User Reviews

My nephew started as an NYPD officer on New Year's Eve, but I he didn't make as spectacular a debut as Mark Shera did on his first day on the job.

Shera who was looking to make a call to his precinct because he was running late in those days before cellphones and believe me trying to find a working public phone in New York City could be a lifetime quest happens to interrupt a mob hit. He makes a lot of rookie mistakes, but his sergeant from the Academy David Doyle believes in him and after awhile so does Lt. Kojak.

They have to because this is looking like the opening shots in a turf war for territory on the Lower East Side. This is an episode where Telly Savalas shows himself to be a master at psychological warfare with both heads of the two factions. Plays them off beautifully against each other.

You have to see it to believe it.

This is an especially interesting episode of one of the great police dramas of the 1970's, "Kojak", starring the dynamic and magnetic Telly Savalas as Lt. Theo Kojak. Along with his usual co-stars, Mr. Savalas is given excellent support by several '70's TV regulars: David Doyle (soon to be John Bosley on "Charlies's Angels), Mark Shera (soon to be Jedediah Romano "J. R." Jones on another favorite detective series, "Barnaby Jones"), and Norman Burton, a supporting actor on many programs of the decade. I especially enjoyed Norman Burton's portrayal of "Fisher", the head of one of two gangs that are seeming to struggle over the usual turf issues. He portrays the role with the usual smugness and arrogance you would expect, but with a touch of humor that is especially evident in a rooftop scene with Telly Savalas and David Doyle, as they begin to work on him to rat on the Laggo gang. There's a neat twist to the story that I will not reveal here. This is an excellent episode of a series that has stood the test of time.