Route 66 (TV Series) Ever Ride the Waves in Oklahoma? (1962) User Reviews

Live & Let Live

[AudioFileZ · 7/10 · 29 February 2012]

This isn't one of the finer episodes I'll concede, but it is worth watching as it is one of the installments with George Maharris front and center. The story starts out with Tod and Buz giving a surfer a ride to a stretch of California beach where he is going to challenge "the king" who he calls a "tired tuna". In a surfing match to see who can "shoot the pier" best the young challenger is killed and Buz immediately is torn by the locals lack of concern over the "kids" demise. He sets out to make Hob, the king, feel remorse and fall in the process. Though the whole idea of Buz as a surfer seems far-fetched, that is exactly the turn taken as he sees no other way to defeat the king except by taking him down at his own game. Soon realizing he can't out surf a pro, he decides to embarrass Hob instead. After the requisite brawl Buz realizes he is trying to impose his norms on everyone else and that really isn't a reasonable solution. Buz concedes to Hob that he has the right to live his life as he sees fit, but, personally, he still needs to prove to himself he isn't afraid to surf the pier.

This episode is on the surface slight and bit ridiculous, but it provides Maharris a palate which he can spread his fine melodramatic acting skills as only he can do with the character of Buz. Definitely not a must see, but one of the episodes for Maharris on his way out of the series to take the lead. Even so, with reservations mentioned, Route 66 is always memorable for fantastic location filming.

10/12/62 "Ever Ride the Waves In Oklahoma?"

[schappe1 · 14 July 2015]

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. But why is it usually something stupid?

This was probably the first episode filmed for Season 3. Buz refers to his time in the hospital and says that part of his cure was getting as much sun as he could at the beach. This gives us an explanation for how much he knows about surfers, their mores and their lingo. They are driving along the beach when they pick up a hitch-hiker with a surfboard who says he's on his way to challenge the King of the beach, (Jeremy Slate), whose big trick is surfing his way through a row of pilings for a highly elevated pier, (it looks like a bridge to nowhere). The challenger tries it and it killed. Slate shows no grief and doesn't even deign to meet with the kid's family, which angers Buz so much he hounds the guy, trying to get him to show emotion. (It's amazing Slate picked up a full paycheck for playing such a vapid character.)

Buz humiliates him by taking Tod and their beach bunny girlfriends to the restaurant where the guy is a waiter: he had told his friends that he was independently wealthy and had rejected the workaday world. This produces a fight and Buz beats the surfer up in a scene that reminded me, somehow, of the fight between Robert Cohn and the young bullfighter, Romero, in Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" in that Buz wins the fight over the surfer but it means nothing because that wasn't his skill anyway. It makes the surfer a sympathetic figure and causes everyone to be disgusted with Buz, (even Tod)

One of the girls explains that the only way to really get to "Hob", (Slate) is to duplicate his feat of "shooting the pier" so he won't be the only one who has done it any more. He trains for two weeks, (no sign of a job for Buz or Tod), and finally tries it- and crashes. He's lucky he didn't break his neck like the kid at the beginning. He gives up on the quest but spends the night dreaming of that pier. He gets up early in the morning while Tod still sleeps, grabs his board and, with no one watching but Hod, who sleeps on the beach, he successfully shoots the pier and Tod picks him up as they head north, (for their encounter with David Janssen).

As they drive away, they have this exchange: Buz Murdock: "They make a pretty good map for cars don't they? But what do they make for guys like me who turn left instead of right?" Tod Stiles: "We have to know we're lost before we can find ourselves Buz. That sort of map you make up as you go along."

Pure Poetry

[Phillim212 · 10/10 · 5 March 2022]

Sterling Silliphant's teleplay for this episode soars with the angels. Young men pursuing a vision of freedom and authenticity, and the other young men who are jealous of them, but then envy them, and the young women who love them and study them to learn who they might capture them, Innovative stuff for 1962. "Look for me under the sun -- I'll be there . . ."

Beach Blanket Beatnik

[TheFearmakers · 6/10 · 3 June 2023]

Sad as we enter Buz's last season, and he's as dramatic as ever, maybe more than ever if you don't count the time he helped Robert Duvall come down off heroin...

This episode in Huntington Beach, California showcases another young actor who'd become a legend, Harrison Ford, who turns up at a party scene to protect the king surfer who doesn't care that a younger surfer died trying to surf through the pier to beat his record (same thing happened in the same years' SURF PARTY)...

It's a rather thin premise, and unrealistic as Buz has ten days to not only learn how to surf, but to beat a championship surfer... Also, while this is a good show, there's too many overlong scenes of Actor's Workshop dialogue that goes on forever, and that frankly is both melodramatic and pretentious and hardly moves the plot forward... Here it's a bunch of monologues about life and death...

This quick lesson of becoming a pro surfer in a week might be a bigger stretch than the mermaid episode after dullard Glenn Corbett replaced Maharis...

Why, oh why do some people leave things they're great at and that makes those things better than without them? Why George? Why McClean Stevensn? Why Mick Taylor? Why Jackie Martling? Why.... the list goes on an on... talented people should just stay put and, to use a surfing term, ride it out.

Where's Gidget

[dougdoepke · 13 June 2017]

No need to recap the plot. The early 60's was high tide for beach bunny hedonism, what with Gidget wiggling her way across Malibu sands and surfers providing their own telegenic action. So it's not surprising that a surfer themed episode would turn up on R66. I haven't much to add to the previous two fine reviews except a couple of observations. On the whole, the premise of Buz getting really carried away by Hob's insensitivity is not very convincing. On the other hand, his desire to "shoot the pier" certainly combines with his competitive spirit. Yet his fierce obsession with Hob is under-motivated, appearing little more than a plot contrivance. As a result the storyline is undercut despite the script's occasional poetic insights, a series trademark. Also, for a cast headliner, Slate hasn't much to do except stand around, expressionless. Looks like he really was an accomplished surfer (IMDB), picking up an easy payday here as a king wave-rider. Then too, Buz's surfing scenes are well handled since the series likely didn't take chances with one of their co-stars. To me, it's a lesser episode mainly because of the premise, and despite the compelling visuals, both watery and curvaceous.