The Manhole

Starting with the episode's title, this "Naked City" is a particularly bleak tale, and one that departs from the show's usual format in that the work of the police, including our heroes Franciscus and McIntire, is nearly absent.

Instead we have almost an audition starring George Maharis for "Route 66" (in fact he made a subsequent episode that was a pilot for same) as a gang leader who is embittered against his dad (Will Kuluva) who works Art Carney-like down in Manhattan's sewers.

Maharis demonstrates his bad boy/looking for a fight mode of Buz in "Route 66" in a violent scene fighting with pool cues against a fellow gang member in a billiards hall, but is otherwise a dead serious character here. Silliphant's script has the gang moving up from minor heists to a big-deal robbery of jewel couriers, with Maharis masterminding their escape route through, you guessed it, Manhattan's sewers. Kuluva foils this by personally going down under and getting his boy to give up. The police are hardly involved here, other than their sketch artist whose drawing of Maharis alerts Kuluva to his kid's bad behavior.