Although this was a pretty good episode, there were a couple of things about it that bugged me. It features Adam-12's William Boyett, as Sgt. Ken Williams, more than normal, as he is the subject of the episode's title.
We begin with a young woman walking up the steps to a house and knocking at the door, which is open by our young police, sorry, Highway Patrol, Sergeant Williams, all dressed just about to leave for work. The woman introduces herself as Vera, a friend of Ken's aunt, who she set up to meet him-meet, as in get acquainted as a possible romantic interest. Ken says he only has a couple of minutes to talk, but they wind up talking so long he phones in to report he will be late.
Unseen by the pair, someone takes his car out of his garage and is seen quite deliberately running over a man in a crosswalk. The odd thing about that scene, is that the car stopped just past the intersection, the man got out, looked at the fallen victim, then got back in the car and drove off. All the while, half a dozen people were standing, looking at the victim, and paid no attention to either the car or the driver-who was wearing a highway patrolman's uniform, or a facsimile.
Back at Ken's he is rushing out for work seconds after his car is returned to the garage with the man disappearing. After Ken leaves, Vera walks only to the curb where that same man is picking her up in a different auto and we quickly learn what's happening. The man, Paul, is seeking revenge because Ken was the cop responsible for Paul's brother being sent to prison exactly one year earlier.
Vera, apparently his girlfriend, is quite nervous about being caught and eager to get on the train to go back home. Paul insists they wait until reading about the accident in the afternoon newspapers. They report what he wanted to know-there were witnesses-so it looks like the frame up is going to work, and he and Vera head for the train station, and also arrange to have their rental car returned-picked up, they said.
All day long, Ken has been suspended once evidence pointed to him. He wears plain clothes and works with Dan talking to witnesses-none of whom are asked if they saw the driver or could identify him, weirdly-only asked about the actual accident. One saw his gray car and reported the license number, but that is all they have. We never heard about any damage to the front of Ken's car.
Ken and Dan tried to track down Vera, but found there was nobody by that name staying at the hotel where she told Ken she could be found. Dan gets the notion that someone could have taken Ken's car, run the man down, and returned the car while Vera was talking with Ken. They somehow find the locksmith who remembers making a key for one that looked exactly like the car key Ken customarily carries. (Hope you like my alliteration.) Ken knows he left his key with an attendant at a restaurant a few days ago while at a restaurant on a date (the boy gets around) and the time his keys weren't with him were exactly when the locksmith recalls copying a key for some man. He even reports seeing a red-headed woman (like Vera) in the car the man was driving, waiting outside. For reasons that escaped me, Ken asks, "Was she red haired, about 5'5"? He only said he saw her in the car, it's kind of hard to guess how tall she was. I ask, if you looked outside your office window and saw a woman standing on the street for a few seconds, could you a week later recall if she was 5'3" or 5'5" or maybe 5'7"? About all I could say was that she wasn't really tall or really short for a woman.
At the police station, they figure out who it was because the locksmith picked out the man he served as Paul's actual brother from the mug books. Ken takes one glance at the picture he pointed to and says it couldn't be him because he testified against him a year ago and he's in prison. The man says, "Well, it sure could be his brother." Now Dan immediately remembers that the man in the picture did have a brother also involved in crime. This leads them to tracking his whereabouts and finding a rent-a-car agency and learning he is returning it just in time for the 5 o'clock train.
So our guys go to the station and very, very quickly spot Vera and her "boyfriend" boarding the train. Despite the bad guys not having any real reason to run as there was no way to trace them to the car accident, Paul starts to run away from and shoot at the cops. I guess you know which side won the gun battle, so I can't spoil that.
The huge plot hole is that Vera could keep Ken talking not only long enough to be late for work, but just barely long enough for his car to be returned-she had no way of seeing it being returned, so she wouldn't know that it was. But if Ken had just more efficiently talked to her for two minutes and then said, "Look, I'd love to talk to you more but I have to get to work right now. Where can I phone you later?" he would have left in time to see his car was gone. They were leaving a lot to chance in figuring she'd be able to keep him until the car was returned.
It was also odd that nobody reported any damage to the car-which there most certainly would be. Maybe that was in a brief scene that got cut from ME-TV's airing today.
Except for that, the personal look at Ken helped this be an above-average episode, so I give it an 8. I found the trivia interesting in that the hit-and-run victim was played by the real-life husband of the woman who played Vera. It further reports that they were still happily married in 2015, a marriage that has lasted more than 60 years. There's a lot more of that in Hollywood than most people figure, because the scandal sheets rarely write about the long-time, happily-married couples.
We begin with a young woman walking up the steps to a house and knocking at the door, which is open by our young police, sorry, Highway Patrol, Sergeant Williams, all dressed just about to leave for work. The woman introduces herself as Vera, a friend of Ken's aunt, who she set up to meet him-meet, as in get acquainted as a possible romantic interest. Ken says he only has a couple of minutes to talk, but they wind up talking so long he phones in to report he will be late.
Unseen by the pair, someone takes his car out of his garage and is seen quite deliberately running over a man in a crosswalk. The odd thing about that scene, is that the car stopped just past the intersection, the man got out, looked at the fallen victim, then got back in the car and drove off. All the while, half a dozen people were standing, looking at the victim, and paid no attention to either the car or the driver-who was wearing a highway patrolman's uniform, or a facsimile.
Back at Ken's he is rushing out for work seconds after his car is returned to the garage with the man disappearing. After Ken leaves, Vera walks only to the curb where that same man is picking her up in a different auto and we quickly learn what's happening. The man, Paul, is seeking revenge because Ken was the cop responsible for Paul's brother being sent to prison exactly one year earlier.
Vera, apparently his girlfriend, is quite nervous about being caught and eager to get on the train to go back home. Paul insists they wait until reading about the accident in the afternoon newspapers. They report what he wanted to know-there were witnesses-so it looks like the frame up is going to work, and he and Vera head for the train station, and also arrange to have their rental car returned-picked up, they said.
All day long, Ken has been suspended once evidence pointed to him. He wears plain clothes and works with Dan talking to witnesses-none of whom are asked if they saw the driver or could identify him, weirdly-only asked about the actual accident. One saw his gray car and reported the license number, but that is all they have. We never heard about any damage to the front of Ken's car.
Ken and Dan tried to track down Vera, but found there was nobody by that name staying at the hotel where she told Ken she could be found. Dan gets the notion that someone could have taken Ken's car, run the man down, and returned the car while Vera was talking with Ken. They somehow find the locksmith who remembers making a key for one that looked exactly like the car key Ken customarily carries. (Hope you like my alliteration.) Ken knows he left his key with an attendant at a restaurant a few days ago while at a restaurant on a date (the boy gets around) and the time his keys weren't with him were exactly when the locksmith recalls copying a key for some man. He even reports seeing a red-headed woman (like Vera) in the car the man was driving, waiting outside. For reasons that escaped me, Ken asks, "Was she red haired, about 5'5"? He only said he saw her in the car, it's kind of hard to guess how tall she was. I ask, if you looked outside your office window and saw a woman standing on the street for a few seconds, could you a week later recall if she was 5'3" or 5'5" or maybe 5'7"? About all I could say was that she wasn't really tall or really short for a woman.
At the police station, they figure out who it was because the locksmith picked out the man he served as Paul's actual brother from the mug books. Ken takes one glance at the picture he pointed to and says it couldn't be him because he testified against him a year ago and he's in prison. The man says, "Well, it sure could be his brother." Now Dan immediately remembers that the man in the picture did have a brother also involved in crime. This leads them to tracking his whereabouts and finding a rent-a-car agency and learning he is returning it just in time for the 5 o'clock train.
So our guys go to the station and very, very quickly spot Vera and her "boyfriend" boarding the train. Despite the bad guys not having any real reason to run as there was no way to trace them to the car accident, Paul starts to run away from and shoot at the cops. I guess you know which side won the gun battle, so I can't spoil that.
The huge plot hole is that Vera could keep Ken talking not only long enough to be late for work, but just barely long enough for his car to be returned-she had no way of seeing it being returned, so she wouldn't know that it was. But if Ken had just more efficiently talked to her for two minutes and then said, "Look, I'd love to talk to you more but I have to get to work right now. Where can I phone you later?" he would have left in time to see his car was gone. They were leaving a lot to chance in figuring she'd be able to keep him until the car was returned.
It was also odd that nobody reported any damage to the car-which there most certainly would be. Maybe that was in a brief scene that got cut from ME-TV's airing today.
Except for that, the personal look at Ken helped this be an above-average episode, so I give it an 8. I found the trivia interesting in that the hit-and-run victim was played by the real-life husband of the woman who played Vera. It further reports that they were still happily married in 2015, a marriage that has lasted more than 60 years. There's a lot more of that in Hollywood than most people figure, because the scandal sheets rarely write about the long-time, happily-married couples.
