Big, hulking Leo Gordon was a bad guy "to the bone". He terrorized, beat up and generally put the fear of God into scores of Hollywood's "toughest" screen heroes over the years. And it came naturally to him--he was an ex-convict who spent time in San Quentin Prison for armed robbery and once took several bullets in a shootout with police, He turned his life around, though, and eventually became one of the most familiar and in-demand villains in the business. He also turned into a first-rate writer, with several screenplays and a lot of TV series scripts to his credit. This episode of "Adam-12" was one of them--he wrote more than 20 altogether--and it's a good one.
Gordon wrote himself a good part, too, as a retiree who is a police "buff" who turns his fascination with police work into a hobby, and winds up making a nuisance of himself and actually putting himself and others in danger by showing up at the scene of crimes--he has a police scanner in his car--and inserting himself into Reed's and Malloy's cases.
The second story is about a woman who pulls the "palm switch" at jewelry stores, surreptitiously stealing expensive jewelry and replacing them with cheap copies. A young and startlingly beautiful Lindsay Wagner--this was her first TV role--plays a newly hired jewelry-store clerk who is a victim of the palm switch.
The stories move along quite well, thanks to veteran director James Nielsen, with none of the choppiness that often affected this series. Gordon does a good job of playing not a villain, per se, but a man with too much time and money on his hands who doesn't realize that he's doing more harm than good, and Wagner is charming as the nervous and somewhat timid clerk who's afraid of losing her job.
All in all, a very creditable episode.
Gordon wrote himself a good part, too, as a retiree who is a police "buff" who turns his fascination with police work into a hobby, and winds up making a nuisance of himself and actually putting himself and others in danger by showing up at the scene of crimes--he has a police scanner in his car--and inserting himself into Reed's and Malloy's cases.
The second story is about a woman who pulls the "palm switch" at jewelry stores, surreptitiously stealing expensive jewelry and replacing them with cheap copies. A young and startlingly beautiful Lindsay Wagner--this was her first TV role--plays a newly hired jewelry-store clerk who is a victim of the palm switch.
The stories move along quite well, thanks to veteran director James Nielsen, with none of the choppiness that often affected this series. Gordon does a good job of playing not a villain, per se, but a man with too much time and money on his hands who doesn't realize that he's doing more harm than good, and Wagner is charming as the nervous and somewhat timid clerk who's afraid of losing her job.
All in all, a very creditable episode.
