TV Recap: Mod Squad ep 1, “Teeth of the Barracuda”


I think I missed a few weeks on my TV recaps. Well, tonight’s is a good one — Mod Squad’s first episode. Set in 1968 (though the novel on which it is based was set in the 50s), Mod Squad follows a mod, a cool cat and a hippie chick as they narc on their friends for Johnny Law. Richard Pryor and a very young Harrison Ford have cameos.
It’s a very sanitized version of the 60s, and it reassured viewers that beneath the beads and day-glo, kids of the so-called counterculture revolution were just good plain folks who would grow up to become Enron executives and investment bankers.
The people who ruined today’s world were the rebellious kids of the 60s. Maybe they should have been concerned?
While writing this, I wondered how this show escaped being turned into a movie. Turns out it WAS — in 1999. Who knew?
Click through for all the thrilling hippie action!

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TV Recap: Gilligan’s Island (pilot episode)

Aside from the famous theme song which tells the story, the American television audience of 1964 never saw the events that drove the ill-fated crew and passengers away from civilization and onto an uncharted densely jungled desert isle. The pilot episode, “Marooned”, tells the whole story, but that’s been lost to the desert sands of … Read more