedial 18 years ago

"Search for a Dead Man" special Guest Star Barbara Stanwyck
-----------------------------------------------------------

They ran this one tonight. Pretty bad.

[–] rwsmith29456 16 years ago

I don't know if the show actually 'jumped the shark' but after 3 seasons, quality scripts about Feds were becoming scarce. I did see some really dubious plots that made me think...'Untouchables?'

[–] dramaticpause 17 years ago

The Network promised a new kind of Untouchables and what we got was some ugly mishmash of 60s bad taste television. It always struck me as odd that they wanted to tone down the violence in the 4th Season, but in the premiere episode they gun down Santa Claus (and in such an ugly, poorly edited fashion, too.)

Some of these fourth season episodes are an insult, and even Stack admitted in interviews that only for the first few years was the show really something to be proud of. The writing, characters, and the MUSIC all were terrifically handicapped in its final season.

A large portion of the final season are all bad episodes; try Butchers Boy or Come and Kill Me (the first and only episode written by a woman oddly enough.)

Hearing the "improved" jazzy 'Untouchables' theme chime in everytime Ness and company did something 'Untouchable-ly' makes my skin crawl. This wasn't Batman--it was The Untouchables! Even Winchell's narrations were sedated. Everything that made the show work was turned upside down. The Untouchables was not a cute cop, guest star spinoff sitcom that they tried to turn it into, it was black and white and bloody film noir.

[–] msgene61 16 years ago

I just saw your post - sorry, I practically said the same thing in mine. Sorry - didn't mean to hijack your thread. But I agree with you. That bird one was on the other night. Before that, it was Barbara Stanwyck as a tough female investigator looking for missing persons.

My feeling is that the show was under fire from the Italian League and for the violence and they were looking to spin off another show. Thank God they didn't make it.

[–] pc-privconfounder 11 years ago

"Blues for a Gone Goose" is one other fourth season ep worth catching.

[–] telegonus 11 years ago

I'm just beginning to watch The Untouchables season 4 on MeTV, and thus far I'm not disappointed. The downsides: less Winchell narration,--I love the guy's voice; less violence; a ludicrous "de-ethnicizing" of the bad guys, are obvious. On the other hand, some of the character studies are quite good, better than in the first three seasons, due to the toned down violence.

The show still had legs. That they altered the opening and closing music doesn't particularly bother me. The original was more hard-driving, like a sledgehammer; effective, but primitive and melodramatic. There have been some good stories thus far, and some exploration of the characters of the Untouchables deal with. I'm looking forward to more episodes. If the series hadn't been so controversial it might have morphed into a different kind of show, become more thoughtful, with less shoot-'em ups.

[–] donofthedial 11 years ago

Wow. A 7 y/o thread comes back to life. I had to stop and remember exactly what we were talking about and to even remember the episode. No additional thoughts, though. :/)

[–] george-695-323782 11 years ago

I am also enjoying season 4. The show was getting too predictable by the end of season 3.

The best thing about season 4 is they started the story right at the start. For me it was very annoying that some of the shows of this period (such as "The Fugitive" and "The Outer Limits") usually showed a preview scene at the start. When I play a DVD I jump past this. I don't want to know what is going to happen until it happens even if i have seen it before.

Maybe the music wasn't as good and they picked some weird poses when introducing the stars but I like the thing with the book at the start.

[–] telegonus 11 years ago

I also like the opening book at the beginning of the fourth season's episodes.

Yes, the final season is getting predictable, though The Untouchables wasn't a show with many big surprises to start with. Its subject matter and Prohibition time frame made it unique. Last night's episode with Pat Hingle was decent, and Hingle really hooked me. Excellent performance, and the issue of whether he'd survive or get outed by the Mob guys drew me in emotionally.

Tonight's episode was sub-par. I could see the ending coming in the first act, and I've always found J.D. Cannon a cold, alienating, humorless actor, thus I didn't give a rat's arse whether he survived. What kept me watching were the other two guest stars, Peter Whitney and Salome Jens. Neither's talents were stretched by the material they were given, but they were good at what they did.

[–] telegonus 11 years ago

It seems that shows like The Untouchables,--is high concept the right term to describe them?--tend to run out of ideas sooner or later. It was the same with The Fugitive: How long could Richard Kimble run? Or, more to the point, how long could Kimble run and sustain the viewer's interest? They had so many variations on so many themes at their disposal. Even the great and mighty Star Trek could have the Enterprise go to just so many planets to meet folks just like us,--but they live underground, but their heads are screwed on backwards, but they're stuck in the 14th century, but they've under the thumb of a figure just like Napoleon (or Mussolini, or Stalin); or they can levitate, read minds, or they've abolished war, or they only go to war, or they fight with swords or sticks or fly around in blimps. The possibilities were, I suppose, endless, far greater than what was available to the more limited in time frame Untouchables, but it's probably just as well it didn't go on for several more seasons, the way Mission: Impossible did. It's sad to see a good show jump the shark. Fortunately, The Untouchables, on the cusp of the shark jump, was shut down before that happened.