This episode does start off quite slowly. A woman claiming to be acting on behalf of her sister, wants to retrieve some jewels that the sister's ex-lover, a married stockbroker, keeps in a safe. In exchange for doing the job, she will let the safe-cracker, Sam, keep all the remaining securities kept inside - worth $100k.
Sam is reluctant to take Cara on the job, a mansion set in the leafy environs of a university campus on Staten Island. So the pair of them decide to dress up as a pair of students in order to blend in & avoid suspicion. They opt to take every precaution possible including making sure they won't be caught carrying a wallet with any incriminating ID.
The episode's strong point in my opinion is that it plays against expectation. I thought that Cara was possibly using Sam as a smokescreen in order perhaps to commit a murder (revenge on her ex-lover, or two lovers in on a murder plot to kill the wife etc.).
The episode eschews this for a much more humorous storyline where the couple perform the burglary and have to endure a few narrow scrapes such as not trying to arouse the suspicion of the stockbroker's gardener.
I thought the ending had more in common with an Ealing Comedy. As Sam & Cara desperately try not to arouse the suspicion of a local policeman, they sit down & try to act like a pair of impecunious students enjoying a coffee. And therein lies the twist. It's perhaps more of a sleight of hand - the setting of a university campus, the lack of ID & wallets - but Sam & Cara's successful venture encounters the one random factor (happenstance) that neither envisaged occurring. There's an element of farce as they watch in agony as their loot - literally - is taken away from them.
The late Eddie Albert plays Sam with a lugubrious manner, Roxanne Hart is good, too, as the over eager Cara, whilst Terry Quinn makes a cameo as a lothario policeman whose intervention undoes everything.
Sam is reluctant to take Cara on the job, a mansion set in the leafy environs of a university campus on Staten Island. So the pair of them decide to dress up as a pair of students in order to blend in & avoid suspicion. They opt to take every precaution possible including making sure they won't be caught carrying a wallet with any incriminating ID.
The episode's strong point in my opinion is that it plays against expectation. I thought that Cara was possibly using Sam as a smokescreen in order perhaps to commit a murder (revenge on her ex-lover, or two lovers in on a murder plot to kill the wife etc.).
The episode eschews this for a much more humorous storyline where the couple perform the burglary and have to endure a few narrow scrapes such as not trying to arouse the suspicion of the stockbroker's gardener.
I thought the ending had more in common with an Ealing Comedy. As Sam & Cara desperately try not to arouse the suspicion of a local policeman, they sit down & try to act like a pair of impecunious students enjoying a coffee. And therein lies the twist. It's perhaps more of a sleight of hand - the setting of a university campus, the lack of ID & wallets - but Sam & Cara's successful venture encounters the one random factor (happenstance) that neither envisaged occurring. There's an element of farce as they watch in agony as their loot - literally - is taken away from them.
The late Eddie Albert plays Sam with a lugubrious manner, Roxanne Hart is good, too, as the over eager Cara, whilst Terry Quinn makes a cameo as a lothario policeman whose intervention undoes everything.
