User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** This October 1962 "Naked City" episode seemed to have been inspired by the recent March 1962 Welterweight Championship fight between Bennie "Kid" Perret and Emil Griffith. It's there where Perrett was knocked unconscious and into a coma in the 12th round of the fight by Griffith and never came out of it dying a few weeks later at Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital. Here washed up fighter Johnny Meigs,Robert Duvall, is knocked out cold in a fight that should have never been sanctioned. Meigs was already suffering from serious brain damage, like Bennie Perrett in real life was before he fought Emil Griffith, but had his trainer Gus Slate, Hersey "The Bird" Bernardi, pay off, with $50.00 and a case of Johnny Walker Red, an alcoholic and former New York State Boxing Commission doctor Doc. Randel Benton, Ludwig Donath, to give the brain damaged Meigs a clean bill of health.

As we soon find out Meigs needed $250.00 that he got for the fight to pay for his wife Kathy's, Shirley Knight, trip to Baltimore to attend a flower contest that she, or what Meigs thought, was a sure shot of winning! With no one willing to lead him the $250.00 Meigs went to see his friend Slate at the local gym for the money offering to get into the boxing ring to do it. Now after the dust settled Meigs not only lost the bout but in in danger of losing his life as well! All this for some crummy flower show that didn't mean a hill of beans to anyone but those, like Meigs, that are involved in it!

With a police manhunt in full force to track down the both drunken Doc Benton and unscrupulous boxing trainer Gus Slate for manslaughter in the possible,he was still alive, death of Johnny Meigs it's Doc Benton who comes clean and turns himself over to the police but Gus Slate is another story. Not wanting to face the music Slate tries to skip out of town but is caught by the police as he made his unsuccessful getaway down the fire escape of his apartment.

**SPOILERS*** Powerful closing sequence as Gus Slate is handcuffed to a bed by the police at a flea bag hotel as a tearful Kathy lets the guy have it in what seems like a victim impact statement some 20 years before they became part of a trial! As for Johnny Meigs he pulled out of his coma to both live and breath another day but as for the fight business he's sticking to his newsstand where his life expediency will be a hell of lot longer!

While on a daylong marathon of The Naked City - being not disposed to, for one, the silly title change when it was "rebirthed" - I happened to fall asleep for a short time & woke up to find myself being served a whopping dish of cold chipped beef on stale toast in the (de)form of this Huh??? Anemic remake of its (far) better S1 E38 original. There is not a single aspect of it that can be called an improvement - love me some Robert Duvall for the longest, but here, No No Nanette! The anemic acting is the fault of the "director" of this pile, & R. D. comes across strangely awkward, illfitting even, as if himself not comfortable with ripping off an established work (see specifically his diner meeting avec The Little Woman, wherein his bright smile & cheery disposition - "Baltimore!" he gives out (in an equally brighter ptomaine trap) as weightily as wind on water - stand in glaring, inferior contrast to Harry Guardino's delivery, full of pained determination to provide something very special for his wife); he just isn't as beaten down yet refusing to stay there - a comparative "lightweight," no pun but unfortunately clear. Pressing into service as Gus Slack the hardly incapable Herschel Bernardi only 5 weeks after his light-years better outing vs. Burgess Meredith is 1 of the most glaring weaknesses here; he comes up short compared to Clement Fowler as well as himself, delivering a phoned-in performance that added nothing to the proceedings except yet 1 more more occasion to sigh with disappointment. And why was it done at all - with all these "millions" of stories in that dirty town, then & before, let alone since, there was absolutely NO need for this tired puffball to have been churned out. It's testament to how absorbing this production's 1st season is that it wasn't until reading some backstory on it that I was startled to find it was only a ½-hour show. In both cases, while having skipped plenty of episodes in both forms as their plot synopses didn't interest me, I seen enough to discern more acute differences than would've been liked or hoped. That trivial little detail of "writing" is the very foundation of the entire enterprise; quite marked, like tarmac & concrete, it is between its later form & the original, when some "Who?" hack with the singular name of "Silliphant" penned the scripts. Just going by the episode content, though, yielded many good S2-S4 moments (unluckily the background/episode title/end theme music, after Billy May/George Duning/Ned Washington's originals, took a boilerplate downturn especially with, surprisingly, Nelson Riddle composing). "Aye well, these things happen," & if from its many changes the blooms had fallen somewhat off the roses (!) of the original show by this point, they hadn't been to a death's-door degree. "Until now," as no less than Captain Kirk said, & hopefully the remaining 27 episodes this IMDb cites as still to be perused will be more good than not - & NO MORE ¼-BAKED LEFTOVERS! Because with just this (let us pray) single sample, another timeless quote from old Spock comes into (tele)play: "And I believe we've had enough of THAT!"