.... that being - Where did Reed's wife and child go? Mentioned frequently for the first couple of seasons, they seem to disappear into thin air. You even see them when Reed invites Malloy over for a cook out during season two. In this episode I notice Reed isn't even wearing a wedding ring. He was wearing one in the first few seasons. A similar mystery - Where did all of the hippies go? For the first few seasons they are always around - tuning out, dropping out, camping out, complaining about the man and materialism. Then, one day, all of a sudden they are all gone. I can actually solve that mystery. In January 1973 an agreement was reached on ending the Vietnam War. There would be no more draft. That's all the college age hippie children of the middle class had to hear. It was back to Harvard law and on to Wall Street. Suddenly materialism was not so crass anymore. That generation - the first wave of the baby boomers - went on to become the most prudish bunch of old people since the Pilgrims. They were constantly defining adulthood up to age -21, 23, 26 - You would have to be thirty before they would allow you to have the kind of fun they had at eighteen. But I digress.
In this episode you do see some expressions of what the hippies morphed into for those who were not rich enough to high tail it back to the Ivy League. There is a woman doing some nude sunbathing on the beach who claims she is a free spirit. She is annoyed when she is arrested because it turns out she thought that this would be an opportunity for some free publicity for her modelling career. It turns out that is not the case. There is also the case of the mentally deranged man who becomes obsessed with a total stranger. So you are now reaching a point in crime where the standard question is no longer - What was the motive? There's a good chance there was no motive and no link between criminal and victim.
As for Reed's incredible disappearing family - It turns out marriage and family were considered very square during the 70s. With Reed being a very good looking guy, I'm sure they would have written his character as a single man if they could have started over. And the team that brought you Adam-12 actually did that in 1972 with Emergency!. Randy Mantooth, a young good looking guy, is playing a single guy who has an active dating life. Malloy's counterpart - the rather gruff 30 something DeSoto - is the married paramedic on Emergency!.