Reviews

I didn't think the daughter Laurie Mock did such a bad acting job. Although it wasn't Oscar winning performance either. She did have a good confronting her father scene when she found out he hired the gunfighter. And the climax where she was pleading for her boyfriends life wasn't bad either.

In fact Mock did a better acting performance than Amanda Blake did. And Blake has a star billing. For Blake's only appearance she just sat at the table as Ken Curtis delivered his usual whimsical tale and she looked like she was thinking 'Gosh I just sit here looking annoyed for a couple minutes and I get a big paycheck.' Then when Avery the gunslinger walks into the bar eveybody at the table looks stunned and Blake turns to Matt and delivers her only line, "Aint that boy we never met?" (As far as I can tell) And for me her line doesn't even make sense!

In response to another reviewer commenting about Babette's father spanking an adult woman, how do you know she was an adult? I re-watched the episode and although her age was never specified I believe she was intended to be a a teenager around 15 or 16 years old. Throughout the episode she is refereed to as a girl and she is even called a 'young lady' by McHale. McHale even responds to her father calling her a shy little flower by saying, "Sir, the flower appears to have bloomed." Meaning she is a maturing teen but not yet a woman.

Also her young age explains why she acts so childish and why she wants to just play around and chase boys or young men. Also explains why Parker runs away from her. She's a minor and Parker is even shy around adult women from previous episodes.

Mind you the actress who played Babette was really 21 years old at the time, but in the 1960s, television productions frequently hired women several years older to play a young teen. Probably so they wouldn't have to give her time off and give her required school lessons.

I like how some of these Egyptian pyramid digs work out so neatly and exciting for the television cameras. Take for example this episode's archaeological dig in the pyramid of Sahure. They started off by explaining that the interior had suffered a stone collapse from the roof in the past and it was very dangerous. One wrong move and they could be buried by tones of stone. Never the less in short time they have built a supporting wall. Now they are looking for the burial chamber which might be protected from looters. They also mention that the chamber had never been found before this current expedition season, which we might assume is in the year 2022 or 2021. Well they soon find what appears to be a chamber with smoothed walls, and a few minutes later a worker finds an unusual black broken rock which the archaeologist examines with great excitement and concludes since the pyramid is mostly built out of sandstone this black rock is basalt broken from the king's sarcophagus! Wow! What a great find? But wait a minute. Something to me sounds familiar. Doing some further research, history records that that basalt piece was actually found by the archaeologist John Shae Perring in the year 1838. He thought it came from the sarcophagus and no other section of the burial chamber has ever been found since. Well, you gotta make documentaries entertaining to watch, or people just won't watch, eh.

I have an educated guess that this episode title may be "Blackout". I have just finished watching an old VHS recording of this TV episode, and although the TV station edited out the title and jumped right into the guest star credits (Ed Asner received top billing), but SPOILER ALERT, a city wide power blackout is an intricate plot component with the hit men's attempted mobster hit. That makes more sense since I don't see anything was really FAKE concerning the story line.

Fairly boring episode, but one thing they got right. In this age of PC multiculturalism and anti racism, what form would you think an invading conquering alien civilization would take to disguise as human? True to form of old 1950's sci fi movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Day the Earth Stood Still, the invading aliens were foiled again by meeting up with blue eyed blonde American families! Well, at least this time they hired a host who is African American.