Zacharek didn't really go into it, but one of the things I love about it is how the plots of the shows were really original, often to the point of being almost meta. Like the episode where the just sat in a cave and looked at candles. (Uh, as far as I can remember.)

It really is a great series.

What struck me most is how good-natured and gentle-spirited the show is, and how it strives for at least some degree of open-mindedness, even though it made its debut at a time when the generation gap was at its widest.

That's what it was like back before the War on Drugs really began. Back then the worst thing you could expect from your high school dealer was a bad haircut.

There were no SWAT teams. There was no gangster rap. Nobody carried Glocks to school back then.

There has been an escalating arms race since Nixon first announced his war. And now they've gone past Glocks and are up to AK-47s, I'm reading in the news.

"The Mod Squad" tells it like it was before the big escalation.

So of course it feels strangely sweet and open-minded to people today who belong to Generation Glock, soon to be followed by Generation AK-47.

The kids in the Mod Squad may have reflected the gentler side of the counter-culture movement, but, at bottom, they were narcs, and I think that's why I can't remember anyone watching the show when it first came out. The idea that the hippie next to you at the protest or rock festival might be an FBI informant was brought home to me fairly early when a houseful of pot-smoking friends was busted by just such a narc. (How easy it is to fall back into that kind of parlance!) I think each spent a year in jail; now, I suppose, they'd throw away the key. So I guess it depends on your persepective. Pretty they may be, but I still have a hard time seeing the Mod Squad kids as "sweet."

American TV wasn't ready for what the young generation was really like. The idea of drafting young "troubled" kids to become undercover cops was a cute series concept, but essentially phony. The "hip" music in the series was more like Dave Grusin jazz. The criminals were the same old creeps - not of the young generation - as in every other crime series.

I believe Clarence Williams III is the only one who had a continuing career. Peggy Lipton worked a little in shows like Twin Peaks, but nothing spectacular. Williams, on the other hand, got to play comedy later on; the out-of-time Black Panther radical in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (with Lipton, I believe, doing an uncredited cameo as his wife) and as Satan in disguise as a dope-smoking undertaker in Spike Lee's Tales from the Hood. Both of those are worth far more than the entire collection of Mod Squad episodes.

a guilty pleasure I'd probably watch again if anyone reran it (that it embarrasses Johnny Depp only makes it better).

Unlike Love, American Style, The Mod Squad was never rerun when I was growing up in the 70's, so I have no nostalgia for it. I've never seen an episode and don't want to pay to catch any now.

>Williams, on the other hand, got to play comedy later on; the out-of-time Black Panther radical in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (with Lipton, I believe, doing an uncredited cameo as his wife) and as Satan in disguise as a dope-smoking undertaker in Spike Lee's Tales from the Hood.<

Oh, he is a _hoot_ in TFTH. It's a pretty good movie on its own, but Williams is worth the price of admission...

"This ain't no funeral home! It ain't the Terror Dome, neither! Welcome to Hell, motherfuckers!" ;)

Yeah I liked it when I was a kid until I realized that the premise was pure evil.

Fuckin Narcs.

On the other hand, mmmm Peggy Lipton.

Peggy Lipton in a catsuit... goodtimes... of course they were a bunch of fucking phoney-baloney narcs working for that square motherfucker Danny Thomas... but... Peggy Lipton in a catsuit... damn! Seriously, it was the best thing to happen to the catsuit since Julie Newmar...

Of course, an unstated but popular reason why a lot of us Boomers (both "square" and "hip") watched the show was to figure out clues as to who was pairing up with whom after the credits ran out. (Something tells me there are a lot of fan-fiction sites out there expounding on this theme...)

"Mad" may have had the last word: The final panels in its parody of the show had Julie explaining that the "romantic interest" in the show was "between those two guys..."

BTW Clarence Williams' most notable post-MS role was as the dad in "Purple Rain."

Freddie--

I won't swear to it, but the episode you refer to, where our trio of heroes sit in a cave staring at candles, might have been a late one. For reasons I can't remember (I've only seen the episode once, first run) they're stranded out in the middle of some southwestern nowhere and their only hope for aid is from an older gent living alone out in the middle of that nowhere. The hitch is, he's grumpy and deeply resentful of young people like them. His own son died in the war, and he has no use for kids who protest against war and enjoy the privileges his son died for. He decides, like a good TV psychotic, to take it out on good ol' Pete, Julie and Linc. As a result, to my recollection, this forces our heroes to hide out in a cave for a fair bit. And though P, J & L ultimately win the day, they're taken aback by a final revelation that call their own perceptions of the older generation into question.

One feature of this episode that struck me as a bit backward even then was Linc, when confronted by the older gent's keen lack of sympathy for their plight, pleads "We have a girl with us!" Desperate times call for desperate words, I suppose, and Linc no doubt only hoped to touch a soft spot in the fellow, but it still sounded strangely out of character.