User Reviews

Another good Season 5 episode with an original storyline. A group of sociopathic misfit college students get their kicks by stealing valuable art objects and collector's items. But their game turns deadly when a security guard dies of a heart attack during one of their raids.

Pete and Linc infiltrate the group while Julie tends to a member who tried to off himself (he was also giving her piano lessons). Peggy is looking better and better as the season goes on.

The tough-talking leader of the club instantly turns into the biggest wimp you've ever seen when his hand is shot at the end. I couldn't stop laughing.

Not a particularly great episode (and Mod Squad is usually much better than this despite the reputation for trendiness it has acquired today), but made even worse by the obviousness of the affirmative-action thinking, which must have went something like this: "This is an episode about college students with high IQs who are committing crimes. Well, we've got to have at least one token black and one token Hispanic in the group, because if we don't, we'll be seen as implying that blacks and Hispanics aren't smart. Also better have at least one female member of the gang, or we'll be seen as implying that women aren't as smart as men. But, of course, the leader of the group will be a white male. Yes, I know, in real life criminals are not very particular about being racially or sexually inclusive in their choice of comrades (anything but), but this is television, and we've got to try to break stereotypes, even if it strains credulity...". On top of this, this group of students embraces vulgarized Nietzschean philosophy of the "superman" and "superior people". Highly improbable that the white leader of the group would simultaneously embrace affirmative action, and just as highly improbable that any racial or ethnic minority students (or even women) would join such a group as it is well known that this philosophy goes hand in hand with racism and sexism. One of the most laughably obvious excesses of "cultural sensitivity" writing. Also, you see no real evidence that any of these kids are really of excess intelligence. Stories about people with high IQs should only be written by writers with high IQs, and obviously this one was not. Very typical of the worst of the early '70s.