The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo S1 E7: Run for the Money Part III

Originally aired on November 13, 1979
Directed by Bruce Bilson
Story by Glen A. Larson and Sidney Ellis and Robert L. McCullough and Frank Lupo and John Peyser
Teleplay by Michael Sloan and Sidney Ellis and Frank Lupo and Robert L. McCullough

And the conclusion to this massive adventure arrives!

Hi, I'm the dad who gets kidnapped by the main jerk

That's me and the main jerk. I've been kidnapped!

The blonde croupier decides to go good. But, her dad is kidnapped by the main jerk. The main jerk is in a boat on a lake in the middle of the desert. He demands that Blondie and B.J., with Bear, bring him all the casino heist money. And, in true farce fashion, every single main cast member spends much of the episode speeding towards the boat. They all get involved in chicanery with broken down cars, nasty bikers led by Richard Moll and just plain racing against time. Will these huge assembly of cops and good guys be able to take down the bad guy and his handful of men on a yacht?

Probably. And it's a lot of fun.

 Don't trust this taxi guy

Hello! I'm on The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo

If episode one was about introducing everyone and setting up the Scheme (robbing the casino)...  and episode two is everyone acting in character trying to solve the Scheme...  episode three is a low budget, in the desert, variation of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. As mentioned, it's everyone involved in their Own Private Shenanigans. It's too bad that Lobo won't be heading over to the world of Mr. McKay again because they work well together.

Fun with Wiley and The Fox

I wonder now if lifting Lobo out of B.J. and the Bear hurt everyone involved. As I mentioned in previous reviews, much of the Lobo slapstick isn't terribly funny. It can be charming but it's never laugh out loud funny. And, when Lobo left, the producers on B.J. and the Bear immediately brought on two other groups of cops and a bunch of mean truckers to try and match the Power of Claude Akins. And, the ratings did drop. At this point, ratings are still going strong but they drop pretty quick after this. I need to find when exactly that happens.

Fun with Perkins and Lobo

There's not much to say about the actual episode. It semi-cleverly brings this story to a close. The odd thing is that it really is all about this one criminal jerk and this one Scheme. One gets the feeling that possibly the stakes should have been higher. Every once in a while it strikes me as a bit of a Much Ado About Nothing. One sees all these people running around, all this stuff happening...  and then when focus is placed on why it's happening, it seems a trifle small. In the first season of B.J.'s show, B.J. was freeing a group of women from white slavery. He was taking down a corporation that was producing biological weaponry. He was climbing up a Ferris wheel to save people! It's petty niggling for me to bring it up but I think the stakes could have been higher.

 I have to get in the water with Deborah Shelton?

You got it.

Avengers Assemble!

(Not a lot of Cain in this episode.)

Now, we return to regular B.J. and the Bear reviewing...  It was nice to visit Lobo and the gang one last time. I salute you, sir!

 The last shot with these two pop culture icons together

Tears? Shame? Or tears of shame?

B.J. and the Bear S1 E6: Lobo's Revenge

Originally aired on April 7, 1979
Directed by Bruce Bilson
Teleplay by Michael Sloan
Story by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim

(My copy of this episode is super-fuzzy. So, my elongated screenshots are also super-fuzzy. My apologies.)

I love B.J. and the Bear. We all know that. But, it's very rare that the show makes me laugh out loud. It's not quite that kind of comedy for me. It's amusing, certainly, but not big guffaw-funny. However, there is one moment in Lobo's Revenge that made me laugh aloud. Sheriff Lobo's is currently situated in a trailer while the jail is being rebuilt. (See Odyssey of the Shady Truth.) This episode is filled with shenanigans between B.J. and Lobo. The funniest bit involves B.J. hooking the trailer, with Lobo sleeping inside, up to his rig and hauling it out of town. And the moment when Lobo wakes up and sees that he's in the middle of the forest...  I laughed. Thank you, everyone involved.

Who?

Perkins! That's who!

The 6th episode of the first season sees a return to Orly County. By this time, any attempts at having Sheriff Lobo be a serious character are gone when Perkins dresses as a woman and tries to kidnap Bear. Lobo's plan is: Kidnap Bear. Bring him back to Orly. B.J. will come after his best friend. All charges have been dropped against B.J. but if Our Hero takes a wrong step he's getting put away. Of course, Lobo has other motives here involving overspending on police swag, an audit and robbing a bank. But, that's where it gets complicated. You can learn all that when you watch it yourself.

 Perkins!

The episode spends about ten minutes kidnapping Bear and getting B.J. back to Orly. Then, the rest of it is basically B.J., surreptitiously, wrecking havoc on Lobo's world. Including moving the trailer and destroying the jail again...  re-using the shot of the wall landing on a police car from the previous Orly episode. And the whole adventure is fun. I was worried that a Bear kidnapping might make things more serious. (See Season 2's Bear Bondage.) But, nope. It's all goofballery of the highest order.

Is Perkins pretending he's dissolving from exposure to toxic waste?

 No, you goof! He went through the car wash wrong!

We meet the portly president of the Bank who loves gambling, along with several other Orly characters who show up in the next Lobo-related episode and, possibly, in the spin-off. In fact, this episode seems like early warm-up for the spin-off. B.J. has stuff to do here. But, Lobo is definitely the star, the wacky star. Yes, he gets puts in prison again at the end of this episode...  wait four episodes. He'll be back.

 Who's the lovely lady with Brion James?

 What?! Perkins!

Evigan and Akins work well off each other. Their moments together are good ones. Lobo is one sneaky guy, though. And Perkins is an idiot. B.J. meets up with a lovely lady who I think was in Shady Truth. (I couldn't quite place her. Maybe she wasn't.) The episode has a nice leisurely pace to it. It doesn't go anywhere exciting and new. Steal Bear. B.J. causes trouble. Bank robbery. Car chase. But, as another episode in the continuing saga of Lobo vs. B.J., it's a worthy entry in the Canon.

 Sheriff Perkins. Criminals start running

BJ And The Bear S1 Ep1: Odyssey of the Shady Truth

Originally Aired: February 19, 1979
Teleplay by Kenneth Realman & Michael Sloan
Story by Kenneth Realman

It happened! BJ And The Bear, the actual series, has begun. After a successful TV movie in October of 1978, the show was picked up by NBC as a mid-season replacement. It had ten episodes to prove itself. And it had a strange twist of pop culture providence to help it along. As I mentioned in the review of The Foundlings, Glen A. Larson's newest venture seemed to hit every pop culture button at the time. However, it actually came two months before Every Which Way But Loose when truckers and simians became all the rage. And, it was three months before The Dukes of Hazzard began.

 Even our Big Macs are corrupt

Odyssey of the Shady Truth aired a month-in-a-half after the Clint Eastwood vehicle became a huge hit and one month after the Duke boys began racing up the ratings. So, what seemed like it was ahead of itself four months previous was now right in with the zeitgeist of the times. That's planning.

 Jo Ann, pre-being nice

The story behind the first of the episodes ends up being a condensed variation of the pilot movie. A woman named Barbara Sue (played by the awesome Jo Ann Harris) gets BJ to head back into Orly County to pick up a load. But, it's a trap. Sheriff Lobo with Perkins, as a Deupty now, jail BJ. But, Barbara Sue can't let BJ rot in jail so she breaks him and some others wrongfully imprisoned by Lobo out. The race for the county line is on again!

No caption required

It does seem a little bit remiss of BJ to want to head back into Orly. (Or, in fact, to be eating at a diner anywhere near it.) But, one imagines that he thinks Lobo has probably been put away for a very long time for the awful stuff he did in the pilot movie. Strangely enough, he hasn't been. In fact, Lobo is doing better than ever and Perkins, his main accomplice, is now second-in-command. Not sure how that happened unless Orly County is the most corrupt county in the United States. (And that could be true.)

 When is a jail not a jail? When it has no wall

Everyone in Lobo's cell, including a man named Banjo who hauled moonshine, one of those TV drunks who is drunk all the time regardless of whether he has access to booze and two young women, one played rather hysterically by Randi Oakes, has been wrongfully imprisoned. And, Lobo is stealing shine from the supplier and selling it on his own. It's all very shady. Luckily, Barbara Sue ties a chain to the jail cell window and, using BJ's rig, rips the brick wall off the side of the building. It's pretty cool.

Randi? Are you thinking about Battle of the Network Stars?

Then, the mayhem begins. This time a little more playful than in the pilot. Many, many police cars are destroyed in assorted and amusing ways. Lobo and Perkins have their car slowly whittled down piece by piece. That's pretty funny. It all culminates with a ride on the Shady Truth. That is a river barge owned by Barbara Sue's uncle. And the image of the barge hauling the big red rig behind it down the river is very cool.

See? Cool

For being a, more or less, remake of the pilot, this episode acquits itself well. It has heroics, excitement, drama and humor. And, yes, a bunch of great chimp action. (Although, Bear doesn't have quite as much to do as he did in the pilot.) BJ's wit and intelligence are going strong in this episode. Plus, he has a little bit more of a romantic squeeze on Barbara Sue than he did on Stilts. Once BJ is free from the jail, he sets up a series of tricks, diversions and stunts to get him and the bunch he's with around the roadblocks of Lobo.

 That's a Comedy Car if ever I saw one

The episode is very entertaining. It's got a nice pace to it. The set-up, getting BJ into prison, happens quickly. The sequence in the jail cell is just long enough to establish that Lobo is corrupt and sleazy but a little goofy. And then the chasing begins and it doesn't stop until the end. There were only two problems I had with this episode as it went along but neither of them is a big cause for concern.

 Not a scene from Planes, Trains & Automobiles

The first is that darn county line. In The Foundlings, it was nebulous. BJ was passing through and took the job. They were stuck in the woods a lot. One hoped that they were moving towards it but one was never sure. In this episode, the county line is still--  where is it? There's a lot more water involved in this episode. One would think the rather lengthy trip down the river would have helped. But, they never seem to actually get any closer to getting out of Orly. Which leads to the second problem.

 I feel like this guy was in The Milpitas Monster

The resolution of the episode. Shady Truth has the same ending as the pilot. BJ and his passengers run and run and run. Eventually, the day is saved by them coming across someone who can stop Lobo from going any further. In The Foundlings, it's the Army. In this episode, it's Seth McClellan, the moonshine man that Lobo is ripping off. Yes, the day is saved. BJ and pals make it out safely. But, BJ doesn't actually save everyone. He just keeps everyone out of harm's way until someone else can come along and do it. That's not so great for a show with a hero in it. If BJ was played by Don Knotts, that would be one thing. But, here, the hero should be doing the saving. Time will tell.

The top half of Lobo's car goes a'reelin'

Odyssey of the Shady Truth, flaws aside, is an entertaining opening episode for the series. If you watch this one and like it, there's a very good chance that you will get a kick out of the nine remaining episodes from this season. I enjoy them. Granted, Lobo is only in three more episodes. So, don't get too comfortable with him.

 The basic face one sees in The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo

B.J. And The Bear: The Foundlings

Directed by Bruce Bilson
Written by Christopher Crowe and Glen A. Larson
Aired: October 4, 1978

Starring: Greg Evigan (B.J. McKay), Penny Peyser (Stilts), Claude Akins (Sheriff Lobo), Mills Watson (Perkins), Sam The Chimp (Bear)

B.J. And The Bear: The Foundlings is a 2-hour TV movie from the stable of Glen A. Larson, whose Battlestar Galactica was all over the place at the end of 1978. This movie introduced the world to ex-Vietnam Vet/ POW and super trucker B.J. McKay. Traveling with B.J. at all times was his chimp, Bear. (Bear was named after Paul "Bear" Bryant, football coach at the University of Alabama.) The theme song, written by Larson and sung by Evigan, basically explained the premise: B.J. is a guy who lives in his semi- and travels around the country delivering loads for $1.50/mile plus expenses, no questions asked. (Nothing illegal.)

 The guys and their truck

In the early 1970s, there was a show, starring Claude Akins, called Movin' On. It was about an old trucker and a young trucker who co-owned a rig. That show ran for 2 seasons and was a mix of comedy, drama, adventure. B.J. And The Bear was similar except, like many Larson shows, it felt much more trendy, more of its time. B.J. was a singer. He'd strum his guitar and play soft rock hits for us. (This episode features him playing "Sweet Baby James.") There was a chimp as a pal. Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way But Loose wasn't quite out yet but it almost was. There was a lot of CB work. There was a lot of trucking, beautiful women, a good looking male star and a Sheriff straight out of The Dukes of Hazzard, which actually hadn't quite come out either. Larson was able to hit on several big threads of the time and anticipate a few others.

 A little Moonlight Serenade

The Foundlings introduces us to B.J. McKay and Bear as they are hauling something to a government facility. Turns out it's old paper currency designated for burning. This sequence feels semi-out-of-place here because nothing really happens but it introduces us to the characters. B.J. gives us some narration that lays out his life and his philosophy. (He's from Milwaukee...  just like The Fonz.) He is then seen in a high stakes pool game betting all of his cash against a swarthy gentleman. That's when we meet Stilts, a rather, sadly, annoying young lady in cutoff jean shorts. She is introduced in the opposite of a "meet cute." It's a "meet annoying." Stilts (actually her real name is Florence from Little Rock) knows that B.J. has a lot on the line during the pool game. (B.J. announces it to everyone.) Even though she knows this, she interrupts him when he's about to win and causes him to lose. B.J. is annoyed. But, Stilts has a job for him and that job is our story.

 Oh, Stilts!

Basically, in Orly County, there are a group of men who kidnap young women for some sort of sex slave ring (the episode is semi-vague about this). They are kept at the house of a man named Perkins. The operation is run by Sheriff Lobo (Claude Akins). The women break out. And, B.J. discovers that he is hauling them to the county line. Lobo has put out an APB on B.J.. He claims that the kidnapped women are "foundlings", orphan babies that Perkins has in his charge. Chaos ensues. Bear shoots a gun. Cop cars explode. B.J.'s rig gets painted yellow. It all culminates with about 20 minutes of chase from big rig to Army helicopter. (B.J. was a Medevac pilot.)

 Lobo and the missing "babies"

There is only one bump in the dramatic road for this reviewer: Stilts is annoying. One can understand that she is under a great deal of pressure. But, she overdoes it and becomes sitcom annoying. When she goofs up B.J.'s pool game and then demands his help, she doesn't seem to see what she did there. Granted, she is in a bad spot. But, surely, you'd want to be nicer to the person who is going to help you. And, she does this strange thing where she keeps demanding expense receipts and B.J. keeps forgetting them. I think that's supposed to be comedy. But, at this point, we don't really know B.J. so we don't know if he's bad at keeping receipts or if this whole confusing enterprise is throwing off his normal business acumen. (Certainly stipulating "plus expenses" must means that he knows he has to keep the receipts.) Stilts becomes less annoying in the end. But, B.J. has to pull of some pretty heroic stunts in the rig before that happens.

 Stilts with Mud

Apart from Stilts, this TV movie really gives out the entertainment. Greg Evigan is great as B.J. He's got a good sense of humor. He's a good friend to Bear. Clearly he enjoys his life and doesn't want a run-in with the law or anyone. He goes against the law (running through a roadblock) for the first time because Stilts is holding a gun on him. So, his first defiance of bad law enforcement is under duress. This act and many others will pile up over the series until every police officer in the United States treats him as some sort of rampaging outlaw. B.J. is also quick-witted and he's able to come up with the good plans when needed. For example, he gets the rig out of some mud in the middle of the night. He paints the rig yellow to throw off the police. And, in a great stunt, he drives the rig up an incline past a roadblock causing lots of police car pileup. The man is good.

 Bear's Got A Gun!

Claude Akins isn't the comedy Sheriff Lobo of the first season episodes or the spin-off The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. Mills Jackson's Perkins is not very pleasant either. Although some of the cops are presented humorously, the fact that they are breaking all the rules in order to recapture a group of sex slaves makes this whole adventure somewhat unsavory. And it makes B.J. even more of a hero. After this TV movie (in fact with the first regular episode), Lobo and Perkins will become comedy characters. And more police cars will get smashed up than you could ever imagine.

The newly painted rig smashes 'em up!

The whole movie has a lovely slowly building suspense to it. The first half (with the exception of the currency run) takes place at night. It just gets darker and darker. Things become more and more desperate. The movie helps itself out by never quite giving us a clear clue as to where the county line is. Once the rig crosses that line, they're safe. But, it seems to be very far away. Then, they throw in the fact that the gals don't trust B.J. And one of them gets very sick and needs medical attention. And B.J. and Stilts have to buy yellow paint in town... One thing after another. Bruce Bilson's name was all over 1960s and 1970s TV. He does a good job. He's sort of the Willian Beaudine of TV. Always professional work with the occasional flourish.

 Not for very long...

In February 1979, the show would begin in earnest with a 10 episode first season. And the world would fall in love with  B.J. McKay and his best friend Bear. It all began here. In a darker place but one that was still clearly part of the world that Glen A. Larson created for all of us. The Foundlings is 90-odd minutes of very entertaining, often quite exciting, television. Highly recommended.