Little Garwood wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:29 pm
Does Cannon "evolve" from what was presented in season one? If so, in what ways?
I would say not really. There is a big moment in season five that explains his reason for becoming a detective. I won’t ruin it with any more details, but I felt it odd that it wasn’t explained at the beginning of the series.
November 1, 1980.
Maybe it's due to my age, but the four years between 1976--when Cannon--ended its run---to The Return of Frank Cannon in 1980 feels like an eternity! If the mere 30 days between issues of, say, Spider-Man seemed like a crazy amount of time, the four years from the end of a series up to its reunion TV movie was even longer. Nowadays, the passing of 20 years is like the blinking of an eye.
This post brought to you by growing older...it happens to us all (if we're lucky).
That’s fun to see and I have watched the episode. It was solid. The passage of time does seem to accelerate, especially for those of us past the 50 year mark. As you noted and I have told my students over the years, I never want to complain about it. I’ve had more than one student that never got to enjoy life up to my age. I hope I never attend another student funeral again. Sorry If that got heavy.
Last edited by Pahonu on Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Heavy"? Of course it got heavy. After all, this is the Cannon thread.
While the series is one with which I have long been aware, watching Cannon now (an episode [or two] every Sunday), is a pleasure much in the same way that obtaining a comic book from my childhood I was unable to get at the time is now. Cannon, unlike many other contemporaneous shows, is of a high quality while at the same time invoking the nostalgia of a bygone era.
Last edited by Little Garwood on Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Little Garwood wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:16 pm
"Heavy"? Of course it got heavy. After all, this is the Cannon thread.
While the series is one with which I have long been aware, watching Cannonnow (an episode [or two] every Sunday), is a pleasure much in the same way that obtaining a comic book from my childhood I was unable to get at the time is now. Cannon, unlike many other contemporaneous shows, is of a high quality while at the same time invoking the nostalgia of a bygone era.
Little Garwood wrote: ↑Wed Mar 30, 2022 3:02 pm
Anthony Zerbe is “must-see” TV for me! He’s a stalwart of 1965-75 television. He did multiple episodes of Desilu series Mission: Impossible and Mannix, but never Star Trek…that’s a huge missed opportunity!
Zerbe did 3 episodes of Cannon. I’m looking forward to seeing his 3 different characters there.
I don’t want to ruin anything for you so I’ll just say that his second role in Cannon is INTENSE.
Yesterday I watched Zerbe's first Cannon appearance, The Torch. Zerbe had an intensely sympathetic moment when the episode's villain* pushed Zerbe to commit a murder.
*Played by the excellent Larry Blyden, who met a real-life tragic ending. Blyden was most memorable in the S3 Twilight Zone episode, Showdown with Rance McGrew.
The Torch, an otherwise superb S1 episode, has a guest appearance by Lena Greenberg herself, Hanna Landy, who plays "Mama Immelman" here but gives the same bad, crying-dry-tears performance as she did in MPI's Never Again...Never Again.
Hanna even wears the same "bread knot" hairpiece, and this episode was made eight years before the Magnum episode! Bad news for me is that ol' Hanna has three more Cannon episodes in different guest roles.
Little Garwood wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:06 pm
Bad news for me is that ol' Hanna has three more Cannon episodes in different guest roles.
Bad news? You don't like her? The actress?
I saw her in a very brief role (almost unrecognizable) in the notorious COLUMBO episode "Last Salute to the Commodore". She didn't do much there. Just had a few lines. On MPI I thought she was very good. Haven't seen her in anything else.
Little Garwood wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:06 pm
Bad news for me is that ol' Hanna has three more Cannon episodes in different guest roles.
Bad news? You don't like her? The actress?
I find her performances irritating. She's especially annoying in Never Again...Never Again. Her character is supposed to be crying and upset over her husband's disappearance, but she produces not a single tear. I go by the Rebecca Holden Rule (MPI S1 "Missing in Action"): If Rebecca Holden can produce tears in her big emotional scenes, then so too should every other performer. I suspend this rule for "comedic" crying performances when I'm feeling charitable.
Little Garwood wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:06 pm
Bad news for me is that ol' Hanna has three more Cannon episodes in different guest roles.
Bad news? You don't like her? The actress?
I saw her in a very brief role (almost unrecognizable) in the notorious COLUMBO episode "Last Salute to the Commodore". She didn't do much there. Just had a few lines. On MPI I thought she was very good. Haven't seen her in anything else.
I recall her in that Columbo episode as well. I looked her up on IMDB a while back and she has a long list of credits. The odd thing was that she seemed to go both by Landy and Hertelendy, interchangeably in the credits.
Little Garwood wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:06 pm
Bad news for me is that ol' Hanna has three more Cannon episodes in different guest roles.
Bad news? You don't like her? The actress?
I find her performances irritating. She's especially annoying in Never Again...Never Again. Her character is supposed to be crying and upset over her husband's disappearance, but she produces not a single tear. I go by the Rebecca Holden Rule (MPI S1 "Missing in Action"): If Rebecca Holden can produce tears in her big emotional scenes, then so too should every other performer. I suspend this rule for "comedic" crying performances when I'm feeling charitable.
Yeah but Becky Holden is a serious thespian. So you can't hold everybody to her standard.
ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan) wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 5:48 pmYeah but Becky Holden is a serious thespian. So you can't hold everybody to her standard.
I agree, which is exactly why I have a Rebecca Holden Rule! If gorgeous Rebecca can produce tears in her crying scenes then so can those ostensibly "better" performers who got so many gigs in all those TV shows.
I finished season one. Here are the ratings grouped by their 1-10 IMDb-style star rating system. No episode in season one got a rating lower than a "5" so it was a solid introductory season.
10
Stone, Cold Dead
Flight Plan
9
Fool's Gold
Dead Pigeon
The Torch
8
Pilot
Scream of Silence
A Lonely Place to Die
No Pockets in a Shroud
Death is a Double Cross
To Kill a Guinea Pig
Devil's Playground
7
The Salinas Jackpot
Death Chain
Call Unicorn
Country Blues
Girl in the Electric Coffin
6
The Nowhere Man
Blood on the Vine
A Deadly Quiet Town
A Flight of Hawks
5
Treasure of San Ignacio
The Island Caper
Cain’s Mark
Murder by Moonlight
Hi Guys,
The below site gives a brief history of the people behind Quinn Martin. Crime Reads covers a variety of similar things that I think would
interest the posters here. There are reviews and articles about crime books, movies, TV etc, sometimes a author will write about their book,
say about Lee Marvin, and they will reply to your comment, it can get pretty lively at times.
Sometimes an editor will opine about a subject, say The Godfather, and if he does't have his facts right the readers will fall on
him like a buzzard on a gut wagon.
I copied and pasted the link below, but as I am the king of the Luddites you may have to put it in your search engine.
How Quinn Martin and His Crime Shows Came to Dominate 1970s TV ‹ CrimeReads
“When you go down in deep water, you’re scared. You don’t know how scared you can be. Soon, you forget. But the reef never forgets. It just waits.”
Gilbert Roland as Mike Petrakis.
( Beneath the 12-Mile Reef)
I read it. Good read. I guess I'd consider myself a Quinn Martin fan, even though STREETS OF SAN FRAN is the only show of his that I've seen almost every episode. His other shows I'm sure were good (though I couldn't get into THE FUGITIVE) but I just never got around to them. For instance I'm sure I would enjoy CANNON (I've seen a few snippets here and there) or BARNABY JONES (I actually saw a good episode not too long ago with James Olson as a serial killer) because they represent that 70s cop/detective/PI genre that I really enjoy. Even if it's not FIVE-O level of enjoyment.
The writer of that article questions why BARNABY JONES ran longer than either CANNON or STREETS OF SAN FRAN. I guess that's a valid point. I can't compare it to CANNON but I'm sure it wasn't better than SOSF. But then longevity doesn't always equal quality. I think in the case of SOSF it was the departure of Michael Douglas that kind of put the kibosh on the show. It ran one more season without him (with Richard Hatch in his place) but he was definitely missed. Hatch was seriously lacking compared to Douglas - both in the acting and charm/humor departments. So I think that was kind of the nail in the coffin. Had Douglas stayed I think the show could have run for several more seasons. But on the other hand... 5 seasons I think was probably the average run for most shows back in the day. KOJAK was also very successful and also ran for 5 seasons. It's not like the NCIS's and CSI's and LAW and ORDER's of today that have a 20-season run.
The passage of time does seem to accelerate, especially for those of us past the 50 year mark. As you noted and I have told my students over the years, I never want to complain about it. I’ve had more than one student that never got to enjoy life up to my age. I hope I never attend another student funeral again. 
Sorry If that got heavy.
