The Mod Squad: Season 2, Volume 1
Peggy Lipton is a fox. Let me get that personal
preference off my chest before this review gets underway. I remember
watching Twin Peaks with my good buddy Luke while I was in
graduate school. Although there was no denying the sultry bad-girl
allure of Sherilyn Fenn as Audrey Horne or the peachy-keen sexiness of
Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle), Luke and I agreed that there was
something magnetic about Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings, the complex
ex-beauty queen who ran the Double R Diner in Twin Peaks. Blonde and
mysterious, simple but intelligent, Norma (and Peggy) popped off the
screen for us.
She definitely played a different sort
of character in The Mod Squad, that’s for sure, but for
this writer, the highlight of this box set was the sheer act of
Lipton-appreciation that came along with it. The show is decidedly and
unavoidably dated, and many of its scenarios are groan-inducing with
their naiveté, but any time Julie Barnes (Lipton) comes
onscreen, things are never that bad.
The
Mod Squad is the kind of you-had-to-be-there show that many
thirty- and forty-somethings used to love watching. Before
the glory days of Magnum P.I. and CHiPs, The Mod
Squad used sexy youths in fancy clothes (well, they were
considered fancy at the time) to fight crime with a hip sensibility
and some swingin’ proto-disco music.
 The setup, predictably, is quite simple. Three delinquents were
shooed away from their potential lives in crime in the show’s
first season and decided to set up shop as members of an elite crime-
fighting group. Pete Cochran (Michael Cole) was a spoiled rich jerk
before his parents kicked him out of their Beverly Hills mansion; he
had turned toward the seedy. Lincoln Hayes (Clarence Williams III) had
always been on the dangerous side of things. Julie Barnes (Peggy
Lipton) is a flower-child-turned-hardened-ass-kicker. And instead of
going to prison, they went to work for the fuzz, man.
This paradigm continues through this first volume of the show’s
second season with relatively interesting results. As with many shows
that had trouble getting their sea legs in their debut seasons, the
second season of The Mod Squad proves that the show’s
creators figured out what worked and what didn’t, so
everything here is hip, crazy, and more than a little frenetic. This
set opens with The Girl in Chair Nine, which starts with a
crazy gypsy-like psychic who helps the squad try to find a missing
college student only to lead the trio into a bizarre underground
abortion cabal. The season then goes quickly into episodes dealing
with drug dealers and their hopped-up kidnapping schemes (An Eye
For an Eye), a messed-up author with some severe multiple
personality disorders (Lisa), and this writer’s
personal favorite, The Death of Bill Hannachek. In that
episode, Julie goes undercover as a country and western singer to
solve the mystery of the episode’s eponymous heavy; Peggy in
full country garb was almost too much for me to handle.
So, yes, The Mod Squad ain’t rocket science,
but this second season’s first half provides more than a few
solid, goofy scenarios that are hard to resist. The series
doesn’t back away from its inherent silliness (to be fair, once
you see our three protagonists jive with one another a few times,
you’ve seen it all), yet this latest release of The Mod
Squad on DVD is a distinct improvement from installments past. It
probably is more valuable as a time capsule than a legitimately
provocative crime/mystery/action series, but with cool music,
outrageous clothes, some insane plot lines and the lovely Miss Peggy,
I’d wager that it would be difficult for anyone to say The
Mod Squad is without at least some merit.
Bring on Volume 2!
The Video:
How Does The Disc Look?
These 1.33:1
transfers, though… Pow! Like Paramount’s DVD
treatments of Mission: Impossible, these presentations
probably couldn’t be much better. Detail is better than
expected, colors are rich and wonderfully saturated, flesh tones are
surprisingly natural (though they sometimes err toward pink), and
black levels are exceptionally thorough and consistent. There are some
effects of age and wear-and-tear – after all, the show’s
40 years old – but for the most part, these transfers are spot-
on. Fans should be ecstatic.
The
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
As with the
first DVD release of The Mod Squad, these are mono, man.
Mono. There’s consistent hiss and fuzz, but that’s the way
it originally sounded. Dialogue sounds all right, music comes through
well… there’s nothing to applaud and there’s
nothing to whine about. If you go in expecting old television mono and
are ready for all its limitations, you’ll be happy.
English Closed Captions are included.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
None.
Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens
when you pop the disc into your PC?
There are
no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.
Final
Thoughts
I gladly eat a bowl of crow in
regards to The Mod Squad. The first season didn’t
really grab me, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t eat this
Season 2, Volume 1 set right up. The episodes look great and
sound fine, and while it might have been nice to see some supplements,
the simple act of being able to watching Peggy Lipton do her thing
with her hipster co-stars is enough for me. This is good camp fun.
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