This episode was buried on the night AFTER Christmas, and as far as I know was only rerun once (in a chopped-down version for CBS Late Night in December 1983). But it's close to, if not THE best episode of the whole series. Dennis Weaver directs with far more style and flair than any other director (besides this show, he also did a few "Gunsmokes" while playing Chester and those are highly praised; I wonder why he didn't do more). I don't know if he and Glen A. Larson (who had written the first three "Alamo" episodes) rewrote the script without credit, but it plays 10 times better than most any Michael Sloan teleplay. The edge-of-the-chair interest goes throughout the episode with some marvelous camera angles (check one in particular where McCloud comes down a hospital hallway, seen through a hole in the window, starting in full frame and gradually diminishing until only his eye is seen). There is a lot of humor in this show as well. The only real complaint I have is that MANY bit players (several cops, a whole hospital ward of kids, a TV news reporter) aren't in the credits at all. This deserved to run on, say, December 12 or 19 and get a far larger audience.
2 Reviews
POSSIBLY THE STUPIDEST EPISODE OF THIS STUPID SERIES
rms125a23 March 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Horrible, repugnant, vile ... I already knew McCloud is an incredibly stupid and thoroughly unconvincing police procedural with the moronic premise that McCloud, a deputy who looks and sounds like a Texas Ranger, somehow gets transferred to the New York Police Department (NYPD), most of the other "police officers" look and sound like they've never been anywhere New York in their entire lives. I knew that but there was nothing else to watch so I endured it. Three druggies bust into a hospital, engage in various shootouts and hold a children's ward hostage but are largely ignored and the hospital goes on as though nothing were going on.
In another subplot a gregarious Santa Claus holds up at gunpoint people coming to contribute money. One of the marks stabs him (the only part of the show I enjoyed) and he goes to the same hospital mentioned above and is entirely ignored by doctors and nurses for reasons which have nothing to do with the anarchy in the other wing of the hospital.
In another moronic subplot, a psychotic stalker who refuses to give his name waits for McCloud in the police precinct, misbehaving and throwing paper airplanes at cops and yet he neither gets his butt kicked nor thrown into the slammer.
There was also something going on involving a character played by Linda Gray which was so boring I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to what was happening there and still don't know or care.
McCloud was one of the stupidest series of all times with the most annoying and repugnant characters and guests. Only the beautiful Diana Muldaur (born in Brooklyn yet somehow not sounding at all New Yorkerish, and I am from Brooklyn, so I know whereof I speak), wasted as McCloud's love interest, is almost always appealing. It is also fascinating to observe glimpses of 1970s New York City, which was a bubbling cauldron of social woes but now seems (to this viewer anyway who lived through it) far more winningly simple and appealing than the cookie cutter gleaming dystopian megalopolis which has taken its place.
In another subplot a gregarious Santa Claus holds up at gunpoint people coming to contribute money. One of the marks stabs him (the only part of the show I enjoyed) and he goes to the same hospital mentioned above and is entirely ignored by doctors and nurses for reasons which have nothing to do with the anarchy in the other wing of the hospital.
In another moronic subplot, a psychotic stalker who refuses to give his name waits for McCloud in the police precinct, misbehaving and throwing paper airplanes at cops and yet he neither gets his butt kicked nor thrown into the slammer.
There was also something going on involving a character played by Linda Gray which was so boring I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to what was happening there and still don't know or care.
McCloud was one of the stupidest series of all times with the most annoying and repugnant characters and guests. Only the beautiful Diana Muldaur (born in Brooklyn yet somehow not sounding at all New Yorkerish, and I am from Brooklyn, so I know whereof I speak), wasted as McCloud's love interest, is almost always appealing. It is also fascinating to observe glimpses of 1970s New York City, which was a bubbling cauldron of social woes but now seems (to this viewer anyway who lived through it) far more winningly simple and appealing than the cookie cutter gleaming dystopian megalopolis which has taken its place.
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