Magnum Mania!

Does anyone have any thoughts on Ironside, show where Raymond Burr (previously Perry Mason) plays a cop in San Francisco who becomes a paraplegic after he is shot.

I started to do the usual anal-ytical WWW site for this show in 2017, but soon abandoned it.

More recently, however, I started to continue working on it again. I actually spent $$ for a domain name!! http://www.ironsidetv.com/

I don't like this show very much, it is full of errors which suggest to me that the show was overwritten and then edited back after it was filmed.

I read somewhere that with Classic Hawaii Five-O, the scripts were typically limited to a number of pages like 60 which would be the equivalent of an hour-long show.

It was major contributing writer Jerome Coopersmith who discussed this on some WWW page.

Mr. Mike wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 9:53 pm Does anyone have any thoughts on Ironside, show where Raymond Burr (previously Perry Mason) plays a cop in San Francisco who becomes a paraplegic after he is shot.

I started to do the usual anal-ytical WWW site for this show in 2017, but soon abandoned it.

More recently, however, I started to continue working on it again. I actually spent $$ for a domain name!! http://www.ironsidetv.com/

I don't like this show very much, it is full of errors which suggest to me that the show was overwritten and then edited back after it was filmed.

I read somewhere that with Classic Hawaii Five-O, the scripts were typically limited to a number of pages like 60 which would be the equivalent of an hour-long show.

It was major contributing writer Jerome Coopersmith who discussed this on some WWW page.

Hey Mr. Mike,

First I want to thank you for all of the diligent work on your H5-O page. I’ve enjoyed it immensely over the years.

My father used to watch reruns of Ironside in the late 70’s/early 80’s when I was a kid. I would watch with him as we had only one TV. I think the show largely succeeded on Raymond Burr’s performance and his previous success being able to attract excellent guest stars. I have watched just a handful of episodes since then and it doesn’t hold up well for me either. Being a big fan of The Streets of San Francisco, and having been to the city dozens of times, it doesn’t take good advantage of the location either. It still used a blue screen for vehicle shots after it was no longer the norm.

Raymond Burr is too much of a sour-puss in this show to really enjoy it. Though I suppose a bullet in your back would do it. But I just always found Burr too boring and too one note. One of the reasons I could never get into PERRY MASON. Compare that show with MATLOCK and it's night-and-day! I can't get enough of Andy Griffith's charm and homespun humor and his courtroom theatrics. He made MATLOCK into a great show! PERRY MASON could just never compete. It lacks an interesting star. Burr is just dull.

And I agree about IRONSIDE looking too stage-bound/set-bound (of what little I've seen of the show). They'll show you an establishing shot of San Fran and then cut to a street which is clearly a set somewhere on the Hollywood backlot. Also the rear projection shots. That definitely hurts the show, especially later in its run when STREETS OF SAN FRAN was already on the air and actually being filmed on location in San Fran and not using process shots or rear projection. Even compared to MANNIX (which ran exactly the same 8 years from 1967 to 1975) it feels more stagey and less authentic. I know MANNIX also used studio backlot streets but I remember it being filmed more at actual locations and using wide open spaces and rural areas more often. But again, I've seen very little of IRONSIDE so maybe I'm off there.

[Oops, I am a dummy, I posted this in the H50 group by mistake...]

Here are timings for the first season Ironside shows. They are totally screwy. There is a difference of up to 2 minutes between some shows. One of these shows, E02, lists John Rubinstein in the end credits, and he is not in the show at all that I can see.

I was doing a review of show E20 below, and by the end, it was totally illogical. (I watched it TWICE, making detailed notes each time.)

I am sure that something was cut out of this show because it was too long as filmed. This has happened with other episodes I have watched from the first season as well, for example, E22: http://www.ironsidetv.com/ironside-1.htm#22

If you look at the timings for the first season of H50 on my site (https://fiveohomepage.com/5-0log1.htm), they don't vary so much, maybe up to 10 seconds at the most.

There are multiple releases of Ironside. One of them was done by Shout Factory (seasons 1-4). One review of these sets suggests they are based on PAL broadcasts. There is a release in Australia of all 8 seasons, and others sold on Amazon and Ebay which seem to be not from the USA (seasons 5-8 were never released in the USA as far as I know). I really don't feel like investing a lot of money in these releases to see if stuff is missing.

Note the episode numbers here may not tally with some listings elsewhere.

S01E00 - 1:36:39 - Pilot Episode
S01E01 - 49.54 - Message from Beyond
S01E02 - 47.58 - The Leaf in the Forest
S01E03 - 49.56 - Dead Man's Tale
S01E04 - 49.52 - Eat, Drink and Be Buried
S01E05 - 49.52 - The Taker
S01E06 - 48.18 - An Inside Job
S01E07 - 47:51 - Tagged For Murder
S01E08 - 47:52 - Let My Brother Go
S01E09 - 47:53 - Light at the End of the Journey
S01E10 - 49:49 - The Monster of Comus Towers
S01E11 - 47:51 - The Man Who Believed
S01E12 - 47:49 - A Very Cool Car
S01E13 - 49:51 - The Past is Prologue
S01E14 - 48:50 - Girl in the Night
S01E15 - 47:52 - The Fourteenth Runner
S01E16 - 47:53 - Force of Arms
S01E17 - 47:54 - Memory of an Ice Cream Stick
S01E18 - 50:00 - To Kill a Cop
S01E19 - 50:03 - The Lonely Hostage
S01E20 - 47:56 - The Challenge
S01E21 - 49:56 - All in a Day's Work
S01E22 - 49:56 - Something for Nothing
S01E23 - 49:54 - Barbara Who
S01E24 - 47:54 - Perfect Crime
S01E25 - 48:20 - Officer Bobby
S01E26 - 47:57 - Trip to Hashbury
S01E27 - 47:55 - Due Process of Law
S01E28 - 48:21 - Return of the Hero

[Reposted from H50 forum]

I have finally finished season one episode reviews of Ironside. It took me a long time – I wasn't trying to kill myself doing this. I had already done a few episodes when I first started doing the usual "anal-ysis" of Ironside in 2017, but I updated all those reviews recently. I am going back now and cleaning up the first season review page -- https://www.ironsidetv.com/ironside-1.htm – for grammar, typos and so forth.

Overall, I found doing reviews of this show a tough slog.

It seems to me that many of the episodes were overwritten (i.e., they would take more than an hour of time), so that parts were edited out of them without too much thought as to the results of doing this. There were also discrepancies with the time of the 28 first season episodes, up to two minutes in some cases. Who knows why there is such a difference? I don't think this was because of music rights issues. If you look at my H50 first season page, you will see the timings of those episodes are pretty consistent, very close to 51 minutes, for example.

I recall reading somewhere that Jerome Coopersmith in an interview said that when writing for Classic H50, he was instructed to keep to a certain number of pages, which would represent around 60 minutes (minus the commercials).

As well, it seems to me that the writers for Ironside are often trying hard to be clever. There is a limit as to how clever they can be, though. We are talking about a TV show, not Shakespeare. You often find gaps in the story, which is trying to go from Point A to Point B, but in order to get to Point B, you have to "know something" which is never referred to.

This "cleverness" reminded me of the H50 reboot where the writers would often refer to something obscure or geeky which they had probably researched on Wikipedia. Ironside writers didn't have that option, so I guess we should give them credit for digging up something obscure in encyclopedias or whatever.

Here is an example. In the pilot episode, Ironside is researching locations connected to the person who shot and paralyzed him at the beginning of the show.

Ironside suddenly has a brainstorm, wanting to talk to the field agent to the local Department of Agriculture and also the office of the local Boy Scout troop. The scouts, whose leader is Wally Cox, scour the area at night where the shooter was likely standing, even though it has already been vacuumed with special police equipment. They don't find anything, but Eve [one of Ironside's team] does, totally by accident -- the shell casings from the rifle that fired the shots that hit Ironside are far away from where the shooter was standing.

Ironside has a theory that a packrat would have taken acorns from a faraway oak which is in the area not used as a base for the shooter and swapped them with the six shell casings from the shots that paralyzed him. This is actual pack rat behavior, according to Wikipedia.

I got so fed up with some of the Ironside first season episodes that I just chose another show from a later season at random. But it turned out to be the two-part opener from season three (originally a two-hour show), the continuation of a soap opera-like episode from season one which starred Vera Miles as a woman who has totally lost her memory!

Mr. Mike wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2024 3:27 am
Ironside has a theory that a packrat would have taken acorns from a faraway oak which is in the area not used as a base for the shooter and swapped them with the six shell casings from the shots that paralyzed him. This is actual pack rat behavior, according to Wikipedia.

WHAAAAAAAAAAT??????? That makes ZERO sense!! Unless I'm missing something. Why would a shooter take acorns with him, even if he was under an oak!? And why would he swap these for shell casings?? I guess I'm missing something here because this really doesn't make any sense. If this is some kind of Ironside logic then this must be the worst written show on the planet!

You don't "get it," and I don't blame you. The deal with the pack rat is like this:

Where the person was standing when they were shooting at Ironside, they dropped the empty cartridges from the gun on the ground.

The pack rat found these cartridges later and took them to their "nest area" or somewhere else. They had a bunch of acorns in the "nest area," and they brought those acorns back to the place where the cartridges were, in other words "trading" them for the cartridges.

According to Wikipedia, this is actual pack rat behavior as follows:

Pack rats are nest builders. They use plant material such as twigs, sticks, and other available debris. They are particularly fond of shiny objects. A peculiar characteristic is that if they find something they want, they will drop what they are currently carrying—for example, a piece of cactus—and "trade" it for the new item.

Strictly speaking, this doesn't jibe with the idea of "trading" one thing for another. But it is an attempt by the writer(s) for the episode to come up with an explanation of how they can drag the plot out a bit more and try to make themselves look clever.

This kind of explanation for something weird that happened, usually accompanying a brainstorm by Ironside, is quite typical of the show. After a while, this started to really drive me crazy when I was reviewing the episodes.

See the index for season one episodes at my site for what I really think about some of these shows, LOL:

https://www.ironsidetv.com/ironside-1.htm

Mr. Mike wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2024 11:47 pm You don't "get it," and I don't blame you. The deal with the pack rat is like this:

Where the person was standing when they were shooting at Ironside, they dropped the empty cartridges from the gun on the ground.

The pack rat found these cartridges later and took them to their "nest area" or somewhere else. They had a bunch of acorns in the "nest area," and they brought those acorns back to the place where the cartridges were, in other words "trading" them for the cartridges.

According to Wikipedia, this is actual pack rat behavior as follows:

Pack rats are nest builders. They use plant material such as twigs, sticks, and other available debris. They are particularly fond of shiny objects. A peculiar characteristic is that if they find something they want, they will drop what they are currently carrying—for example, a piece of cactus—and "trade" it for the new item.

Strictly speaking, this doesn't jibe with the idea of "trading" one thing for another. But it is an attempt by the writer(s) for the episode to come up with an explanation of how they can drag the plot out a bit more and try to make themselves look clever.

This kind of explanation for something weird that happened, usually accompanying a brainstorm by Ironside, is quite typical of the show. After a while, this started to really drive me crazy when I was reviewing the episodes.
See the index for season one episodes at my site for what I really think about some of these shows, LOL:
https://www.ironsidetv.com/ironside-1.htm

Mr. Mike,
Thank you for sharing the link. As always one is impressed by all the effort you put into your reviews. Count me as a fan. When the last 3 years Of Hawaii Five-O in its entirety had recently become
available I binge watched it - not a good way to savor the material(good or bad) - and checking what you had to say after each episode. Frankly I was hoping to spot something you missed - "gotcha" -
but you are too damn good at this. If you ever do Route 66 -"the best written TV series ever" according to Ed Asner in Playboy - please let us know.
With Stirling Silliphant/Howard Rodman doing the writing, many of its episodes soared.
"Suppose I Told You I was The Queen of Spain" in particular was a gem, Lois Nettleton's speech at the end amazing, if I was auditioning for a part - if I was a woman - I would use that.
Probably to it's detriment with the general public, such episodes have to be viewed twice to grasp all the nuances.

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From The Big Lebowski:

The Stranger:
"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals."

Mr. Mike wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2024 11:47 pm You don't "get it," and I don't blame you. The deal with the pack rat is like this:

Where the person was standing when they were shooting at Ironside, they dropped the empty cartridges from the gun on the ground.

The pack rat found these cartridges later and took them to their "nest area" or somewhere else. They had a bunch of acorns in the "nest area," and they brought those acorns back to the place where the cartridges were, in other words "trading" them for the cartridges.

According to Wikipedia, this is actual pack rat behavior as follows:

Pack rats are nest builders. They use plant material such as twigs, sticks, and other available debris. They are particularly fond of shiny objects. A peculiar characteristic is that if they find something they want, they will drop what they are currently carrying—for example, a piece of cactus—and "trade" it for the new item.

Strictly speaking, this doesn't jibe with the idea of "trading" one thing for another. But it is an attempt by the writer(s) for the episode to come up with an explanation of how they can drag the plot out a bit more and try to make themselves look clever.

This kind of explanation for something weird that happened, usually accompanying a brainstorm by Ironside, is quite typical of the show. After a while, this started to really drive me crazy when I was reviewing the episodes.

See the index for season one episodes at my site for what I really think about some of these shows, LOL:

https://www.ironsidetv.com/ironside-1.htm

Oh wow! We're talking about an actual rat here!? A rodent? And here I was thinking a "packrat" as a person who hoards things. That's why I couldn't understand why a person would pick up bullets and leave acorns in its place. Wow, talk about stupid!! Personally I still think it's a stretch, even with the rodent, and I agree it sounds like the writers are trying hard to be very clever. But you gotta give 'em credit for originality I suppose. It's the first I've heard of anything like this - both the rodent behavior and something like this ever being used in any TV show or film. A lot of "clues" get used and reused in countless TV shows that you can see coming from mile a way. But something like this is definitely a first! Whether it's believable or very likely is another matter.

You will laugh, here is what I really thought about the first season Ironside shows:

https://ironsidetv.com/ironside-1-index2.htm