Jack Warden plays "Neil Dagget," a World War II hero who snaps in the early '60s and goes on a killing spree. This was one of Warden's best performances in a television role, and this is one of the more action-packed and shocking episodes in this series.
He plays a guy who is about at the end of his rope: no job, an alcoholic, shunned by his family and now the final threat of not being able to see his son. He gets a job interview to make himself presentable enough to convince his ex- wife that he's fit to see his kid. Finally, as the interviewer makes it ultra-plain he's just hiring him to exploit his war record - something that's happened time-after- time, "Neil" snaps and shoots him! He then shoots other people on the way out the building....and it goes on from there with a shootout scene in a hotel.
The postscript was a real puzzler: did the man get his just due after living a post- war life of family-abuse (alcoholic rages and physically-mentally abusing his wife and two kids) or are we supposed to feel sorry for him because nobody cured him of his mental problems?
This question is posed at the end of the show. Believe it or not, the cops, particularly Paul Burke's "Det. Adam Flint," plead the latter. "Flint" is upset at the family. If I had been a member of that man's family, I doubt if I would have sided with the cops on this one. Their liberal sensibilities were way off-base here.
He plays a guy who is about at the end of his rope: no job, an alcoholic, shunned by his family and now the final threat of not being able to see his son. He gets a job interview to make himself presentable enough to convince his ex- wife that he's fit to see his kid. Finally, as the interviewer makes it ultra-plain he's just hiring him to exploit his war record - something that's happened time-after- time, "Neil" snaps and shoots him! He then shoots other people on the way out the building....and it goes on from there with a shootout scene in a hotel.
The postscript was a real puzzler: did the man get his just due after living a post- war life of family-abuse (alcoholic rages and physically-mentally abusing his wife and two kids) or are we supposed to feel sorry for him because nobody cured him of his mental problems?
This question is posed at the end of the show. Believe it or not, the cops, particularly Paul Burke's "Det. Adam Flint," plead the latter. "Flint" is upset at the family. If I had been a member of that man's family, I doubt if I would have sided with the cops on this one. Their liberal sensibilities were way off-base here.