Requiem for a Funny Box

This is a good episode ,I liked it. Chuck McCann plays a great part as a sweet-talking,but shady/smarmy show-biz character that had seen better days. Eavesdropping that reveals more than was expected starts the ball rolling for blackmail,murder etc in this engaging episode of a great show.

Get ready for a knockout blow.

This episode is incredibly risqué for the time it was made. The story is well acted and not remotely sensational.

One of the best.

This , for me, is one of the weakest episodes" of the series. First of all, Chuck McCann was basically a whiny has been grifter who has just scraped be in comedic mediocrity for years. He has earned the enmity of his ex partner Lee Russo (played by Robert Quarry) for allegedly absconding with Lee's material. It was a slapdash plot of murky elements, which gave the episode a type of uncharacteristic unsavoriness. Jason Evers was out of character for the type of personage he portrayed and the idea of certain controversial concepts being thrown about made the entire thrust of the episode incongruous with what viewers had been known to expect from the series. I did like the return of Tom Adkins (Lieutenant Diehl),Jim Rockford's other nemesis .But this was one of the weakest entries yet and I found it not satisfying in the least.

What a huge plot twist in this one. Say no more. And for a 1977 episode of a mainstream US tv series. Jason Evers, who was invariably cast as a heavy, shows incredible bravery to take on this role. The scene with his father is utterly extraordinary.

I notice this is on the ME-TV schedule tonight and I discovered by reading these reviews that I saw this many years ago. Perhaps in its original airing. I remember the scene between the father and son. After listening to his father's denunciation of his lifestyle the son replied with a tired haughty tone, 'Don't you think that all has a rather piquant quality?' The father replied dismissively, 'No, I don't use those kinds of words.' As for Chuck McCann, I remember him on a talk show doing a hilarious imitation of Robert Cummings being much older than he appeared. He mimed Cummings putting on a youthful mask and having a small tape recorder in his mouth instead of using his actual voice. The tape recorder rewinding sounded very real.